Jewish members of the far-right Alternative for Germany party met in the southwestern German city of Wiesbaden on Sunday to launch a Jewish chapter within the party – a move that drew strong condemnation from other Jews.
Twenty people joined the new "Jews in the AfD" group, local media reported.
Party activist Dr. Vera Kosova – a Jewish physician born in Uzbekistan – was announced as the chairwoman of the party's Jewish faction.
"The most important thing for us is to give middle-class, conservative Jews an opportunity to make their voices heard," Kosova told Israel Hayom in an exclusive interview immediately following her election as chairwoman.
"We represent the interests of German Jews within the only party that addresses the most important issue: Islamic anti-Semitism, which today is the greatest threat to Jewish life in Germany.
"The resistance we've elicited is to be expected. We will confront it. We will also take steps to expand the relationship between the AfD and the State of Israel," she said.
A leading member of the group, Wolfgang Fuhl, told the German news agency DPA that people wishing to join the chapter had to meet two criteria: membership in the AfD and ethnic or religious association with the Jewish faith.
"We are not a religious organization, we are a political organization," Fuhl told reporters at the inauguration ceremony, sitting alongside fellow Jews, including a few wearing kippot.
Some 250 people protested against the Jewish AfD chapter in nearby Frankfurt.
"You're not getting a kosher stamp from us," said Dalia Grinfeld, the leader of the Jewish Students Union of Germany.
Meron Mendel, the director of the Anne Frank Educational Center, called the establishment of the group "a PR stunt by the far right," DPA reported.
Seventeen Jewish organizations put out a joint statement earlier this week accusing the AfD of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. "The AfD is a party in which anti-Semitism … and the denial of the Shoah have a home," they said.
Despite repeatedly downplaying the horrors of the Holocaust, the party's rhetoric against Muslim immigrants has attracted some Jewish support.
"The AfD is the only party in Germany that makes anti-Semitism by Muslims a topic without trivializing it," Dimitri Schulz, a Jew and founding member of the Jewish AfD faction, told DPA last month.
Fuhl said the AfD was the most pro-Israel party in Germany, not least because it supports the Jewish state's right to have all of Jerusalem as its capital.
"The AfD is an exceptionally pro-Israel party, possibly the most pro-Israel party in the Bundestag," he said, referring to the lower house of parliament in which the AfD is the third-largest party.
Other members of the Jewish faction emphasized that the AfD is the only party in Germany to voice support for relocating the German Embassy to Jerusalem, and to criticize the transfer of German funds to UNRWA – the United Nations' agency for Palestinian refugees – and to Palestinian and other Arab elements that propagate anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement.
For the time being, however, Israel has officially rejected the party, declining to maintain any official ties with it.
While Jewish faction members admit that even the Israeli Right still treats the AfD as a radical right-wing party, due to the coverage it receives in the Israeli media, which they say is biased against it, they claim that they have already made contact with various parties in Israel.
Germany has seen a recent increase in anti-Semitic incidents, including a series of violent attacks on Jews by Muslims. Most Jews, however, do not believe that the AfD will become a "guarantor of Jewish life in Germany" as some party leaders have touted in the past.
On the contrary, they stress that the AfD's demand to ban kosher butchering practices and circumcision, two staples of Jewish tradition, poses a fundamental threat to their religious rights and jeopardizes their ability to live in Germany as Jews.
In addition, they point to the party's hostile rhetoric. Earlier this year, the co-leader of AfD downplayed Germany's Nazi past as a "speck of bird poop in more than 1,000 years of successful German history."
Last year, another prominent AfD member said Germany needed to take a "180-degree turn" when it comes to remembering its past and said the Berlin memorial to the millions of Jews killed in the Holocaust was a "monument of shame."
"If this was a Nazi party, I wouldn't join it," said Jaroslav Poliak, who immigrated to Germany from Ukraine in 1978, long before the collapse of the former Soviet Union.
"There are black sheep in every party in Germany, same with the AfD. But this isn't a party that supports hatred and Nazism. I have never experienced any type of negative treatment within the ranks of [the party]. It's true there is a local initiative among party members to ban kosher slaughter. But efforts to ratify this ban also exist in other European countries, and it doesn't represent a threat to Jewish life there," he said.
Meanwhile, there is widespread ambivalence among Jews in Germany when it comes to the more than 1 million migrants who came to Germany since 2015, the majority of whom are Muslims from countries like Syria or Iraq with attitudes hostile toward Jews and Israel.
The head of Germany's Jewish Council, Joseph Schuster, has repeatedly warned that Jews shouldn't wear identifying garb in German areas with large Muslim populations.
Germany is home to an estimated 200,000 Jews and has built a reputation in recent decades as a tolerant, safe place for Jews to live.
Anti-Semitic crimes reported to the police rose 4% to 681 in the first eight months of 2017, compared to the previous year, with an overwhelming majority of incidents linked to far-right extremism. The real number is probably much higher.
Members of Jews in the AfD, as stated, appear unmoved by these figures.
When asked by a journalist what he would say to people who might call him a "Nazi Jew," Bernhard Krauskopf said, speaking in English, "I tell them that 'you are talking to a Jewish-German person whose father lost more than 50 people in Nazi death camps, you should be a little bit more intelligent not to talk such nonsense.'"
"It doesn't go together for me," Schuster told Reuters. "In the end, I have to assume that these are people who simply have not recognized the true ulterior motive, also the goals of this more than right-wing populist party."
He added: "I think that there are some who think, 'The AfD is a party that today predominantly campaigns against or targets refugees, migrants, Muslims.' However, I consider it completely wrong to put Muslims under general suspicion. And the formula of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' does not work.'"
AfD lawmakers addressed the Bundestag and hailed the "historic day" for Germany and an "important development" for Israel.
Deputy AfD leader Beatrix von Storch told Israel Hayom: "This is a good day for the 'Alternative' and for Jews in Germany, and it's a good starting point for dialogue with the Jewish communities in Germany and amongst themselves. We have been contacted by many in the Jewish community in an unofficial manner. Across Europe, the social democratic parties have become partners with Islamism. We approach Islamism as a threat and work to contend with it."
