Antisemitism Keeps Increasing All Over Europe, and Has Now Claimed Another Victim

Recently Stefan Hensel, the antisemitism czar in Hamburg, has resigned in despair: “Germany’s only Jewish antisemitism czar is resigning amid rising threats, ebbing support,” by Joshua Schultheis, Times of Israel, December 8, 2025:

Antisemitic incidents in Hamburg, where there is a Jewish population of roughly 5,000, have been on the rise. A study commissioned by Hensel in cooperation with the local police academy this year shows how dramatically the situation for Hamburg’s Jews has worsened since October 7. According to the survey, 77 percent of the 548 Jews who responded reported experiencing antisemitic incidents in the past 12 months. Two-thirds attributed the hostility to the heated atmosphere in Germany due to the war in the Middle East. Eighty-nine percent said they could not freely practice Judaism….

Amazing, isn’t it? Israeli Jews are raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered on October 7, 2023, and after a few days of expressions of solidarity with Israel, much of the world then turned on the Jewish state as it began to fight back in Gaza, and it has been downhill all the way ever since, as the antisemitic words turned into antisemitic deeds. And now these expressions of antisemitism been happening even in Germany, where that “statsräson” seems to have been forgotten.

Hamburg’s state government, known as the Senate, is led by the Social Democrats (SPD) in coalition with the Green Party, which together nominated Hensel for the role. The largest opposition party is the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which at the federal level holds the chancellorship under Friedrich Merz.

Senator Maryam Blumenthal of the Green Party, whose Science, Research and Equality Ministry oversees the antisemitism commissioner’s office, said she had experienced her work with Hensel as “constructive and based on trust.”

“His work to date will continue to inspire the city and the Senate. I thank him very much for his dedication,” said Blumenthal, who is not Jewish herself. “Combating antisemitism and protecting Jewish residents of Hamburg are central tasks for me and for the Senate as a whole.”…

Both the Social Democrats and the Greens have been positively Laodicean in their insufficient support for Hensel’s work, though now they express regret at his resignation.

The Christian Democrats, on the other hand, have been much more forceful in their determination to fight antisemitism in their state, and in their support for Hensel. But they are in the opposition, and limited in what they can do to help him.

As one example, he noted that the governing parties had rejected a CDU proposal to turn the commissioner’s job into a fully paid position.

So the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg could not come up with the money to provide Stefan Hensel with a full-time salary? That shows where Hamburg’s priorities lie. It probably spent more to pay for the beer consumed by the city’s soccer club, the Hamburger SV, during a single post-game celebration than it does on Hensel’s meager salary.

It’s quite something: the antisemitism that keeps on increasing all over Europe, and has now claimed another victim — the very man, Stefan Hensel, who as commissioner of antisemitism in Hamburg was supposed to be leading the fight against it in the city-state, but saw his requests for action repeatedly turned down. At the same time, he required a full-time security detail to guard him against death threats. And Hamburg’s government was unwilling to provide him with a full-time salary. He could no longer cope, and submitted his resignation.

The rise in antisemitism is just one aspect of a much larger problem. German federal and state governments together spend forty-five billion euros each year on migrants, many of whom hate Jews. Many German cities are on the verge of bankruptcy. Pensioners are not receiving the annual rises in benefits that they used to get, before Merkel declared “we can do this.” Working-class Germans are suffering from higher rents as a result of so much housing being taken off the market to provide it to migrants, and from a decrease in social spending, a result of local governments becoming cash-strapped because of what they are paying to support migrants. These poorer Germans see the amounts being spent on these unwelcome and ungrateful Muslim migrants, who are in no hurry to be employed, and no desire to be integrated, and they despair.

What will Stefan Hensel now do? One hopes that he will start to speak openly of the Muslim menace to the Jews of Germany, and come to think of it, to all other non-Muslims as well. If the Alternative für Deutschland triumphs at the polls in the next election, as it quite possibly will, and Alice Weidel becomes chancellor, she should consider appointing Stefan Hensel to a newly-created post, antisemitism commissioner for all of Germany.