The Duchess and the Rabbi

Beatrix Amelie Ehrengard Eilika Duchess of Oldenburg, going by her married name as Mrs. von Storch, a leading member of the German rightwing party AfD, Alternative für Deutschland, has joined her party leader Frauke Petry, and opined that German border guards should be able to shoot refugees trying to enter Germany. Petry, who was born in the German Democratic Republic, a country whose border guards shot its own citizens trying to flee, apparently sees nothing unusual in shoot to kill by border guards.

Blue-blooded Frau von Storch has no qualms in joining GDR born Petry in the effort to keep Germany German. German unification has evidently worked.

Some three thousand kilometres to the east, Shmuel Eliyahu, the municipal Rabbi of Safed, and as such an Israeli civil servant, recently explained that as terrorists were out to kill Jews it was necessary to kill them even after they had been caught. Policemen shooting them should be sent flowers, chocolates and money and medical teams treating them should let them die.

Shit is to be found everywhere. Fortunately, neither all Germans, nor all rabbis share Eliyahu’s and von Storch’s views. Sadly neither German, nor Israeli society, push those who propagate such views out of the public domain, perhaps across the border of the land that they try to establish for those of their own kind.