SWC officials met with senior German Justice
Ministry officials last week in Berlin. L-R: Shimon Samuels and Rabbi
Cooper at an earlier meeting with German Justice Minister Heiko Maas.
June 15, 2016
Dateline: Berlin
Dateline: Berlin
Last week, together with Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) International
Relations Director Dr. Shimon Samuels, I had meetings in Berlin with
senior government officials focusing on the implications of one million
Middle Eastern migrant/refugees now in Germany. Social
integration and the need to challenge problematic attitudes brought
from their cultures about women, gays, and Jews was a core focus of the
discussions.
Here are some of our findings:
Despite the serious efforts it is clear
that Germany and other European countries cannot validate the true
identity of hundreds of thousands of these new arrivals.
The political implications of this new
reality are not lost on the fearful voting public that is veering right
in many European nations. One official told us that ISIS made a special
point of infiltrating at least one of the Paris terrorists among
legitimate refugees fleeing Syria’s bloody civil war. “ISIS has plenty
of operatives in place and could have carried out the attacks with
Islamist terrorists already in place,” we were told. "But they wanted to
spread mistrust and hate about the newcomers and they succeeded.”
When we raised the issue of the impact
of radical Imams, authorities admitted that there were times when they
couldn’t identify the Imams, what they are teaching to new immigrants
and who they succeed in radicalizing, until it is too late.
We conferred with a top Jewish
community leader in Berlin and the Israeli Ambassador to assess the
changing situation and discuss steps to secure a safe future.
Der Tagesspiegel, a leading
German newspaper, ran my op-ed challenging Germany to confront the
anti-Semitism that migrants brought with them from their countries of
origin and has been widely read.
We will continue to keep you updated on developments in Germany and across Europe - thank you for your continued support.
Source: The Simon Wiesenthal Center
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