Dieter Graumann, president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews recalled Kristallnacht when interviewed by The Guardian. Inappropriate Nazi comparisons have also been made as regards Israel’s newest assault on Gaza, a besieged and largely defenseless, mostly civilian population living in what even UK Prime Minister David Cameron had called an open air “prison camp.” Two wars ago. Graumann was born 1950 as son of Polish holocaust survivors in Israel. His fist name was originally David but his parents told him when returning to post-war Germany that his new name was Dieter, since a Jew should not attract attention in Germany (“In Deutschland fällt man als Jude besser nicht auf”).

There have indeed been anti-Semitic acts among anti-Israel demonstrations in Germany and elsewhere in Europe (nothing faintestly recalling Kristallnacht) as response to Israel’s relentless shelling of defenseless Gazans in what is called Operation Protective Edge. What Israel has done is instantly visible now on the internet. Hospitals, schools, shelters, thewhole infrastructure were targeted. More than 1800 people lost their lives, mostly civilians, among them hundreds of children.

I would have appreciated Dieter Graumann’s outcry  about Israel’s disproportionate acts after the killing of three young West Bank settlers (by Hamas-linked Qawasmeh terrorists) which are almost unanimously considered, on a global scale, war crimes. Rather than to whinily compare the situation in Germany with Nazi Deutschland.

“On the streets, you hear things like ‘the Jews should be gassed’, ‘the Jews should be burned’ – we haven’t had that in Germany for decades. Anyone saying those slogans isn’t criticising Israeli politics, it’s just pure hatred against Jews: nothing else. And it’s not just a German phenomenon. It’s an outbreak of hatred against Jews so intense that it’s very clear indeed.” (Emphasis added.)