Activists attack Jews putting up Gaza hostages photos in Frankfurt

Three Jewish men who were placing posters of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were doused with red paint in a Frankfurt park on Friday.

“We were putting up posters with photos of the 50 hostages still in Hamas captivity on a fence in Frankfurt’s Grüneburgpark,” Sacha Stawski, 55, told the Bild newspaper.

Police confirmed the incident, according to the report, which took place around 5 p.m. local time. In response, law enforcement personnel will increase their presence in the area, Bild reported.

A municipality-approved tent encampment was set up last week in the central meadow of Grüneburgpark in Frankfurt’s Westend—a traditionally Jewish area near the city’s largest synagogue, Hessenschau, the online news portal of Hesse state public broadcaster Hessischer Rundfunk, reported.

The self-titled “System Change Camp” was initiated by various left-wing groups, such as Antifa and Ende Gelände (“Here and No Further”), a “climate justice group” that occupies coal mines and promotes civil disobedience, according to the report.

Palestinian flags, expressions of solidarity with Gaza and keffiyehs can be frequently seen in the camp of roughly 1,000 people, Hessenschau added.

Stawski said that earlier on Friday, he walked through the park with a local delegation of the Christian Democratic Union party, “and we were repeatedly pushed aside and prevented from leaving by a group of about 20 to 30 partly masked people. A man who was there with his son called the police,” Bild reported.

Later in the afternoon, Stawski returned to the park with two members of the Jewish community to hang posters with hostages photos. “I suddenly heard antisemitic chants, we were called child murderers, and I kept hearing shouts of ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Genocide,’” he was quoted as saying.

Then a masked woman poured two tubes of red paint over him and the two others, Stawski said.

Stawski is a member of the Honestly Concerned association, which campaigns against antisemitism in Germany.

Germany’s Free Democratic Party described the camp in the park as a “stage for antisemitism,” according to Hessenschau.

“That this can happen in Grüneburgpark, with its Jewish history, is a disgrace for Frankfurt,” Benjamin Graumann, chairman of the local Jewish community, said in an interview with HR.

Uwe Becker, the state of Hesse’s representative for Jewish life and the fight against antisemitism, and a former mayor of Frankfurt, said that “Israel-related antisemitism” was being spread at the camp.

In a tweet on Thursday, he stressed that a “mass demonstration of Israel-haters must not take place in Frankfurt,” referring to German anti-Israel groups that have called to hold a mass protest in the city on Aug. 30.

“In their public statements, the organizers make it clear that they reject Israel’s right to exist, and that their demand for the ‘liberation of Palestine’ from the river to the sea constitutes propaganda for the destruction of Israel,” Becker wrote in German.

Paula Fuchs, co-spokeswoman of the encampment, rejected allegations of antisemitism, according to Hessenschau.

She said that red lines have been drawn that forbid “antisemitic statements, as well as the trivialization or justification of the events of Oct. 7, [2023].”

However, photos of hostages in Gaza that have been put up by Israel supporters have been repeatedly torn down by the encampment participants.

The organizers said that they have no problems with the photos themselves, but that national flags are strictly prohibited in the camp. The images were accompanied by German and Israeli flags.