Israeli Tourists Attacked by Skinheads Near Berlin

For the first time since the beginning of the current wave of violence by neo-Nazis in Germany, two Israeli tourists have been attacked by neo-Nazi Skinheads.

The two Israelis, who became engaged in a scuffle with the Skinheads who taunted them, were promptly released by police after the fracas, which took place in a supermarket last Friday.

The Skinheads, both of whom have criminal records and are known to be associated with extremist groups, were detained in custody for 24 hours. They face charges of insulting and attacking foreigners, a police spokesman in Potsdam said.

The incident was the first physical assault by neo-Nazis on Israelis or specifically on Jews. But it sent shock waves through the German Jewish community and among Jews abroad.

Although Jews in Germany have been spared such attacks until now, dozens of instances of Jewish cemetery desecrations have been recorded this year in the south German state of Baden-Wurtemberg alone.

Few of the vandals have been caught and none has been brought to trial. Local politicians tend to shrug off the incidents as youthful mischief.

But right-wing thugs have attacked foreigners with impunity this years to the profound embarrassment of the Bonn government. Their targets mainly have been guest laborers or asylum-seeking refugees from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.

The two young Israelis were shopping at a market called Kaufhalle Spar when the Skinheads, recognizing foreigners in their midst, shouted at them, “Pigs, get out of Germany.”

The Israelis retorted, “Again the Nazis,” and a violent clash erupted with shopping carts.

The only party hurt was an innocent bystander, a 5-year-old boy, who was slightly injured by one of the carts.

PROPOSAL ON ASYLUM-SEEKERS

Witnesses said it was unclear whether the neo-Nazis knew the tourists were Israelis or attacked them simply because they were speaking a foreign language.

The police, who took the attackers and attacked alike into custody, released the Israelis with profuse apologies when they identified themselves.

On the same day, police in the southern German town of Emmendingen arrested eight members of the neo-Nazi National Front. Most are between 16 and 17 years old.

They are accused of severely damaging a refugee hostel in the village of Kaiserstuhl and daubing the walls with swastikas.

The new parliamentary chairman of the combined parliamentary group of Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social. Union deputies in the Bundestag has proposed that asylum-seekers who enter Germany from what are deemed “safe countries” should in the future be deported or not permitted to enter Germany at all.

Wolfgang Schaeuble told the daily Stuttgarter Zeitung last week that Germany’s governing coalition has agreed that an asylum-seeker who enters from France, for example, could be refused permission to enter Germany and returned to France.