BERLIN: Antisemitic incidents in Germany, from graffiti to attempted arson, rose around 83 percent last year, watchdog RIAS said on Tuesday, surging after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Around half the 4,782 recorded antisemitic incidents were linked with anti-Israel activism, with many involving a relativization or denial of the Nazi Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were killed, RIAS said.
While antisemitism has been on the rise worldwide, it is a particularly sensitive subject in Germany, where Jewish institutions are under heavy police protection.
Critics including prominent Jewish-German intellectuals say this has led to German authorities and media failing to differentiate sufficiently between antisemitism and criticism of Israel and as a result curbing freedom of speech.
In the week after the Hamas-led attack, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reiterated the idea of Israel’s security as a “reason of state” or matter of national interest for Germany.
In its antisemitism report, RIAS cited incidents such as the destruction of Israeli flags hung in solidarity with Israel after Oct. 7. In another incident, “Free Palestine from Zionists” was scrawled on a toilet door and the words “Save Israel” and Star of David scratched off.
Felix Klein, the government official charged with coordinating the fight against antisemitism, has said antisemitism was already on the rise before Oct. 7, in part driven by the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD).
The AfD has said Germany, which has a Jewish population of about 225,000, should move on from atoning for its past crimes, with members accused — and in some cases convicted — of using Nazi language.
Klein said many incidents since then could be traced back to Germany’s growing Muslim community, and urged Muslim associations to speak up more against this.
Anti-Muslim incidents registered in Germany also rose last year, the CLAIM network of NGOs monitoring Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred said on Monday.
Israel says around 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 hostages seized in the Oct. 7 attack. The Israeli offensive launched in retaliation in Gaza has killed more than 37,600 people, Palestinian health authorities say.
Antisemitism rose more than 80 percent in Germany last year, watchdog says
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Antisemitism rose more than 80 percent in Germany last year, watchdog says
- While antisemitism has been on the rise worldwide, it is a particularly sensitive subject in Germany, where Jewish institutions are under heavy police protection
- Anti-Muslim incidents registered in Germany also rose last year, the CLAIM network of NGOs monitoring Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred said
Dagestan terror attack toll hits 22
Gunmen simultaneously attacked two churches, two synagogues and a police checkpoint in two cities in Dagestan on June 23.
On Monday, regional governor Sergei Melikov said the number of those killed had risen to 22 — after a previously reported toll of 21.
“One police officer died the next day from severe wounds. In total 17 police officers and five civilians,” were killed, Russian news agencies quoted Melikov as saying.
The Kremlin has dismissed fears the attacks could mark a return to the kind of separatist violence that marred the historically restive region throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
The attacks came just three months after Daesh fighters killed more than 140 in an assault on a Moscow concert hall, the deadliest terror attack in Russia for almost two decades.
Melikov also said Monday that one of the assailants had taken part in a riot at Dagestan’s main airport in October.
Hundreds of men had stormed the runway of Makhachkala airport in an anti-Israel riot when news spread on social media that a flight from Tel Aviv was due to land in the Muslim-majority region.
That had come amid rising tensions over the war in Gaza.
In the June attack, two synagogues were targeted in Makhachkala and the city of Derbent, where a fire started by Molotov cocktails completely destroyed the interior of the building.
A Russian Orthodox priest was also killed.
Melikov also hinted Monday that the West had been involved in whipping up the “ideological state” of the assailants, without providing evidence or specifying who he was referring.
India replaces colonial-era criminal laws, including on sedition, to provide ‘justice’
- Modi government says change would make India more just, but opposition said it risked throwing criminal justice system into disarray
- Among key changes is replacement of sedition law frequently used as a tool of suppression after its enactment under British rule
NEW DELHI: India replaced colonial-era criminal laws with new legislation on Monday, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government said would make the country more just, but the opposition said risked throwing the criminal justice system into disarray.
The new laws were approved by parliament in December in Modi’s previous term with the government saying they aim to “give justice, not punishment.” It says they were needed as colonial laws had been at the core of the criminal justice system for more than a century.
Among the key changes is replacement of the sedition law frequently used as a tool of suppression, after its enactment under British colonial rule to jail Indian freedom fighters.
Under the new laws — which replace the Indian Penal Code, the Indian Evidence Act, and Code of Criminal Procedure — sedition is replaced with a section on acts seen as “endangering the sovereignty, unity, and integrity of India.”
“About 77 years after independence, our criminal justice system is becoming completely indigenous and will run on Indian ethos,” India’s Home (interior) Minister Amit Shah told reporters. “Instead of punishment, there will now be justice.”
Criminal cases registered under the repealed laws before Monday will continue to follow them, Shah said, adding that the first case logged under the new law was that of a motorcycle theft in the central city of Gwalior, registered 10 minutes after midnight.
“The laws were debated for three months ... It is not fair to give political color to this big improvement happening after centuries. I ask the opposition parties to support this legislation,” Shah said.
Opposition Congress party lawmaker P. Chidambaram said the previous parliament session did not hold any “worthwhile debate” before passing the laws.
He said that there was only marginal improvement in the new laws, which could have been introduced as amendments to existing laws.
“The initial impact will be to throw the administration of criminal justice into disarray,” he posted on X.
The Indian Express newspaper said in an editorial that criminal justice reform should not be “a one-time solution or one that just takes place in the books,” and called for police reform and addressing gaps in judicial infrastructure.
‘This is genocide’: Indonesian medics in shock over scale of Israeli violence on Gaza
- Indonesian doctors, nurses have been arriving to volunteer in Rafah since March
- They recall lack of basic equipment, being forced to treat wounded children without anesthesia
JAKARTA: When Ita Muswita arrived in Rafah in March to volunteer at Al-Halal Al-Emirati Maternity Hospital, she was overwhelmed by the scale of malnourishment among the newborn babies she was helping to deliver.
The hospital was one of the few that remained partly operational in Gaza and was providing medical care to thousands of pregnant women and new mothers, handling between 50 and 65 births each day with only five delivery beds.
Many of them were underweight.
“It is likely for them to become sick or die … It’s because the mothers are not meeting their (nutritional) needs,” Muswita told Arab News.
“Underweight babies are vulnerable to diseases, which means we need more hospital rooms for babies, which require equipment and medicines, and that was a problem … We often ran out of medicines … gauze, and suture instruments.”
The Indonesian midwife from Banten province was part of the first team of doctors and nurses from the Jakarta-based nongovernmental organization Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, which since March has been sending medical volunteers to the besieged enclave as part of a larger emergency medical deployment led by the World Health Organization.
While she was prepared to face the situation, knowing from UN estimates that most of the 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza had limited access to maternal healthcare, the situation she faced on the ground was worse than she imagined.
“This isn’t war, this is extermination, this is genocide, it’s true,” Muswita said.
Since October, Israeli airstrikes and ground offensives in Gaza have killed nearly 37,900 Palestinians and wounded more than 86,000 people, while thousands remain missing under the rubble.
Israel has also cut off the enclave from supplies of water, food, fuel and medical aid, as its forces destroyed most of its vital infrastructure.
Nadia Rosi, a nurse who was a member of another MER-C team that arrived in Rafah on April 21, said she was shocked when she saw the healthcare situation in Gaza.
Even the possibility of disinfecting equipment was rare.
“Where do we look for gauze, equipment? We don’t know because there wasn’t any,” she said.
“I was also scared of course, because even when we were at the hospital, we could hear the bombs exploding, the loud sounds from shooting, and this goes on as the attacks continue for 24 hours.”
When she served at the Tal Al-Sultan health center, children made up the bulk of her patients. She recalled their screams when there were no painkillers or anesthesia available.
“I was working in wound care and most of the patients were children. Maybe out of 50 patients, around 35 were kids. We didn’t have anesthetic … I would give them candy to calm them down,” she said.
“I would also invite them to recite the Qur’an, starting together with them before letting them continue on their own, and they would almost immediately settle down … These children are bravely withholding the pain, can you imagine how deep the cuts usually get? We already feel such great pain with small wounds, and these are lacerations that require stitches.”
After weeks of witnessing Israeli violence against Palestinians, Indonesian medics refused to describe the situation in Gaza as war.
“This isn’t war … It’s mass murder, mass annihilation. What kind of crazy person comes with their tanks to tents, killing children, killing babies, killing the elderly, killing women?” Asrina Sari, another nurse who arrived in Rafah in April, told Arab News.
“This is truly genocide that the whole world must know about, how ruthless Zionists are.”
Following her return to Indonesia last month, she has joined other Indonesian volunteers in raising awareness about what is happening in Palestine.
“You only need to be human to defend Palestine,” she said. “Let’s continue to pray for Palestinian independence and always use social media to update the latest situation on Palestine, to share all matters related to Palestine so that people know.”
Mauritania’s Ghazouani wins re-election with 56.12% of vote
- Victory gives the former army chief a second term as head of the vast desert country
- Ghazouani, 67, is widely regarded as the mastermind behind the West African state’s relative security
NOUAKCHOTT: Mauritania’s incumbent President Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani has comfortably won re-election with 56.12 percent of the vote, the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) said Monday.
Victory gives the former army chief a second term as head of the vast desert country, seen as a rock of relative stability in Africa’s volatile Sahel region and set to become a gas producer.
Ghazouani would have faced a second round had he not won more than half the votes in Saturday’s election. As it was, he placed well ahead of his main rival, anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid, who won 22.10 percent, according to results announced by CENI chief Dah Ould Abdel Jelil.
Abeid said Sunday he would not recognize the results of CENI, which he accused of being manipulated by the government.
Ghazouani’s other main rival, Hamadi Ould Sid’ El Moctar, who heads the Tewassoul party, came third with 12.78 percent, according to CENI.
“We did everything we could to prepare the conditions for a good election and we were relatively successful,” said the head of the electoral commission.
A 2019 election brought Ghazouani to power, marking the first transition between two elected presidents since independence from France in 1960 and a series of coups from 1978 to 2008.
While the Sahel has in recent years seen a string of military coups and escalating extremism, particularly in Mali, Mauritania has not experienced an attack since 2011.
Ghazouani, 67, is widely regarded as the mastermind behind the West African state’s relative security.
Saturday’s presidential election had an overall turnout of 55.39 percent, lower than in 2019.
The results had trickled in since Saturday evening and were published continuously on an official online platform, giving an indication of the final outcome.
“We will only recognize our own results, and therefore we will take to the streets” to refuse the electoral commission count, opponent Abeid said.
Some of his supporters demonstrated in the capital Nouakchott late Sunday, burning tires and disrupting traffic.
At the end of the afternoon, Abeid’s campaign headquarters were surrounded by security forces, according to an AFP journalist. His campaign manager was arrested, a spokesman said.
The police presence in the capital increased significantly later in the evening.
El Moctar said Saturday that he would “remain attentive” to any breach of voting regulations, while calling on his supporters to steer clear of anything that could create public disorder.
Ghazouani has made helping the young a key priority in a country of 4.9 million people, where almost three quarters are aged under 35.
After a first term hit by the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the incumbent says he hopes to make more reforms thanks to a favorable economic outlook.
Growth should average 4.9 percent (3.1 percent per capita) for the period 2024-2026, according to the World Bank, spurred by the launch of gas production in the second half of this year.
Inflation has fallen from a peak of 9.5 percent in 2022 to 5 percent in 2023, and should continue to slow to 2.5 percent in 2024.
German court convicts a prominent far-right politician for using a Nazi slogan
BERLIN: A high-profile politician in the far-right Alternative for Germany party has been convicted for the second time of knowingly using a Nazi slogan at a political event.
Björn Höcke, who plans to run for governor in the eastern state of Thuringia in a September election, was fined Monday for using the banned Nazi slogan “Everything for Germany.”
The Halle Regional Court sentenced the 52-year-old to a fine of 130 daily rates of 130 euros each.
He was already fined 13,000 euros ($13,900) in May for using symbols of an unconstitutional organization, a verdict that his lawyers are appealing.
