Germany's government commissioner on anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, said in an interview published Saturday he "cannot advise Jews to wear the kippah everywhere all the time in Germany," due to increasing anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish attacks there.
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Rivlin said Klein's remarks "shocked" him, and while appreciating the German government's "commitment to the Jewish community," accused it of bowing to those targeting Jews in Germany.
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"Fears about the security of German Jews are a capitulation to anti-Semitism and an admittance that, again, Jews are not safe on German soil," he said.
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"We will never submit, will never lower our gaze and will never react to anti-Semitism with defeatism -- and expect and demand our allies act in the same way," he said.
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Anti-Semitic crimes rose by 20 percent in Germany last year, according to interior ministry data which blamed nine out of 10 cases on the extreme right.
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Klein, whose post was created last year, said that while the far-right was to blame for the vast majority of anti-Semitic crime, some Muslims were also influenced by watching certain television channels "which transmit a dreadful image of Israel and Jews".
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Germany has a culture of atonement over atrocities committed during World War II, during which the ruling Nazis orchestrated the murder of some six million Jews in the Holocaust.
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