Multiple incidents of vandalism against a synagogue in Ulm cannot be considered anti-Semitic, police in the German city have stated.
The exterior of the synagogue was damaged in two separate incidents in August and September there is "no indication of an anti-Semitic background,” local authorities were quoted as saying by the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper.
The local Jewish community’s executive council issued a statement saying that its members were "concerned because the perpetrators returned to finish their work” and that "a group of young men have it in for the synagogue,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
In January, a German court upheld a previous ruling that a 2014 arson attack on a synagogue by three Palestinians in Wuppertal could not be considered anti-Semitic as it was intended to raise awareness of the conflict in Gaza. Anti-Israel demonstrators rallied across Germany during the 2014 conflict, in some cases yelling slogans such as “Jew, Jew, cowardly swine, come out and fight on your own” and “Hamas Hamas Jews to the gas!”
Sixty percent of German Jews have thought about emigrating because they no longer felt safe, according to a study cited by Die Welt in August.
The online survey of more than 500 Jews was conducted by researchers at Universität Bielefeld and Frankfurt University and found that three quarters of German Jews saw anti-Semitism as a major problem and have little hope for the future. 29 percent stated that they have been harassed or offended for being Jewish while three percent said they had been physically assaulted. Despite these negative reactions, however, three quarters of respondents stated that they still felt comfortable there.
Around 70 percent of respondents indicated that they were concerned about the recent influx of Middle Eastern immigrants, stating that it could lead to an increase in anti-Semitism while 56 percent said they were scared of attacks by migrants.
According to the study “most members of the Jewish population in Germany do not dare to express their faith in the public - the fear is too great to be a victim of psychological and physical violence.”
“In some districts in major cities, I’d advise people not to identify themselves as Jews,” Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany told German media recently.
