A German bishop has criticised a decision to cancel one of the country’s largest carnival parades at only a few hours’ notice, and urged democracies not be bullied by Islamist terrorists.
Bishop Hans-Jochen Jaschke, an auxiliary in Hamburg, said the Braunschweig carnival should not have been cancelled.
It was called off only hours before it was due to begin, because of two fatal gun attacks in Copenhagen on Saturday at a synagogue and an event promoting free speech.
“If there is a real danger of an attack, then such a step is necessary, but as free democracies we must not put up with such pressurisation on the part of Islamist terrorists on a permanent basis.
“Knuckling under is quite the wrong signal,” Jaschke told the German Catholic news agency KNA.
Shortly before the carnival parade was cancelled, the German Ministry of the Interior said there was no heightened danger of terrorist attacks in Germany after the Copenhagen attacks, although local police said there had been a "specific threat of an Islamist attack".
Islamist terror was, moreover, also motivated by anti-Semitism, he said, taking issue with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was the only place Jews could now feel safe.
“It is sad news indeed that Premier Netanyahu is now calling Europe’s Jews to emigrate to Israel. We must not allow that to happen. Jews belong here,” he emphasised.
The president of the Jewish community in Bavaria, Charlotte Knobloch, agreed, saying: “An exodus of European Jews to Israel is no solution to the immense danger Jews are being exposed to by Islamist terrorists.”
Terrorists were threatening European democracies, European society and freedom as a whole and must be fought far more decisively with all political and legal measures, she said.
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