Amid public debate over the safety of wearing kippahs in public, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the German state has an exceptional duty “to protect our Jewish fellow citizens and to step in when necessary.
He also said it was a duty for Germany to protect Jews “even during demonstrations and public events”.
Steinmeier’s comments, circulated in a press release Friday, come just before Al-Quds day, which marks the occupation of East Jerusalem by Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967.
The president called on the public to “fight anti-Semitism in all its forms,” during a telephone conversation with Josef Schuster, who heads up the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
Palestinian groups and sympathizers are to launch protests to mark their resistance to Israeli occupation on Al-Quds day this Saturday.
Earlier this week, Berlin’s anti-Semitism commissioner Felix Klein urged Germans to wear the Jewish skullcap in public out of solidarity on Saturday, when he said people would “agitate unbearably against Israel and against Jews.”
Klein had made headlines last week when he warned Jews not to wear kippahs in all public spaces, noting a recent rise in anti-Semitic crimes in Germany.
Last year, some 1,600 people took part in the Al-Quds (the Arabic name for Jerusalem) demonstration in Berlin, calling for an independent Palestine and lashing out at Israel with chants.
