BERLIN – Ken Jacobson, deputy national director of the Anti-Defamation League,
on Friday weighed in on the raging German dispute over the alleged anti-Semitism
of Der Spiegel columnist Jakob Augstein and his attacks on Jews and
Israel.
Augstein’s statement about Jewish control of US foreign policy
“crosses the line into anti-Semitic conspiracy thinking,“ he told The Jerusalem
Post in a telephone interview.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center included
Augstein in its list of 2012’s top-ten anti-Semites.
Jacobson cited the
following Augstein quote, which appeared in his column, as being contaminated
with conspiratorial anti-Semitism: “With backing from the US, where the
president must secure the support of Jewish lobby groups, and in Germany, where
coping with history, in the meantime, has a military component, the [Binyamin]
Netanyahu government keeps the world on a leash with an ever-swelling war
chant.”
The New York-based ADL, like the Wiesenthal Center, monitors
modern anti-Semitism in Europe in general and in Germany in
particular.
Jacobson said that Augstein’s quote, in which he equated
haredim with Islamist terrorists, “crosses the line into stereotypes of Jews,”
but added that “anti-Israel criticism is not necessarily anti-
Semitic.”
The Augstein controversy has divided Germany’s
Jews.
German media reported that Salomon Korn, vice president of the
Central Council of Jews in Germany, said Augstein’s writings are not
anti-Semitic.
Korn argued that the Wiesenthal Center should not have
included Augstein in its list because the organization “does not know German
relations.”
Though the head of the council, Dr. Dieter Graumann, did not
completely agree with the Wiesenthal list including Augstein, he said the
columnist’s Israel texts are “dreadful and not nuanced,” and that he apparently
has an “Israel obsession” and “spreads anti- Jewish
resentments.”
Augstein’s Der Spiegel columns contribute to an
“anti-Israel atmosphere” in the Federal Republic, noted Graumann, whose comments
were reported in the main German Jewish newspaper, Die Jüdische
Allgemeine.
Dr. Alexander Brenner, former head of Germany’s largest
Jewish community in Berlin, told the Post on Friday that he agrees with
Wiesenthal Center’s designation of Augstein as No. 9 in the rankings of last
year’s most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel people.
Brenner, who has a seat
in the directorate of the Central Council and on the representative board of the
Berlin community, sharply criticized Korn as an “alibi Jew” – a phrase
frequently used by German Jews to describe a small group of fringe Jews who
protect anti-Semites and anti- Israel critics from rebuke in the public sphere.
He said Korn’s behavior made him want “to throw up,” since Augstein is, “without
question an anti-Semite.”
Brenner, a popular Jewish leader in Berlin,
called on the council to stand behind the Wiesenthal Center and Henryk Broder,
the first German journalist to term Augstein’s articles
anti-Semitic.
Augstein has told the German media that he does not know
what prompted him to be placed on the Wiesenthal list and said the inclusion of
him only hurts “critical journalism” because it will be stigmatized as
anti-Semitic or racist.