Antisemitic demonstrations erupted over the weekend in major European cities, with Muslim groups staging violent and angry protests under the pretext of the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
A gang of 20 masked-men fire-bombed a synagogue late Saturday in the Swedish city of Goteborg. The assailants threw several molotov cocktails at the synagogue while a youth event was underway. Jewish children were forced to take shelter in a cellar during the attack, German broadcaster DW News reported.
The attack at the synagogue comes after a series of angry antisemitic and anti-Israel demonstrations in major Swedish cities. Demonstrators in Stockholm set fire to an Israeli flag, while in Malmö — a city with large migrant Muslim population — protectors shouted death chants, vowing “to shoot the Jews”, among other slogans, the national public broadcaster Sveriges Radio reported.
UK newspaper Daily Express reported Saturday night’s fire-bombing of the Swedish synagogue:
Police arrived at the scene, where Jewish students had taken refuge in the basement.A police spokesman said: “There are several molotov cocktails that have been thrown against the synagogue. It’s about bottles and gasoline.”A fire broke out between vehicles in the car park, fire fighter Kristoffer Wahter told local news.No injuries were caused and the building did not catch fire, Police inspector Peter Nordengard said.Initial local media reports suggest the group was around 20 men wearing masks carried out the attack. (…)Online police have said: “We do not know much more than there are several molotov cocktails that have been thrown against the synagogue.”
The UK and Germany witnesses similar protests over the weekend. Hundreds gathered outside the US embassy in London to protest President Trump’s decision. The demonstration sponsored by leftist and Socialist groups soon turned antisemitic with protesters raising Islamist slogans.
“[T]he crowd outside the embassy loudly chanted (among other things) ‘Khaybar Khaybar, ya yahud, Jaish Muhammad, sa yahud’. This is a famous Islamic battle-cry which might be translated, ‘Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning,” wrote leading British columnist Douglas Murray in the British newspaper The Spectator commenting on Friday night events.
Berlin witnessed similar antisemitic outbursts. “Trump’s decision on Jerusalem led to aggressive protests in Berlin: Israeli flags were burned at the Brandenburg Gate,” reported the German newspaper Die Welt.
Two Israeli flags were burned at a rally over the moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem, a spokesman for the police told Die Welt. At least 450 police officers were at the scene. According to the dpa news agency 1,200 participants were present. Police refused to confirm those numbers.Demonstrators gathered outside the US embassy with numerous Palestinian flags on Friday. “We found that participants behaved emotionally to some extent,” said the [police] spokesperson.There were clashes between the police and the protesters at the end of the demonstration, as they tried to bring down the crowd barrier. Some of the participants had masked their faces and threw things at the police officers. (…)The group Jüdisches Forum wrote on Twitter that demonstrators shouted antisemitic slogans and carried the flag of Racial-Islamic Hamas. Police had no information on that, the spokesman said. Hamas is classified as terrorist organization in the EU, US and Israel.A spokesperson for Jüdisches Forum told Die Welt that the mood was tense right from the onset of the demonstration. The participants shouted “child murderer Israel” in German and “Death to Israel” in Arabic. [Die Welt, December 9, 2017; author’s translation]
Video showing demonstrators chanting ‘Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning’ in Berlin this weekend
While the Berlin Police pretends to have no knowledge of antisemitic death chants raised in Berlin, there is plenty of video evidence on the YouTube. Could this rather be the lack of political will in Germany to confront migrant gangs?
Equally disturbing is the conspicuous silence of the German and European political class in the wake of latest antisemitic outburst in Europe. German Chancellor Merkel and rest of her cabinet, quick to slam President Trump for his Foreign Policy move, couldn’t be bothered to comment on this disturbing resurgence of Jew-hatred at home.
Raw footage of anti-Israel demonstration at Berlin’s historic Brandenburg Gate:
[Cover image via YouTube]
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