After slogans about Gaza were left outside a Berlin city house during an attempted fire attack, the German government’s state security agency is looking into a possible politically motivated arson.
Local people reported hearing crystal splitting, a fire burning on the ground floor, and people fleeing the scene at Tiergarten community hall, a city center area, with 30 firefighters on their way. The fire” could have caused a larger fire,” according to a town spokesman, but it was quickly contained thanks to the quick action of those who were nearby, with the brigade declaring:” We were able to quickly extinguish the fire.”
According to Die Welt, the town hall’s furniture, which was covered in scaffolding during restoration work, was damaged.
Graffiti at the scene was subsequently discovered, which contained what the German , Jewish Forum for Democracy , and Against Anti- Semitism called “anti- Israel slogans and threats”. The messages included’ If Gaza Burns, Berlin Burns’, and ‘ Warning Berlin, We’ll Let it Burn’.
In der Nacht wurde das Bürgeramt im Rathaus Tiergarten,# Berlin, Ziel eines Brandanschlags. Unbekannte wie” Warnung Berlin wir lassen es brennen” and” Brennt Gaza brennt Berlin” großflächig an die Fassade gesprüht haben israelfeindliche Parolen und Drohungen. # B0905… pic. twitter.com/rE3Z8JPb5B
— Jüdisches Forum ( JFDA e. V. ) ( @JFDA_eV ) May 9, 2024
A police spokesman told the Tagesspiegel that the fire and the wall writing are connected and that initial investigations believe a Molotov cocktail was the cause of the fire. The relationship between the two acts is “obvious”, the spokesman said. The state security agency is now looking into and considering an act of political arson as a result.
The paper also makes reference to Samuel Salzborn, Berlin’s anti-Semitism commissioner, who said” a focus must be placed on the police’s attention on the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel escalations of the last few weeks and months” if the suspicion of arson is proven.
Hatred is being directed against Jews in Germany, Salzborn said, but violence was also being directed at “central elements of democracy”. He claimed that the violence at a town hall was an extension of the protests.
Antisemitism is, after years of decline, again resurgent in Germany, and particularly since last year’s deadly Hamas terrorist attack against Israel. In December a report found there had been hundreds of , antisemitic “politically motivated crime” cases in Germany since the attack, and the majority of these were found to be attributable to , “foreign ideology” or “religious” causes.
A Synagogue was destroyed in a German city just this year, and a German death camp’s Auschwitz memorial was hacked out.
‘ Never Again Must Be Unbreakable’ — Chancellor Olaf Scholz Condemns Rise of Antisemitism in Germanyhttps: //t. co/lPCXckA6cv
— Breitbart London ( @BreitbartLondon ) October 22, 2023
