Masked attackers doused with red paint and shoved German Jewish activists hanging up posters of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza in Frankfurt on Friday. The assailants shouted “child killers” and “free Palestine.”
Sacha Stawski, a German-Jewish activist who heads the media watchdog NGO Honestly Concerned, who’s spent decades combatting antisemitism, spoke to local media about the incident.
“We attached posters with photos of the 50 hostages still in Hamas’s captivity to a fence in the Frankfurt Grüneburgpark,” Stawski told the Bild outlet. “We were branded ‘child killers,’ and I constantly heard ‘Free Palestine,’ and ‘genocide’ calls.”
“The paint also poured over my glasses, making it difficult for me to identify the perpetrator,” he added.
Germany’s ambassador to Israel condemned the incident.
The small pro-hostage rally took place near an anarchist encampment housing several anti-Israel organizations. Stawski said this was announced announced to the camp organizers.
Meanwhile a German government spokesman said on Friday that Berlin currently has no plans to recognize a Palestinian state because that would undermine any efforts to reach a negotiated solution with Israel.
Germany says it will not recognize Palestinian state
“A negotiated two-state solution remains our goal, even if it seems a long way off today. … The recognition of Palestine is more likely to come at the end of such a process, and such decisions would now be rather counterproductive,” the spokesperson said during a press conference.
Countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada have recently announced they intend to recognize a Palestinian state.