German Jews warned not to wear skullcaps

THE head of Germany’s leading Jewish organisation yesterday warned people to avoid wearing skullcaps following a series of anti-semitic attacks.

Josef Schuster, of the Central Council of Jews, said: “I have to advise people to avoid showing themselves with a kippah in a big city setting in Germany and to wear a baseball cap or something else to cover their head instead.” The warning follows an attack on two men wearing kippahs in Berlin. They were whipped with a belt by three men who shouted “Yahudi”, Arabic for Jew.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, spoke of a “different form of antisemitism” coming from migrants of Arab descent after the main suspect, a 19-year-old Syrian asylum seeker, surrendered to police. Mr Schuster had warned against wearing kippahs in Muslim-majority neighbourhoods before, but said that the problem existed among the general German public, too.

Aiman Mazyek, of the German council of Muslims, denounced the attacks and said anti-semitism was a “sin” in Islam. Mr Schuster warned that democracy itself was in danger. “It’s not just about anti-semitism, it’s also about racism and xenophobia,” he said. One of the victims was not in fact Jewish but an Israeli Arab wearing a kippah in a failed attempt to prove it was safe.