The head of Germany’s leading Jewish organisation on Tuesday warned people to avoid wearing Jewish skullcaps in major cities following a series of violent anti-Semitic attacks.
“I have to advise people to avoid showing themselves openly with a kippah in a big city setting in Germany, and to wear a baseball cap or something else to cover their head instead,” Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told German radio.
The warning comes after a videoed attack last week in central Berlin, in which two men wearing kippahs were set upon and whipped with a belt by a group of three men who shouted “Yahudi” — the Arabic word for Jew.
“Most of society realises we have reached a tipping point,” Mr Schuster said. “If we don’t oppose open anti-Semitism ultimately it will endanger our democracy. Because it’s not just about anti-Semitism, it’s also about racism and xenophobia.”
The main suspect in last week’s attack is a 19-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker who has surrendered to police, and Angela Merkel has spoken of a “different form of anti-Semitism” in Germany coming from migrants of Arab descent.
Three years ago Mr Schuster warned against wearing kippahs in Muslim-majority neighbourhoods. But he stressed on Tuesday that the issue is not only caused by Arab migrants, and that there is also anti-Semitism among the German population.
The warning came as the head of Germany’s leading Muslim organisation denounced attacks on Jewish people and said anti-Semitism is a “sin” in Islam.
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“Anti-Semitism, racism and hatred are great sins in Islam, and we will never tolerate them,” Aiman Mazyek of Germay’s Central Council of Muslims told the Rheinische Post newspaper.
The main victim in last week’s attack, Adam Armoush, was not in fact Jewish but an Israeli Arab wearing a kippah in a failed attempt to prove it was safe.
The incident was the latest in a series of violent attacks on men wearing skullcaps on Berlin’s streets. There have also been concerns over anti-Semitic bullying in the German capital’s schools.