The Union has spoken out in favor of applying harsher penalties for anti-Semitic crimes. The Bundestag is scheduled to vote on a corresponding proposal on Thursday.
The Union is calling for higher penalties for anti-Semitism and supporting terrorism. “Anyone who agitates against Israel must be punished with at least six months in prison,” said the legal policy spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Günter Krings, to the newspapers of the Funke media group.
Anti-Semitism must also be classified as a particularly serious case of incitement to hatred in the criminal code.
Demand for passport revocation
The CDU/CSU parliamentary group also demands that people with German and another nationality should lose their German passport if “anti-Semitic attitudes have been identified in connection with a criminal conviction”.
“The tipping point of our democracy appears to have been reached when 540 anti-Semitic crimes have been recorded by the police in the third quarter of 2023, significantly more than in previous quarters and demonstration participants here in Germany are calling for the establishment of a caliphate,” said Krings.
The criminal offense of breach of the peace must be designed in such a way that participation in a hostile crowd is also punishable.
Vote on Thursday
The Union faction has summarized its demands in a Bundestag proposal, which will be voted on in the plenary session on Thursday. “The vile display of joy over the death of Jews is intolerable and must entail all possible consequences under the rules of the constitutional state,” says the text, which was available to the Funke newspapers.
SPD party leader Klingbeil: Not all Muslims are anti-Semites
In the debate about how to deal with increasing anti-Semitism, SPD party leader Lars Klingbeil has meanwhile defended Muslims against blanket suspicion. “Anti-Semitism must be fought, no matter which direction it comes from. Whether from the left, from the right, from Muslims or Christians,” he told the magazine “stern” and added: “I refuse to generalize here.”
Klingbeil called it “perfidious how the far right is now trying to stir up sentiment against Muslims.” And if a politician like Hubert Aiwanger attributes anti-Semitism solely to people with a migration background, “then he should reflect on what he used to have in his school bag,” said the SPD leader in view of the anti-Jewish leaflet that was found at Aiwanger’s school.