(03.02.2010) Deutsche Welle World

Hardy Graupner, Deutsche Welle radio, Berlin

It’s no secret that roughly 20 percent of ethnic Germans have a more or less pronounced anti-Semitic thinking. But a recent survey among local residents with a Turkish background by the Emnid polling institute has confirmed that strong resentments against Jews in general continue to exist also among some of the approximately four million Muslims living in Germany. But as Hardy Graupner reports from Berlin, the issue is no longer swept under the carpet as a number of bottoms-up initiatives have sprung up to confront predominantly young Muslims with their stereotypical perception of Jews as their enemies in a sometimes painstaking effort to change their views …

“The hard facts of the daily news reports and statistics remind us very day that anti-Semitism is not only existing, but growing very much, also the various forms of anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism among young Muslims.”

… says the general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Stephan Kramer. You probably get the most outspoken comments from radicalized Muslims on Jews in general during street protests against Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians that flare up in Germany at regular intervals …

“Israel deliberately kills women and children”, says this protester. “The Israelis simply don’t have right to behave that way towards our Muslim brothers and sisters. / // Jews are such a lousy bunch of people …”

Such attempts to generalize are an alarming signal, says the head of the American Jewish Committee’s Berlin office, Deidre Berger…

“The only way to cope with anti-Semitism within the Muslim community is to have more dialogue and to get partners within that community, to work together with Jewish groups and non-Jewish groups who fight anti-Semitism and promote democracy. It’s very important to have leaders within that community more sensitive to that problem.”

Many of the young Muslims living in Germany and expressing anti-Semitic views haven’t ever met a Jew in person. And according to a study by the Emnid polling institute, almost 70 percent of all young people with a Turkish background here admit they know nothing or almost nothing about the Holocaust. 75 percent of them have never been to a concentration camp memorial site, let alone a Jewish museum …

But in Berlin, things are slowly changing, thanks also to people like Ufuk Topkara – a historian with Turkish roots who’s been showing around young Muslim groups in Berlin’s Jewish Museum.

“While they’re here in the museum, the young Muslims start questioning everything they’ve ever heard about Jews, he says. You can see this in their faces, and you can judge this by their willingness to get involved in the debate and ask questions. My only worry is, that this will not have a lasting effect when the kinds are back in their normal environment.”

One of Ufuk Topkara’s “brothers in arms” is Gabriel Fréville who works with a Berlin initiative called AMIRA. It has been working out strategies to combat anti-Semitism among young Muslims and provide youth outreach workers with sound arguments for their discussions with the youngsters on the ground. Gabriel says that this is not an easy task, but adds that much depends on how you kick off a conversation with them …

“It’s more a question of attitude, how do you approach the ‘delinquents’. For example one said ‘I hate Jews’, and then, that you don’t moralize it in the first step and say ‘Oh, you are bad, because you said that!’. You have to try to understand – if it is understandable – ‘why did you say that?’ and ‘what is the problem you have?’. Of course, Gabriel and his colleagues will, at a later stage in the discussion, explain to the youngsters, that their thinking is not okay and cannot be tolerated.

A similar initiative is based in Berlin’s district of Kreuzberg where many residents with a Muslim background have settled down. It’s called KIGA which stands for ‚Kreuzberg Initiative Against Anti-Semitism’. Yasmin Kassar says KIGA’s has been around since 2003 and has since succeeded to get a number of school projects off the ground. Working with the youngsters is important, she says, even if you’re not rewarded with quick progress …

“When they have a really clear anti-Semitistic view of the world, you cannot change it in six hours of our work – but you can give them something to think, you know.”

Both AMIRA and KIGA have so far received state funding for their projects, but there’s great insecurity over whether aid money will continue to flow beyond this year in times of strained federal and regional budgets.

Kenan Kolat, the chairman of the secular Turkish Community in Germany seems to question the thrust of the bottoms-up initiatives against anti-Semitism among young Muslims anyway. He believes that these organizations only distract from the problem that society at large has with the issue …

“‘There never was a Holocaust’, they say. ‘The Jews capitalized on the 9/11 aftermath’. ‘All Jews are rich’ – what I’m saying is that all the prejudices that you can find among some Muslims here are just a reflection of what you find in the German society on a whole.”

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