Until now, attacks on Jews, Jewish institutions and Jewish symbols have almost always been committed by right-wing extremist groups. In the first quarter of 2010 alone, the German Interior Ministry documented 183 anti-Semitic offences committed by right-wing radicals, including graffiti, inflammatory propaganda and physical violence.
The stone-throwing incident in Hanover, however, has finally forced the authorities to take a closer look at a group of offenders that, though largely overlooked until now, is no less motivated by anti-Zionist sentiments: adolescents and young adults from an immigrant community who are influenced by Islamist ideas and are prepared to commit acts of violence.
An informal and accidental alliance has been developing for some time between neo-Nazis and some members of a group they would normally despise: Muslim immigrants. The two groups seem to share vaguely similar anti-Semitic ideologies.
Right-wing extremists and Islamists, says Heinz Fromm, the president of the German domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), are united by "a common bogeyman: Israel and the Jews as a whole." While German right-wing extremists cultivate a "more or less obvious racist anti-Semitism," says Fromm, the Islamists are "oriented toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and support "anti-Zionist ideological positions, which can also have anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic overtones." Both extremist movements, says Fromm, "ascribe extraordinary political power to Israel and the Jews, and their goal is to fight this power."
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Although the BfV has not separately identified anti-Semitic crimes associated with Islamist groups until now, investigators are paying close attention to the development of anti-Jewish tendencies within the milieu ....
