Merkel at the rally against anti-Semitism. Photo: Gabriel Eichler.

JNS.org – German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke at a 5,000-person rally against anti-Semitism in Berlin on Sunday organized by Germany’s Jewish community at the capital city’s Brandenburg Gate.

“It’s our national and civic duty to fight anti-Semitism,” Merkel said, Reuters reported.

This summer’s Operation Protective Edge has led to a significant spike in anti-Semitic incidents worldwide, according to an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) report published last week. The President of the Central Council of Jews, Dr. Dieter Graumann said that this summer saw  “the worst anti-Semitic slogans on German streets for many, many decades.”

“We won’t let ourselves be intimidated,” he said, reported The Associated Press. “But… How do you think we feel when we hear on German streets today, ‘Jews to the gas’?”

Merkel said that it is “verging on a miracle that well above 100,000 Jews live in Germany today” 70 years after the Holocaust, and “it is a monstrous scandal that people in Germany today are being abused if they are somehow recognizable as Jews or if they stand up for the State of Israel”

“I will not accept that and we will not accept that,” she added.