{"id":89466,"date":"2016-03-09T08:34:20","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T16:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=89466"},"modified":"2016-03-09T08:34:20","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T16:34:20","slug":"why-are-jews-supporting-a-right-wing-german-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=89466","title":{"rendered":"Why Are Jews Supporting A Right-Wing German Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Forward, Feb. 10, 2016<\/a>: Standing on an improvised stage and wrapped in the black, red and gold German flag, Rotem Ahituv stared out at thousands of protesters spread below him and offered the demonstrators a kind of absolution that only someone like him could give.
\n\u201cI am Jewish,\u201d he told the crowd. \u201cMy family has lived here in Germany for 700 years, and I can tell you that I see here no Nazis.\u201d
\nIn a short and passionate speech that quickly went viral on the Internet, Ahituv, an Israeli immigrant to Germany, spoke about the threat of a Muslim takeover of Europe and declared that Germany\u2019s Jews stand with Pegida, the populist right-wing movement that had organized the January 26 demonstration in Frankfurt.<\/p>\n

The group, whose name is a German acronym for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, has organized similar demonstrations in cities across Germany. The largest have been in Dresden, Pegida\u2019s base, where as many as 25,000 people have taken part. The protesters say they support Pegida\u2019s call for more restrictive immigration policies and for the right to preserve and protect a Christian-Jewish dominated Western culture.
\nAhituv told the crowd in Frankfurt that mainstream politicians and media, who have labeled Pegida as xenophobic, racist and even Nazi, are wrong and misleading. \u201cRight here I see only Germans who love their country and want to save Germany from the Islam that wants to take over, to take your traditions, to take your beliefs, to take all of this down,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we will not let it!\u201d
\nIn taking his stand, Ahituv was not just opposing Germany\u2019s leadership and all its mainstream parties; he was standing, too, against Germany\u2019s Jewish establishment. Communal leaders have strongly backed Chancellor Angela Merkel\u2019s description of Pegida as a group led by individuals whose hearts \u201care cold and often full of prejudice, and even hate.\u201d
\nJosef Schuster, chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has condemned Pegida as an \u201cimmensely dangerous\u201d movement that consists of neo-Nazis, parties from the far right and citizens who think that they can finally let out their racism and xenophobia.
\n\u201cThe Pegida-movement definitely doesn\u2019t serve the interests of Germany\u2019s Jewish community,\u201d he wrote to the Forward in an email. \u201cThey want to exclude the Muslims and foreigners [from] German society. Somebody who roots against one minority is also able to root against other minorities\u201d
\nYakov Hadas-Handelsman, Israel\u2019s ambassador to Germany, voiced the same fear. \u201cTheir actions \u2014 racially, religiously, socially, economically or otherwise justified,\u201d he told the Forward, \u201care directed today against one group, and tomorrow against another.\u201d
\n\u201cSince the Second World War, Germany has been a place of democracy, pluralism and freedom,\u201d Hadas-Handelsman noted. \u201cThese values should be treasured\u2026. Those who incite racism and anti-Semitism use the democratic rules of the game to hurt democracy.\u201d
\nBut Ahituv is not the only Jew in Germany who thinks Pegida might be good for the Jews. The once unthinkable idea of a Jewish alliance with the German far right wing has gained some traction, especially following the recent terror attacks in Paris.
\nJews are terribly afraid of the Muslims, according to Henryk Broder, a well-known journalist and outspoken personality in the German-Jewish community. Broder said German Jews should support the anti-Islamization movement.
\n\u201cThe Muslim community in Germany is the only threat to the Jews,\u201d Broder said, adding that he does not agree with everything Pegida says, but thinks the Jewish establishment should listen to the movement instead of just demonizing it.
\nAccording to Rabbi Walter Rothschild, Pegida is raising important questions that mainstream politics has avoided. Rothschild, who is chief rabbi of Schleswig-Holstein, a federal state in northern Germany, said that there was a need in German society to discuss to what extent a minority should be allowed to maintain cultural norms that override core principles of Western civilization. Within the Muslim minority \u2014 which amounts to 5% of Germany\u2019s population of 82 million \u2014 there are some communities, Rothschild said, that disregard Western values like women\u2019s rights or freedom of speech and preach anti-Semitism.
\n\u201cIf you are going to have a mosque, then don\u2019t teach hatred in it,\u201d he said. \u201cYes, you can have a school, but don\u2019t teach people to be terrorists. Yes, you can have your own political opinion about the Middle East, but don\u2019t walk up and down [in street demonstrations] saying, \u2018Kill the Jews!\u2019 \u2014 which is what they did in Berlin.\u201d Rothschild was referring to pro-Palestinian protests that took place in the German capital during Israel\u2019s military offensive against Hamas in Gaza last summer.
\n\u201dThis is a cultural issue,\u201d Rothschild concluded. \u201cJews in Europe are mostly on the side of modern Western values. There are some Muslims who are against modern Western values. Why should I support the right of Muslims to be against what I believe in?\u201d
\nMuch of Pegida\u2019s popularity can be attributed to the organizers\u2019 efforts to appeal to mainstream Germans. The movement has been strictly nonviolent, and its main battle cry is \u201cWe are the people!\u201d \u2014 a slogan used by pro-democracy activists who protested against East Germany\u2019s authoritarian regime in the 1980s.
\nFrom its early days, Pegida presented itself as pro-Jewish, and Israeli flags have been a common sight in demonstrations. When a photo showing Pegida\u2019s founder, Lutz Bachmann, mugging in a Hitler costume was revealed, Bachmann was forced to resign from the movement\u2019s leadership. Pegida\u2019s spokesman, Christian Mayerhoff, recently gave an exclusive interview to the Israeli news website Ynet, in which he said Jews should stand together with Pegida \u201cagainst Islamism and jihadism.\u201d
\nPegida\u2019s pro-Jewish terminology is less about recruiting Jews \u2014 who account for less than 0.2% of Germany\u2019s population \u2014 and more about advertising their regard for the boundaries of German political correctness. For some Pegida supporters, being Jew-friendly is a way to whitewash their radical ideology, explained Nathan Gelbart, chairman in Germany of Keren Hayesod, the Zionist fundraising organization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Forward, Feb. 10, 2016: Standing on an improvised stage and wrapped in the black, red and gold German flag, Rotem Ahituv stared out at thousands of protesters spread below him and offered the demonstrators a kind of absolution … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13633],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-germany"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89467,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89466\/revisions\/89467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}