A "visibly disabled" Jewish man was recently attacked by two perpetrators described as Germans "apparently of the far-left scene."
On Nov. 5, the man, who was wearing a traditional Jewish skullcap (kippah), was seriously injured in Zetel, Germany, while walking to an Alternative for Germany (AfD) party meeting.
The attackers reportedly insulted the man, threatened him with a knife, knocked him to the ground and repeatedly punched and kicked him in the head and face. One attacker also threatened to kill him.
The victim, who had moved from Berlin to the region in November 2023 after experiencing repeated antisemitic harassment, including death threats, stones thrown at his home and antisemitic graffiti following Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, managed to escape to a nearby dental office, where he received first aid before being transported to a hospital.
His life was reportedly no longer in danger, and police were investigating the incident as attempted murder.
Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, says this happened in Germany, which is one country that should know better.
"It seems as if the passage about the strong delusion (2 Thessalonians 2:10-11) is upon us and that people are falling prey to beliefs that we would have rejected with horror just a few years ago," he laments.
Muslim migration to Germany occurred in two main historical phases, driven by economic and humanitarian needs. During the post-World War II economic boom (1955-73), West Germany recruited temporary "guest workers" from countries such as Turkey to address severe labor shortages, and many ultimately settled permanently.
Then, in 2015, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government opened the country's borders to more than a million war refugees, primarily from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, out of humanitarian obligation and adherence to international asylum laws.
Spencer thinks the Germans had every intention of ensuring that antisemitism would never recur in their country, but that goal collided with the massive numbers of Muslim migrants who were brought into it.
"Now the Germans are caught between two imperatives," Spencer says. "They wanted to have mass migration and this massive Muslim population. They thought that it would be a glorious multicultural paradise, and instead they have just recreated antisemitic Germany in an even more virulent form."
Meanwhile, he says, "Nobody seems to dare to even contemplate why this happened or who's responsible because it would lead right to the people who were still in power."
The attackers in this case have been described by police as approximately 16-year-old white males, but their names and identities have not been released.
The police statement specifically says investigators had no established evidence of a political, religious or antisemitic motive at that point. It also describes the victim as wearing a flat cap (Schiebermütze), rather than confirming reports that he was wearing a Jewish skullcap.
