Jews and gay people should hide identity in ‘Arab neighbourhoods’, says Berlin police chief

Barbara Slowik says some residents are openly hostile towards Jews and ‘have sympathies for terrorist groups’

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Jews and gay people should hide their identity in parts of Berlin with large Arab populations, the German capital’s police chief has warned.
“There are areas of the city, we need to be perfectly honest here, where I would advise people who wear a kippah or are openly gay to be more careful,” said Barbara Slowik.
“There are certain neighbourhoods where the majority of people of Arab origin live, who also have sympathies for terrorist groups,” she said, adding that they were often “openly hostile towards Jews”.
She told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper that “violent crimes against Jewish people are few and far between, but every act is one too many”.
A fortnight ago, a youth football team from Makkabi Berlin, a Jewish sports club, reported being “hunted down” by youths carrying sticks and knives after a match in an Arab neighbourhood of the city. The victims, aged 13 to 15, said they were spat at and insulted throughout the match.
The incident took place on the same night that migrant gangs filmed attacks on fans of the Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv after a European football match against Ajax in Amsterdam.
Germany has seen a surge in anti-Semitism since the beginning of the war in Gaza, with reported incidents doubling in 2023 compared with previous years.
Since Oct 7 last year, Berlin’s police have opened more than 6,000 investigations connected to anti-Semitism, according to Ms Slowik. Most of these concern online hate speech or graffiti.
Other incidents in Berlin include a football fan being attacked for wearing a scarf with a Star of David on it, a petrol bomb attack on a synagogue shortly after the Oct 7 massacres in southern Israel, and a couple being attacked in a fast-food outlet for speaking Hebrew.
On the day of the Hamas massacres, men handed out sweets in celebration in the Berlin neighbourhood of Neukolln, an incident that shocked Germany and led to deep anxiety over whether the recent waves of migration had made Jewish life less safe.
Neukolln, also famous for its LGBT nightlife, is the Berlin district with the highest Arab population. The two communities have coexisted for years, although there have been several incidents of gay couples being physically assaulted in recent years.
Earlier this month, a large majority of lawmakers in the Bundestag, Germany’s national parliament, voted for a new resolution against anti-Semitism that mentioned migration from the Middle East as a factor.
The resolution, drafted by the Greens, the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats, warned of an “alarming extent of anti-Semitism based on migration from countries where anti-Semitism and hostility to Israel are widespread due to state indoctrination”.
The resolution could lead to refugees having their asylum status taken away if they are found guilty of committing anti-Semitic crimes.
The migration debate flared again in the summer amid fears of a rise in terrorism, but is likely to play second fiddle to Germany’s stagnating economy in the upcoming election.
The hard-Right Alternative for Germany has cited the protection of the country’s Jewish minority as a reason to push through a much tougher policy of mass deportations of refugees back to countries such as Syria.