The Ukraine War Is Being Used as a Pretext For Antisemitic Attacks in Germany: Report

Russia’s war against Ukraine has been linked to antisemitic assaults, abuse and threats in Germany, according to new research.

The annual report from the Department for Research and Information on Anti-Semitism, or RIAS, a group which monitors antisemitism in Germany, found that 11 percent of the 2,480 antisemitic incidents it documented last year involved some link with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022. These included two assaults, three threats, three targeted attacks on property, and more than 140 cases of abusive behaviour.

Marco Siegmund, a spokesperson for the group, said that, in many cases, this was due to antisemitic conspiracy theories that powerful Jewish forces were secretly “directing world events” being delusionally applied to the Russian war on Ukraine.

He cited one example documented in the report in which a taxi driver in Berlin had told a Jewish passenger that only Americans and Israelis were benefiting from the Ukraine conflict because it was all about "power and money,” and claiming that Israelis owned "60 percent" of the German capital.

Nicholas Potter, a researcher at the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, an anti-racism organisation in Berlin, said that the war in Ukraine had proven the latest issue around which antisemites could frame their conspiracy narratives, as the COVID pandemic had been before it.

“Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine has served as a canvas onto which antisemites can project their ideology – not least because [Ukraine President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy is Jewish,” he told VICE News. “Central to all conspiracy narratives is the question ‘cui bono?’, ‘who benefits?’ And in the mind of antisemites, it’s the Jews.”

He said that the antisemitic narratives circulating around the Russian war in Ukraine typically related to “the alleged power and wealth” of Jewish people, with Jews supposedly standing “to profit from the war and are secretly pulling the strings behind it.”

Also documented in the report was an incident in which a Hamburg family which took in Ukrainian refugees was sent a threatening letter calling their guests “subhumans” and, in a reference to Nazi extermination camps, suggesting Germans could "fire up the stoves we have had for 75 years. We have enough 'fuel'.” Another incident saw graffiti of a Star of David written in the colours of Ukraine’s flag, alongside the “Z” symbol representing support for Russian aggression.

The RIAS report found that while there was a slight decrease – from 2,773 to 2,480, or about 11 percent – in documented antisemitic incidents overall from 2021, they remained at a high level: about seven per day, and about 25 percent higher than in 2020. Most concerningly, there were nine documented incidents of extreme violence in 2022, the highest since national recording began in 2017.

These included three violent incidents in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia – a shooting at a former rabbi’s house next to an old synagogue in Essen, an arson attack in Bochum, and a foiled attack on the synagogue in Dortmund – which authorities believe were ordered by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Another significant finding in the report was that, of the incidents where an ideological or political background to the incident could be identified, for the first time the greatest number – 21 percent – came from a conspiracy background. The far-right, which previously generated the most antisemitic incidents, was the second most common, accounting for 13 percent.

RIAS’s managing director Benjamin Steinitz said that for victims of antisemitism, it was something they encountered in everyday life, and could not isolate themselves from without withdrawing from the social sphere. 

“The people affected are permanently prepared for such incidents: For them, antisemitism has an everyday character,” he said. “In the digital space, Jews are often exposed to anti-Semitic insults as soon as they are identifiable as Jewish or generally express themselves on topics related to Jewish life. For many Jews, withdrawing from social media platforms is the only way to escape hatred online.”