October 7 anniversary may be antisemitism 'trigger event,' German intelligence warns

The anniversary of Hamas’s cross-border massacres in southern Israel on October 7 could be a “trigger event” that sparks social turmoil, Thomas Haldenwang, chief of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) said, the French international news agency AFP reported on Friday.

The BfV is Germany's federal domestic intelligence agency, the equivalent of America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Monday, the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, which sparked the ongoing Israel-Hamas War and prompted the Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah to begin the following day its continuing campaign of rocket and drone attacks on Israel, “could be a trigger event for large parts of the protest spectrum,” AFP cited Haldenwang as saying.

The domestic intelligence agency chief also reportedly warned that conflict in the Middle East often creates tensions in Germany and noted that Islamists, pro-Palestinian hardliners, and other extremists are united by the “connecting element” of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

Already, a number of pro-Palestinian protests are scheduled to occur on Monday, AFP noted.

Pro-Palestinian 'hatred, antisemitism, and violent excesses'

Having seen pro-Palestinian activists demonstrate “hatred, antisemitism, and violent excesses,” police union spokesman Benjamin Jedro said that in the German capital of Berlin, “we are looking at the coming days with great concern,” the French news agency quoted him as saying.

Additionally, Haldenwang stated, “The potential danger of possible terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli individuals and institutions, as well as against ‘the West’ as a whole, has increased significantly in the past six months,” noting that since the start of the war, the rate of antisemitic crimes had reached record levels.

“Islamists have understood how to use the current Middle East crisis to revitalize their propaganda and mobilize their followers,” he reportedly said, adding that the Islamic State was “using its propaganda to use the situation in Gaza to create emotions and encourage young Muslims in the West in particular to carry out terrorist attacks.”