A leftist antisemite in the city-state of Bremen in Germany attacked a group of pro-Israel communists on Thursday who protested against xenophobia and the extreme right-wing terrorist attack in Hanau.
“The attacked person was asked extremely aggressively by a left-wing antisemite to hand over the Israeli flag,” wrote the pro-Israel communist group Solarium on its website. The pro-Israel activist refused to hand over the Israeli flag.
Solarium – communist Group Bremen-- titled its article: ”The provocation of Jewish existence.”
Bremen has a long history of outbreaks of Israel-related antisemitism, including a flourishing Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign targeting Israel.An estimated 1,000 people demonstrated in northern city of Bremen under the slog “Stop Right Terror! Organize anti-fascist self-help" following the racist terrorist attack in the German city of Hanau in February.
The mass murderer Tobias Rathjen killed 10 people in Hanau He said he wanted to murder people from Israel, Asia and North Africa.
According to Solarium, demonstrators asked why “we undertook this provocation” with the Israeli flag. The anti-Israel protestors told the group that an Israeli flag had no place at the demonstration.
“We stated…that we did not intend to provoke and would like to use the flag to express our solidarity with all victims of antisemitic violence, and we were again insulted,“ wrote Solarium.The antisemite spat in the direction of the Solarium members. Solarium wrote that “People who are so bothered by the Israeli flag are to be named antisemites.”
The group criticized “German news programs, which only report on an Israeli reaction after weeks of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip,” suggesting that Israel is to blame for disrupting Middle East stability.
“As uncomfortable as we felt, it was out of the question for us to drop the flags as it is the symbol of the only protective power on which Jews can rely,” adding that the failure of the police to protect the synagogue in Halle is further sad evidence of this,” wrote Solarium.
The neo-Nazi Stephan Balliet’s attempt to create mass mass-murder in a synagogue in the East German city of Halle last year resulted in the deaths of two people. Balliet was wedded to an antisemitic world view that included the “Zionist-occupied government” theory.
Solarium said that “Any rejection of the Israeli state, as the only global shelter for the survivors of the Shoah and their descendants, is already motivated by anti-Semitism,” wrote Solarium.
Germany appears to be the only Western European country that has pro-Israel communist groups, many of whom are students or left-wing intellectuals and journalists.
Two journalists for the local Bremen paper Weser-Kurier, Pascal Faltermann and Jan-Felix Jasch, did not report on the outbreak of antisemitism at the demonstration.
Writing on the popular German website “The Axis of Good,” Marcus Ermler also reported on the antisemitic attack on Solarium.Ermler listed other cases of anti-Israel activists ripping Israeli flags from supporters of the Jewish state in the cities of Berlin and Cologne.
In 2018, reporters for Germany’s largest paper Bild hanged Israeli flags in a number of German cities. All the flags were pulled down, including one attempt to burn a flag.
The Jerusalem Post reported exclusively in 2018 that the Al-Mustafa Community Center in Bremen is a major hub for raising funds for Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to a Bremen intelligence report.
The Bremen intelligence agency’s report stated, “The Al-Mustafa-Community Center supports Hezbollah in Lebanon, especially by collecting donations.”
Bremen and the German federal government refuse to outlaw the antisemitic terrorist entity. The US, the United Kingdom, the Arab League, Canada, Israel and a number of Latin America countries classify Hezbollah’s entire operation as a foreign terrorist entity.