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German Authorities Report More Than 3,500 Crimes Related to Oct. 7 Hamas Pogrom in Israel
German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and Holger Münch, president of the Federal Criminal Police Office, at a press conference in Berlin. Photo: Reuters/Christian Spicker
German officials announced on Monday that more than 3,500 crimes emanating from the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel have been recorded, at least 14 percent of which can be considered unambiguously antisemitic.
At a joint press conference on Monday at the Berlin headquarters of the Joint Counter-Terrorism Center, where federal and state authorities exchange information on threats to national security, Nancy Faeser, Germany’s Interior Minister, and Holger Münch, president of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), disclosed that a total of 3,532 crimes related to the Hamas onslaught six weeks ago have been reported.
Of these, 500 were clearly antisemitic, mainly perpetrated by Islamists, Münch said. Approximately 30 percent of the crimes involved vandalism or damage to property, with another 15 percent categorized as incitement. “The number of violent crimes is in the mid three-digit range. That is also high,” he said.
Münch warned that while there was no intelligence suggesting an imminent threat to Jewish institutions, “the potential for escalation is great.” He noted as well that there had been a 47 percent increase in antisemitic incidents in Germany during the last four years, some of which came from the far right, but much of which can be pinned on “foreign religious ideologies” — a reference to Islamist extremism.
Faeser, who has expressed support for the deportation of Hamas supporters in Germany who are not permanent residents, separately decried the “disgusting terrorist propaganda” promoted by supporters of Hamas, pledging to retain pressure on social media platforms to shut down pro-Hamas accounts. A total of 98 channels on the Telegram channel have been shut down at the urging of the BKA, while the total number of requests to shut down offending accounts across all social media platforms was 500.
Monday’s press conference came on the eve of the first meeting in nearly two years of the German Islamic Conference (DIK), an umbrella body created in 2006 to bring together the leadership of Muslim communities in Germany. The two-day parley will address the theme of “combating antisemitism and anti-Muslim hostility in times of social division.”
The meeting will not include representatives of the Central Council of Muslims (ZRM), whose secretary-general, Abdassamad El Yazidi, issued a much-criticized statement on Oct. 8 which failed to condemn Hamas outright for its onslaught against Israeli civilians. The ZRM also faced strong disapproval for allegedly dithering over the suspension of the Islamic Center of Hamburg (IZH), a Shi’a organization supported by the Iranian regime that has been closely monitored by the federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The IZH from the Council was suspended only after a search of its facilities by police officers.
Speaking to broadcaster DW on Monday, El Yazidi insisted that it was “unfair and insulting” to portray the ZRM as supporting Hamas. However, he added, he regretted his statement of Oct. 8, saying that “it would have been better to condemn the barbarism of Hamas, make one point and [make the other point] later.”
In a separate interview on Monday, the newly-appointed Mayor of Munich, Domink Krause, said that the authorities in the Bavarian capital would adopt a similar stance to radical Muslim organizations as with the far right.
“We should not work with those communities that are radical, just like we don’t work with right-wing extremist organizations,” Krause told the Abendzeitung news outlet.
Asked whether he was playing into the hands of right-wing parties by highlighting Muslim antisemitism when he himself is on the left of the Green Party, Krause demurred. “It was always clear to me that I would take a clear stance on a wide variety of discrimination and attacks on democracy,” he said. “And that should apply to everyone — beyond the political camps. I also find it problematic when groups from the left of the political spectrum now begin to organize against Israel.”
Krause added that he had been talking to contacts in Be’er Sheva, the Israeli city twinned with Munich. “At the moment, everything is heavily influenced by concern about the hostages, concern about the military operation, and how the situation will develop further,” he said.
He added that “there is also a lot of compassion for the Palestinian civilian population, but also the very clear statement: As long as Hamas is there, there will be no peace, neither for the Palestinians nor for the Israelis. Action must now be taken against Hamas. What should not be forgotten is that rockets are still flying towards Israel — Be’er Sheva is relatively close to the border with the Gaza Strip, and there was also destruction there.”
Krause’s Green Party colleague, federal Food and Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir, also criticized Germany’s Muslim leadership on Monday, emphasizing the role played by Ditib, a Turkish Muslim organization that commands the loyalties of 900 imams across Germany.
Ditib is in turn supervised by Diyanet, the Turkish government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, whose head, Ali Erbas, was denounced by Özdemir as “simply an antisemite.” Erbas recently described Israel as a “rusty dagger in the heart of the Muslim world.”
Diyanet reports directly to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose barbs against Israel have multiplied since Oct. 7. Erdogan flew to Germany last week for an official visit that brought fresh German media attention on the activities of Turkish lobby groups in the country.
The post German Authorities Report More Than 3,500 Crimes Related to Oct. 7 Hamas Pogrom in Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency

The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation

Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack

A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.