The Hamas attack against Israel in October is inspiring a fresh wave of anti-Jewish and anti-Western extremism in Europe in new ways that haven’t been seen before, Germany’s political police bureau warns.
Lone wolf attacks against soft targets are a major threat and disparate Islamist groups which have shunned each other in the past for reasons of history and philosophy are now “linking up” out of a shared feeling of antisemitism, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), their domestic intelligence agency which polices both the people and politics of the nation, warns.
The dire warning about the threat to Germany and other Western nations was expressed in a bulletin this week stating that a coalition of “Islamists, Palestinian extremists, Turkish right-wing extremists, German and Turkish left-wing extremists” had been brought together by “antisemitism and hostility to Israel” and are spreading hatred. On the other hand, it warns, “German right-wing extremists” are reacting to this in turn and are agitating “against Muslims and migrants”.
The situation is particularly acute, the director of BfV Thomas Haldenwang notes, as groups that don’t otherwise think much of each other are finding common cause after the Hamas attack on Israel.
The director said: “now a new [situation] is emerging: in the jihadist spectrum, we see calls for assassinations and to [link up between] Al-Qaeda and [Islamic State] over the Middle East conflict. This danger now affects highly emotional people who are inspired by trigger events. This can lead to the radicalization of perpetrators acting alone who attack ‘soft targets’ with simple means.”
ISIS, the former “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” broke off from al-Qaeda following leadership and tactical disputes. The original al-Qaeda maintains close ties to the Taliban, which claims to be fighting the Islamic State, though they share the same attitudes towards Islam and the West. Both the Islamic State and al-Qaeda have engaged in public disagreements with Hamas and Hamas has claimed to arrest ISIS supporters in Gaza in the past. All are Sunni jihadist terror organizations.
Despite these differences, the global terror groups have been happy to take advantage of the Hamas attack on Israel to further their calls for jihad, the BfV report noted, saying the degree to which they are expressing support for each other “previously seemed hardly conceivable”.
Antisemitism is the common denominator, the federal intelligence bureau said, and as their director noted: “The danger is real and higher than it has been for a long time.” The paper also stated: “the risk potential for possible terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli people and institutions as well as against ‘the West’ as a whole has increased significantly.”
Haldenwang reassured the agency was working intensively to “thwart any potential plans”.
Just hours before the paper’s publication, German police swooped on two migrant-background teenagers who were alleged to have been planning a mass casualty attack against a Christmas market in Cologne. The particular target is a highly emotional one in Germany, which saw a deadly terror attack against the Berlin Christmas market in 2016 by a fake asylum seeker who stole a truck and rammed it through the stalls and locals enjoying the festive event. 13 were killed, including the driver of the truck that he shot dead.