The fight against anti-Semitism and xenophobia is the “deepest concern” of the federal government, said Merkel.

According to the ARD Tagesschau on Monday before the start of the integration summit in Berlin, the focus was on “extreme right-wing” incidents in the past few months. The members of the federal government are very depressed “that so far it has not been possible to stop these acts,” the dpa news agency quoted the chancellor as saying.

The government wants to do more so that every citizen of this country, regardless of skin color and belief, can live in dignity. This dignity is not extended towards Germans that support the AfD however.

Before the event started, Merkel had spoken to representatives of migrant associations about the shooting in Hanau. A 43-year-old mentally-ill German shot nine foreigners in the Hessian city about two weeks ago before allegedly killing himself and his mother.

“Right-wing violence is not an exception, but an expression of a problem of racism in society as a whole,” the managing director of the Federal Immigration and Integration Council, Deniz Nergiz, told German news agency dpa. “Institutional racism in German security and investigative authorities” stands in the way of a thorough investigation of right-wing crimes. In an open letter to Merkel, the Federal Conference of Migrant Organizations called for a “mandatory minimum level of diversity” on Friday.

At the integration summit, the federal government decided to set up a cabinet committee to combat right-wing extremism and racism. “The fight against discrimination, racism and hostility to Muslims – in all areas of our coexistence – is crucial for the success of integration,” said the Federal Government’s Integration Commissioner, Annette Widmann-Mauz (CDU).

In the “National Integration Plan” coordinated by the committee, the government will for the first time devote itself to the “phase before immigration”. This is unique in the history of German integration.

“If you want orderly migration, you have to educate people about legal ways. We are in a global competition for skilled workers and there are also many other attractive immigration countries,” warned Widmann-Mauz, suggesting that Germany does welcome enough foreigners.

But Widmann-Mauz was contradicted by the European border protection agency Frontex. It has warned of continuing “migration flows to Greece” and that it would be “difficult to stop the massive flow of people who have traveled,” German daily Die Welt reported.

A further increase in migration can be expected “in the next few days” from Turkey and “social media” played a central role in this.

According to Frontex, this leaves three options for the EU. Firstly, to respond quickly to Turkish President Erdogan’s new demands. Secondly, to secure the borders to Greece with police officers and combat troops. Thirdly: to block off the West Balkan route.

Since the weekend there have been over 75000 migrants massed in the Turkish-Greek border area. There security forces have tried to prevent them from entering EU territory which resulted in often serious clashes.

Greek officials had to use tear gas to defend themselves against the aggressive illegal migrants.

Meanwhile, the left faction’s foreign policy expert Sevim Dagdelen has warned of a new asylum crisis. It had to be regulated so that Germany would not be the only country in the end accepting them, she told the television station ntv. “2015 must not be repeated in Germany.” In addition, Germany should lift economic sanctions against Syria and no longer support “this regime change war against Assad, which is contrary to international law”.

The candidate for the CDU chairmanship, Friedrich Merz, demanded that Germany send a signal to migrants in Turkey: “There is no point in coming to Germany. We cannot accept you here.” In Germany, everyone involved agreed that an asylum inflow like 2015 and 2016 should not be repeated, Merz said on Monday on the news radio MDR Aktuell.

freewestmedia.com/2020/03/03/merkel-fight-against-xenophobia-is-the-deepest-concern/

A video appeared on Twitter, showing an alleged Turkish human trafficker bragging about filling Europe with immigrants and making thousands of euros after Turkey opened its borders last Friday.

“I have filled half of Europe with immigrants,” the trafficker said.

According to his own words, he has been in the human trafficking business for 20 years, receiving €500 to €600 per migrant he successfully sends to Europe.

Although he spent six years in prison for his crimes, the man appears happy to be back in business since Turkey re-opened its border, encouraging millions of migrants to go to Europe.

Erdoğan has said he will not close the border anytime soon, a step that has led thousands of migrants to try to cross over the past few days. Most have been successfully repelled by Greek police.

“I told them it’s done. It’s finished. The doors are now open. Now, you will have to take your share of the burden,” Erdoğan said in a televised speech.

On Monday, Turkish media, as well as the president, accused Greece of killing two migrants and severely wounding a third one. Greece, however, denied all the accusations saying “no shots have been fired by Greek border forces”.

At the same time, a video appeared on Twitter, showing the Greek Coast Guard shooting warning shots into the water to block the migrant’s way to Greece. It is unclear if they were live rounds.

Many are praising Greece’s tough response to the crisis, which is likely in part inspired by Greece’s people staging mass protests against the ongoing migrant crisis, including the  severely overcrowded migrant camps on a number of Greek islands.

Erdoğan has so far refused to back down, saying he refuses to take the billion euros Europe has offered him to halt migration into Europe.

“They told us, ‘We’ll send you a billion euros.’ Who are you trying to fool? We don’t want that money anymore,” Erdoğan said at the press conference after meeting with Bulgarian Prime Minister Bojko Borisov yesterday.

rmx.news/article/article/turkish-human-trafficker-says-he-filled-europe-with-immigrants-and-is-ready-to-continue-doing-so

AfD leader Tino Chrupalla was injured in an attack on his car on Monday night. Strangers set fire to the AfD chief’s Volkswagen Caddy on his property in Görlitz, a town in eastern Germany on the Polish border.

In an attempt to extinguish the fire to stop it from spreading, Chrupalla inhaled toxic fumes and had to be treated in a clinic for several hours.

“I see that as an attack on my family,” Chrupalla told Berlin weekly Junge Freiheit. When asked how he was doing after the crime, he replied: “Badly”. Because of an assumed political motivation for the crime, the police have taken over the investigation, as a police spokeswoman told the Lausitzer Rundschau.

The Secretary General of the Saxony CDU, Alexander Dierks, condemned the attack. “Violence is never a means of political debate,” he wrote on Twitter. He said there was no excuse for such attacks.

The AfD is the party whose representatives are most often victims of attacks. As can be seen from a response from the Federal Government to an inquiry from the AfD parliamentary group, the authorities across Germany registered 112 attacks on offices or facilities of the parties represented in the Bundestag between October and December last year.

The AfD accounted for more than half of the 62 cases. Some 58 of them are left-motivated according to the criminal police service. The alarming figures had been similar in the previous quarter.

The AfD also comes first in the number of attacks on representatives or members of political parties. According to the Federal Government’s response, 87 of the 202 attacks were on the AfD, with 78 crimes seen as politically motivated by the police, while the remaining nine could not be assigned.

For the German Federal Government, however, this is no evidence that the attacks are “a systematic form of intimidation or threat” to the AfD.

The AfD member of the Bundestag, Martin Hess, who initiated the request, sharply criticized this odd assessment. “It has now been shown once again that the AfD is the main victim of political violence – and by a clear margin. If left-wing competitors, including the government, play down these attacks, they will support left-wing extremism and promote the political division in this country that they usually complain about,” Hess said.

freewestmedia.com/2020/03/03/afd-leader-injured-in-arson-attack/

With polls closing across Israel, exit polls published by Channel 12 News show that the Likud party has won 37 Knesset seats while the Blue and White party has won 33 seats.

The Joint Arab List won 14 seats, Shas nine seats, United Torah Judaism seven seats, Yamina seven, Labor-Gesher-Meretz seven, and Yisrael Beyteinu six seats.

According to the exit poll, the right-wing bloc received 60 seats, one shy of the 61 majority necessary to form a coalition.

A Channel 13 News exit poll also showed the right-wing bloc winning 60 seats. The poll also found that the Likud won 37 seats, while Blue and White won 32 seats.

According to the Channel 13poll, the Joint Arab List won 14 seats, Shas nine, Yisrael Beyteinu eight, United Torah Judaism eight, Yamina six, and Labor-Gesher-Meretz six seats.

A Kan News exit poll had the Likud slightly lower at 36 seats, while the Blue and White party won 33 seats.

According to the Kan News poll, the third largest party is the Joint Arab List led by Ayman Odeh with 15 seats. Shas won nine seats, United Torah Judaism eight seats, Yamina seven seats, Yisrael Beyteinu six seats, and Labor-Gesher-Meretz six seats.

All three exit polls predict that the right-wing bloc will win 60 seats in total.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/276725

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel was left embarrassed when her Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer, refused to shake her hand at a meeting in front of journalists, amid rising coronavirus fears.

Seehofer, a perenially leading figure in the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), declined the proferred handshake at a meeting to discuss migration in Berlin.

“That is the right thing to do,” Merkel told her minister, attempting to laugh of the situation along with the rest of the meeting’s attendees.

Lothar Wieler, the president of the Robert Koch Institute, has noted that the coronavirus is now progressing “very dynamically”, with over 150 confirmed infections — including the first in Berlin, Bremen, Frankfurt, and Hamburg.

The virus is already beginning to impact the German economy, with one manufacturer having had to advise over 1,500 workers not to come in on March 2nd after one of them was confirmed infected.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/02/member-merkel-govt-refuses-shake-her-hand-amid-coronavirus-fears/