Gil Ofarim and hotel staff received numerous hateful messages

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Gil Ofarim: About 200 hate messages

Photo: ProSieben / dpa

The debate about the anti-Semitism allegations raised by the musician Gil Ofarim led to a flood of hate messages on the Internet.

Ofarim personally was affected by more than 200 mostly anti-Semitic messages on social media, the Leipzig Public Prosecutor and the State Criminal Police Office in Saxony confirmed to SPIEGEL.

These messages were registered by the Central Reporting Office for Hate Crime on the Internet (ZMI), said a spokesman for the LKA. All cases will now be investigated in a bundled investigation. The majority of the news is about suspicion of insult or sedition with anti-Semitic content.

The man who Ofarim accuses of anti-Semitic hostility is also affected by hatred on the Internet. The hotel employee was also insulted and insulted online, according to the investigators. However, the extent of the hate news is much smaller in this case - also because the man deleted his social media accounts after a short time. According to the public prosecutor's office, both Ofarim and the hotel employee have filed criminal charges against unknown persons for all possible offenses.

Ofarim had said in an Instagram video at the beginning of October that the employee of the hotel The Westin Leipzig had attacked him anti-Semitically - by asking him to wrap his necklace with a Star of David. Otherwise he is not allowed to check in. The hotel employee reported Ofarim for defamation, the musician filed two criminal charges against the man: one for alleged anti-Semitic assault, another for false suspicion in response to the defamation lawsuit.

Most recently, a report about an internal investigation commissioned by the hotel chain caused a sensation because it aroused doubts about Ofarim's information.

According to the final report of a law firm, none of the witnesses interviewed heard an anti-Semitic insult in the incident in the hotel lobby.

Ofarim's necklace with a Star of David was allegedly not mentioned either.

The public prosecutor's office in Leipzig is investigating all three proceedings.

According to a spokesman for the investigating authority, it is not yet foreseeable when all investigations will be completed.

mxw