According to data recently released by German police, anti-Semitic crimes were at their highest levels since such records first started being kept in 2001. Soeren Kern writes:

German police reported a total of 2,275 anti-Semitic hate crimes—an average of six per day—in 2020, according to preliminary data provided by the federal government. The tally represents a more than 10-percen increase over the number of anti-Semitic crimes reported in 2019, itself a record-breaking year for such offenses. The official numbers represent only the crimes reported to the police; the actual number of incidents is presumably much bigger.

The new data . . . shows that police were able to identify 1,367 suspects — but that only five individuals were ultimately arrested. The statistics also show that 55 (roughly 2.5 percent) of the crimes involved violence. This implies that most of the other incidents appear to involve anti-Semitic hate speech on the Internet, property damage, or “propaganda crimes” such as anti-Jewish graffiti.

Also disturbing, Kern argues, is the habit of German police and officials to assume all anti-Semitic incidents are the work of the far right, even though such cases are probably a minority compared to those whose perpetrators are either left-wing or Muslim extremists. And then there is the new phenomenon of anti-Semitism among the so-called Querdenker, who are united in their objection to measures taken to stop the spread of the coronavirus:

One of the largest Querdenker demonstrations to date took place in Berlin on August 29, 2020. An estimated 40,000 people—libertarians, constitutionalists, Greens, esotericists, naturopaths, LGBT activists, pandemic deniers, anti-vaccine and anti-mask activists, and families with children—gathered to protest the government’s coronavirus policies. The protests turned violent after being infiltrated by several hundred far-right agitators waving Nazi-era flags.

Since then, dozens of anti-Semitic incidents have been reported at such rallies. Some protesters have been seen wearing t-shirts with Nazi-era yellow stars in which the word “Jew” was replaced with “unvaccinated.” Others have carried posters with the inscription, “Vaccination makes you free,” a reference to the “Work makes you free” slogan placed at the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Some have referred to the “final solution of the corona question” as well as of “vaccination in Dachau.”

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.