Leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany have been rebuked for belittling the significance of the Nazis and criticizing a Holocaust memorial, but this has not stopped a small group of Jews from throwing their support behind the party.<\/p>\n
On Sunday they formed Jews in the AfD, a political group based in the western city of Wiesbaden that seeks to foster support for the party, which says Islam is not compatible with the German constitution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not a religious organisation, we are a political organisation,\u201d Jews in the AfD leader Wolfgang Fuhl told reporters at the inauguration ceremony, sitting on a podium with fellow Jews including a few wearing the Jewish skullcap.<\/p>\n
He said people wishing to join had to meet two requirements: membership in the AfD and ethnic or religious association with the Jewish faith. Twenty people signed up at Sunday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
The AfD entered the German parliament for the first time in an election last year, drawing support from a broad array of voters angry with Chancellor Angela Merkel\u2019s decision in 2015 to welcome almost a million, mainly Muslim asylum seekers.<\/p>\n
Its success drew immediate expressions of concern from Israeli officials and Jewish groups in Europe and the United States.<\/p>\n
German politicians in June rebuked AfD co-leader Alexander Gauland after he said that Hitler and the Nazis \u201care just bird shit in 1,000 years of successful German history.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Bjoern Hoecke, the AfD\u2019s leader in the eastern state of Thuringia, triggered anger last year after he told supporters that Berlin\u2019s memorial to the victims of the Holocaust was a \u201cmemorial of shame\u201d and that history books should be rewritten to focus more on German victims.<\/p>\n
But Jews for AfD leader Fuhl dismissed those concerns on Sunday, saying the AfD was the most pro-Israel party in Germany, not least because it supports the Jewish state\u2019s right to have all of Jerusalem as its capital.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe AfD is an exceptionally pro-Israel party, supposedly the most pro-Israel party in the Bundestag,\u201d Fuhl said, referring to the lower house of parliament in which the AfD is the third-largest party.<\/p>\n
Palestinians, with broad international backing, seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they want to establish in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n
Israel regards all of the city, including the eastern sector it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed, as its \u201ceternal and indivisible capital\u201d.<\/p>\n
Germany, home to an estimated 200,000 Jews, has built a reputation in recent decades as a tolerant, safe place for Jews to live. The rise of the AfD has alarmed the community.<\/p>\n
Anti-Semitic crimes reported to the police rose 4 percent to 681 in the first eight months of 2017 against the same period last year, with an overwhelming majority of incidents linked to far-right extremism. The real number is probably much higher.<\/p>\n
When asked by a journalist what he would say to people who might call him a \u201cNazi Jew,\u201d Bernhard Krauskopf said speaking in English: \u201cI tell them that \u2018you are talking to a Jewish-German person whose father lost more than 50 people in Nazi death camps, you should be a little bit more intelligent not to talk such nonsense.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said he was sceptical.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t go together for me,\u201d he told Reuters. \u201cIn the end, I have to assume that these are people who simply have not recognised the true ulterior motive, also the goals of this more than right-wing populist party.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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