During Friday night Shabbat prayers, approximately 750 Christians joined hands in a human chain encircling the main synagogue at Jakobsplatz.
The synagogue was in the path of an anti-Israel protest organized under the slogan “Stop the Genocide. Free Palestine” by the group Palestine Speaks. The protest was permitted to travel right past the city’s main synagogue, posing a threat to the Jewish community. The protesters shouted, “Death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces],” “Zionists are fascists, child murderers, and racists,” and “There is only one state: Palestine,” and waved Palestinian flags, according to footage from the rally. One speaker at the rally asserted that the hostages are “mostly Israeli soldiers” and characterized them predominantly as war criminals.
One of the speakers at the protest dismissed the human chain around the synagogue as a staged performance by “friends of Zionists and fascists,” claiming that “Zionists are the real antisemites.” The speaker also claimed that those participating in the human chain were trying to “buy their freedom” from the crimes of their parents’ generation.
The human chain was organized by the “Munich is Colorful” alliance and the group “Grandmothers Against the Right”, under the slogan “Protect Our Synagogue.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that around 150 officers from the Munich Police Department arrived to ensure the synagogue’s safety.
According to the Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Antisemitism, “Hamas terror was glorified as ‘Palestinian resistance,’ and German, Israeli, and French hostages held by the Islamist terror group were denounced as ‘war criminals.’”
Yael Eckstein, president and CEO of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, posted a video of the human chain to Facebook with the caption, “Christians + Jews = brothers and sisters. When an Islamic demonstration in Munich, Germany began intimidating a local synagogue…. hundreds of Christians immediately came together as a human chain, to protect it. They didn’t yell, swear, or burn anything down. They stood bravely in LOVE, SONG, and BROTHERHOOD.
“So many people talk about the darkness growing all around us. And it’s true. But there’s also so much light. We are living in a generation with hundreds of thousands of ‘Corrie Ten Boons’. That brings ME hope. Are YOU one of them?”
Germany has experienced a sharp spike in antisemitism since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct.7, 2023. The Federal Research and Information Point for Antisemitism (RIAS) said it had registered 8,627 incidents of violence, vandalism, and threats against Jews in Germany, almost twice the 4,886 recorded in 2023, and far ahead of 2020’s 1,957.
In just the first six months of 2024 alone, the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin surpassed the total for all of the prior year and reached the highest annual count on record, according to separate figures from RIAS.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), police registered 5,154 antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2023, a 95 percent increase compared to the previous year.
Experts believe that the true number of incidents is much higher but remains unrecorded due to victims’ reluctance to come forward.
