Germany Steps Up Security to Protect Jews
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Tue Apr 2, 8:55 AM ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany has stepped up security around Jewish sites across the country following attacks on synagogues in France and Belgium, Interior Minister Otto Schily said Tuesday.
The attacks have sparked fears that current tension in the Middle East will trigger a wave of violence against Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and institutions outside Israel.
"At the present time there is no concrete evidence of a planned attack in Germany," Schily said in a statement.
"Federal and local governments are alert all the same. Naturally we are doing everything to assure the safety of Jewish and Israeli fellow citizens and their institutions."
Schily said he had asked state authorities to step up protection of Jews and Jewish sites following the France and Belgium attacks.
The statement followed a call by a leading member of Germany's Jewish community to increase protection.
Michel Friedman, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said the conflict in the Middle East was a matter for Israel and the Arab countries to resolve and was no excuse for anti-Semitism.
"To extend this to include all Jews shows the true, grotesque face of fanatical Islamists, who ultimately want to dump Israel in the sea and see Judaism as public enemy number one," Friedman said.
Most of Germany's significant Jewish sites are guarded by armed policemen. Barricades surround buildings such as Berlin's historic New Synagogue, and water cannon and armored vehicles are also in evidence.
In March last year, a Jordanian youth was given a suspended jail sentence for the fire bombing of a Jewish synagogue in Duesseldorf the previous year.
The attack, which happened on the eve of the 10th anniversary of German unification, was initially blamed on neo-Nazis amid a fierce public debate about the rise in far-right violence in Germany.
Last month, unknown assailants set off a home-made grenade at a Jewish cemetery in Berlin, although police said the device was probably the work of right-wing extremists rather than Arab terrorists.
[And here's a picture of the New Synagogue in Berlin:
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