Anti-Semitic rioters went on the rampage in Munich on New Year’s Eve. According to police reports on Thursday, police officers were attacked when they tried to prevent the burning of Israeli flags in the Pasing district. Up to ten masked rioters attacked with fireworks, firecrackers and bottles and repeatedly retreated into the crowd of bystanders.
The police received emergency calls from passers-by at around midnight: Several people were burning an Israeli flag in the street. When the police arrived at the corner of Scapinelli, Lortzing and Bodensee streets, they were immediately attacked. One Israeli flag had already been completely destroyed, another was ready to be burnt – next to it was a petrol canister. According to information from the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, shouts of ‘Free Palestine!’ and ‘Allahu akbar!’ could be heard repeatedly.
The police called in massive reinforcements, including the Support Squad (USK). Around 60 police officers were eventually deployed. Even when they issued orders to leave, the situation did not calm down at first. On the contrary, there were further attacks. It was only when the officers threatened to use pepper spray that the crowd of around 60 people dispersed. According to the police, a 49-year-old man from Munich, who was not actually involved in the riot, objected strongly when the personal details of those involved were to be taken. Pepper spray was used against him.
No officers were injured during the operation and there was no damage to the police cars. The state security department of the criminal investigation department is now investigating numerous offences. The police station 45, which is responsible for prosecuting politically motivated offences related to foreign ideologies, is looking for witnesses to the riot in Pasing.
‘Such incidents will be rigorously investigated’, promised Thomas Schelshorn, the new head of the press office at Munich police headquarters, on Thursday. On Wednesday, Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) had already spoken of attacks by ‘anti-Semitic chaos’ on the Munich police, without explicitly mentioning the Pasing incidents. ‘We cannot and will not tolerate such excesses of radical left-wing and anti-Semitic violence,’ Herrmann wrote, also referring to similar scenes on the Wittelsbacherbrücke. ‘There will be no Berlin conditions in Bavaria.’
Another attack with a possible anti-Jewish background was reported in the Schwabing district on New Year’s Eve. Four window panes of the ‘Tams Theatre’ in Haimhauserstrasse were smashed at around 3 a.m. – directly above a poster with a quote from Shoah survivor Margot Friedländer. ‘Be human. Be human,’ reads a banner with the name of the 103-year-old eyewitness below it.
‘We are dismayed and very worried,’ says Anette Spola, director of the Tams Theatre. ‘There is a strong suspicion that this was an anti-Semitic attack.’ The police were informed during the night. They say they are investigating in all directions. Similar acts of vandalism have been committed in the street before.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian groups have announced campaigns on social networks. The Munich branch of the ‘Palestine Speaks’ network, which is being monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, shared a ‘New Year’s resolution’ on Instagram, which literally states: ‘We will take active action against any Zionist propaganda we encounter.’
Just before Christmas, unknown persons sprayed a graffito measuring almost eight square metres on the listed façade of the Philologicum University Library on Ludwigstraße, which read ‘Israeli precision – 14,000 children killed’. And below it, the silhouettes of a person running away and a soldier shooting after them.