In the past weeks, after recent events in Palestine/Israel, a number of German politicians, journalists and academics cautioned against antisemitism arising from migrant communities. These claims, made by the likes of Armin Laschet, the head of Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), imply that today’s antisemitism is a phenomenon that has been mainly imported from abroad, especially by Muslim immigrants.
This assumption is not new, but it has gained traction in the wake of demonstrations against Israel’s 2014 Gaza war and the European ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015-16. Bild, Germany’s leading tabloid, as well as conservative politicians in particular, has been accused of propagating that assumption. In the mainstream media, few critical voices can be heard that challenge this discourse. But the shortcomings of this framing are significant.
After the admission of almost 900,000 refugees into Germany in 2015 and 2016 – mostly coming from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan – the far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) became the third strongest party. Indeed, racism and xenophobia rose enormously during those years. In 2016, for example, there were more than 3,500 attacks on refugees while, in 2020, there were still some 1,600 assaults. In a survey conducted in 2018-19, more than 50% of Germans acceded to statements that were hostile to refugees. But xenophobia and anti-Muslim racism had been thriving long before. In a survey conducted in 2010, for example, 55.4% of Germans agreed with the following statement: “I understand very well that some people think Arabs are displeasing.”
