Shamir dismayed at anti-Semitism at demonstrations

Created: 2022-01-27Updated: 2022-01-27 05:20

Israeli Consul General Carmela Shamir speaks.

© Bernd Weißbrod/dpa/archive image

Again and again, demonstrators at the Corona demos wear yellow stars with the inscription "unvaccinated" - and thus play down the Holocaust.

The new Israeli Consul General is shocked.

Stuttgart – The Consul General of the State of Israel, Carmela Shamir, was dismayed at the anti-Semitic excesses at the demonstrations against the Corona measures.

"We were shocked when we saw the slogans and the pictures of people wearing the Star of David," Shamir told the German Press Agency during her first visit to the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Interior in Stuttgart.

"We were shocked by the extent." It took society a long time to understand how serious the phenomenon is.

In the meantime, however, there is more understanding and more and more counter-protests, said Shamir.

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According to the security authorities, right-wing extremists are increasingly trying to use the demonstrations for their own purposes.

In the past, demonstrators had repeatedly shown themselves with the Jewish star and the inscription "unvaccinated" - which downplayed the Holocaust.

Shamir said she was also fundamentally concerned about the threat of violent attacks on the Jewish community in Germany.

She is happy about the government's efforts to protect the Jewish community.

But there is still work to be done - she spoke of creating more awareness in the fight against anti-Semitism in the population and doing something about the incitement on social media.

"Many could not have imagined this particularly disgusting form of hate and hate speech in the form of anti-Semitism.

They thought that was the past.

We were wrong.

Anti-Semitism never went away," said Interior Minister Thomas Strobl (CDU).

"We will only be satisfied when children of the Jewish faith can go to school with a yarmulke on their head without the grandparents having to worry."

Shamir took up her post last year.

All of southern Germany is part of their official territory - the consular district includes the Free State of Bavaria and the states of Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland.

dpa