When One Travels as a Mole

First of all: it is legitimate to advocate for a ceasefire and also to criticise Israeli President Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu. The relatives of the hostages are doing the same, and I stand with them!

But in my view, the event in Frankfurt on August 30th, was clearly antisemitic—Israel was demonised. Throughout the demonstration, march and rallies, Israel was denied its right to exist and the term Zionism was used as a swear word.

And the pogroms of October 7th, 2023 Not a word! I did not hear a single voice distancing itself from the atrocities committed by Hamas. The ‘Black Shabbat’ was erased and removed from the vocabulary, as if it did not exist. Instead, the ‘new Holocaust’ in the Gaza Strip was invoked. ‘From the river to the sea’ and words like ‘IsraHELL’ accompanied me for hours. The hatred was fuelled from the podium, and I had the feeling that Islamist organisations were also controlling and leading the demonstration; on stage, women's voices screamed hysterically. Men shouted slogans, some of them religious: ‘Allah Akbar,’ ‘Allah is great: He shall help us save ourselves from the Zionists' world domination.’ Western governments were called upon to take military action against Israel—orchestrated demands that have recently been heard at other rallies in the West. With my head covering and long skirt, I was apparently perceived as a conservative woman, which led to a bearded man wanting to give me a poster. It showed the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jersualem with Arabic writing next to it. Since I wanted to document the event, I accepted the gift. A Muslim woman told me how nice I was and that I would make a good Muslim. Yes, this woman looked at me with her loving big eyes, hugged me, and I knew at that moment that she was not an enemy. She seemed misguided to me, but not hateful; the expression in her eyes moved my heart. Although our positions could not be more different, we had one thing in common: our humanity. On the sidelines of the demonstration, I met a young Israeli. He was stunned by this march of thousands of anti-Semites in the city centre of the metropolis on the river Main. The mix of participants disturbed me deeply. I saw radical Islamists alongside representatives of the Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and the Left Party, numerous well-dressed Germans chanting slogans loudly together with Islamists, and in between them peace activists from times long past and advocates of the ‘anti-Corona movement’. The crowd included a few right-wing Nazis with their symbols, surrounded by migrants from all over the world, people from the ‘left-wing’ Antifa scene—and a large number of men with long beards who appeared to be controlling the demonstration and keeping order. However, they reminded me less of stewards than of images from the caliphate. Women held their small children aloft or carried them on their shoulders, shouting; the atmosphere was at times very aggressive and frightening. After a few hours, I stopped accompanying the demonstration because there was danger—and not only to my mental well-being. I would like to thank everyone who documented the show of force by those who hate Israel, as well as the police, who also protected me when I was harassed and attacked for holding up a sign saying ‘We believe Israeli women’.

My conclusion? The widespread radicalisation of this scene causes me great concern. It does not originate solely from Islamists but is actively supported by sections of the German middle class, especially those on the left, who attend such events and applaud and cheer hateful speakers and rabble-rousers. In their shared hatred of Israel, these movements merged with Corona-deniers and some right-wing extremists in a radical anti-Semitic rally—united in hatred and lamenting about the supposed Zionist world conspiracy. The old anti-Semitic lie that the goal of world Jewry is to subjugate the world was chanted yesterday not far from Frankfurt's old wholesale market hall, from where tens of thousands of Frankfurt Jews were once deported to Auschwitz. Please become righteous among the nations and be ALL united in humanity and against anti-Semitism.

More

During the same march and rally, Our Fight campaigner Mark Birbeck was attacked for declaring that Hamas are terrorists: