"That's a lot more – +19 points – than one year ago," stated the German broadcaster ARD, which conducted the poll, on its website, in comparison to last year's finding that just 40% of Germans believed anti-Semitism in the country is alarming.

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Only 35% of respondents thought Jew-hatred wasn't increasing in Germany.

The poll was published after German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer announced on Thursday a six-point plan to combat anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism through tougher regulations to limit online hate speech along with cracking down on purchases of illegal guns and other weapons by members of the far Right.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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About 10,000 people participated in the march through the German capital. Several thousand others protested Saturday in other cities including Hamburg and Marburg.

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Many Germans are in shock over Wednesday's attack in which two people were killed outside the synagogue and in a kebab shop. The attack has renewed concerns about rising far-right extremism and questions about the slow police response.

The 27-year-old, heavily armed suspect, identified as Stephan Balliet, tried but failed to enter the house of worship on Yom Kippur, Judaism's holiest day. The suspect, who livestreamed his attack online, has been charged with two counts of murder and nine of attempted murder.

On Sunday, people started their march at a symbolic landmark, Berlin's Bebelplatz square, where the Nazis burnt thousands of books by Jews, communists and other opponents, weeks after Adolf Hitler took power in 1933.

The marchers carried Israeli flags and banners with slogans like "No Nazis" or "Far-right terror threatens our society."

The rally was organized by the civil rights group Unteilbar, or "Indivisible," under the slogan "We stand united" and ended at the city's New Synagogue with its famous golden dome topped by a Star of David.

Friedhelm Schmitt, a 52-year-old neurologist, said he'd joined the protest "because I had to. It's my democratic duty. It's like going to vote."

German prosecutors have said the suspect wanted to carry out a "massacre" in the synagogue and had about 4 kilograms (9 pounds) of explosives in his car.

He unsuccessfully tried for several minutes to enter the house of worship, where more than 50 people were attending a prayer service, but the door withstood his shots. He then killed two people and severely injured a couple before he was detained by police.

Police have been criticized because they arrived at the synagogue seven minutes after they were alerted to the shooting.

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A 27-year-old German man previously unknown to police confessed to carrying out the attack in the eastern city of Halle in which two people were killed Wednesday.

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The suspected gunman, identified as Stephan Balliet, allegedly built the firearms he used with the help of online instructions, posted an anti-Semitic screed before the attack and later broadcast the shooting live on a popular gaming site.

In response to the attack and previous incidents, German officials have called for more officers to be devoted to tackling far-right extremism and a greater focus on online platforms they say are increasingly being used as a means of spreading far-right radicalism and linking up with like-minded people in a way already seen with Islamist extremism.

Thomas Haldenwang, who heads the BfV domestic intelligence agency, said the attack in Halle and similar shootings in Texas, New Zealand, and Norway showed the need for security services to get better tools to tackle online extremism. In particular, he called for authorities to be given permission to install monitoring software on suspect's devices so as to read their encrypted communication.

Holger Münch, head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, said online threats and acts of violence are creating a "climate of fear" in Germany that is deterring people from volunteering for public office.

"Right-wing crimes threaten our democracy," Münch said. "The situation is serious."

The country is still reeling from the killing of Walter Lübcke, a regional politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, who was shot dead at his home in June. Lübcke had vocally supported Merkel's welcoming stance toward refugees in 2015 and the suspect in his killing is a far-right extremist with a string of convictions for violent anti-migrant crimes.

Münch said his agency has identified 43 far-right extremists who are considered to constitute a serious threat, an increase of about a third since the start of the year. Overall, authorities say there are some 12,700 far-right extremists in Germany "prepared to use violence."

He called for a bundle of measures including greater scrutiny of online hate postings, extending the period of time that security services can store data on possible extremists and for those who create and distribute lists of political enemies to be prosecuted.

He also proposed that an existing law requiring platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to swiftly remove illegal hate speech should be expanded to force them to report such content to police.

Münch suggested his office could become a central point of contact dealing with online hate crimes in the same way it already does for child pornography.

Further proposals include creating a special unit to investigate possible extremists in the police and other government departments and a crackdown on known far-right groups.

Security officials are particularly concerned that the 'new Right' – groups that include factions within the Alternative for Germany party which entered the federal parliament two years ago – are providing the intellectual fodder for extremists.

Authorities are still investigating whether the suspect in the Halle shooting had ties to any known groups or individuals. At least five people watched the attack live as it happened, suggesting they may have known it was going to take place.

The suspect failed to force his way into the synagogue as scores of people inside were observing Judaism's holiest day, Yom Kippur. He then shot and killed a 40-year-old German woman in the street outside and a 20-year-old man at a nearby kebab shop before fleeing. He was later arrested in Zeitz, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Halle.

The suspect has admitted during questioning that he carried out the shooting and had anti-Semitic and right-wing extremist motives.

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That was the refrain repeated by German broadcasters throughout Oct. 9 as news of the attempted Yom Kippur attack on a Halle synagogue that saw two bystanders killed came to light. The options were obvious: either extremist Muslims or extremist right-wingers were behind the shooting.

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German media treaded lightly until the perpetrator, a neo-Nazi, with suspect Stephan Balliet, 27, going so far as to brazenly document his attack and its planning, was confirmed. The style and rhetoric were similar to the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and the Chabad of Poway, which raised the alarm to the growing prominence of right-wing hate groups in the United States.

Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democrats, who has lost political ground to the Right since her decision to welcome more than a million Muslim refugees and migrants since 2015, made a generic, televised statement in which she said: "We must use all the means of the rule of law to combat hatred, violence and enemies of mankind. There can be no tolerance whatsoever."

On Twitter, Foreign Affairs Minister Heiko Mass, a member of the Social Democrats and a proponent of the nuclear deal with Iran as well as Muslim migration, said: "Anti-Semitism and xenophobia must have no place in our society. It is shameful to have to say this sentence so often in Germany."

The rise of the violent Right

At a press conference the next day, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer remorsefully claimed that the "anti-Semitic threat from the extremist Right and right-wing terror is very high in Germany."

The German Jewish community criticized the country's negligent security and surveillance systems. The synagogue was not given police protection during the holiday; it was the heavy, bolted door that kept the gunman out and protected the 80 or so worshippers inside.

Erstes 1, Germany's largest public broadcaster, dedicated coverage to right-wing extremism, highlighting its social media hangouts and recent history of attacks against Jews and foreigners alike.

Some analysts and activists, however, question German political sincerity when reactions seem to differ depending on the anti-Semitic source.

"Obviously, the terrorist was a native German, and this made it very easy for politicians to condemn the attack as right-wing and anti-Semitic, and to make nice, moving comments about solidarity with the Jewish community," said Andreas Boldt, a German pro-Israel activist who founded the 38,000 member-strong "German-Israel Friendship" Facebook page, which saw a spike in likes since the attack. "However, for me, these are empty words – a lie, a bluff, very dishonest behavior. Why? Germany regularly condemns Israel along with Islamic dictatorships in the United Nations."

Germany came under fire from the Jewish community and Israeli politicians when it voted down a motion in the Bundestag to change anti-Israel voting patterns in the United Nations. It has also been widely criticized by Jewish leaders, as well as the Trump administration in Washington for refusing to outlaw the political arm of Hezbollah that claims more than 1,000 operatives in Germany.

"The alleged neo-Nazi suspect arrested on Tuesday shared a global anti-Semitic worldview of a 'Zionist-occupied government' theory," stated Benjamin Weinthal from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an analyst of German politics.

"The interconnections of modern anti-Semitism among Islamists, the far-Left and the far-Right are patently obvious, and Merkel offers no program of action to blunt the rise of this highly dangerous form of Jew-hatred."

"What can be done? Merkel can, with the swipe of a pen before next week, ban Hezbollah and the Palestinian terrorist entity Popular Front for the Liberation for Palestine in Germany."

Weinthal regularly highlights the German political disconnect between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, most recently illustrated with Merkel's downplaying of Iran's call to wipe Israel off the map as "anti-Israel" rhetoric as opposed to blatant anti-Semitism.

The Merkel government versus the AfD

Anti-Semitism is often utilized by German political groups to make jabs at each other, particularly between the governing coalition and its archenemy in the domestic political sphere: the right-wing Alternative for Germany, which made significant gains in regional elections in eastern Germany, where the Halle attack occurred, facilitating a connection between AfD and the attack.

SPD lawmaker Karl Lauterbach, for example, tweeted: "It's the hate spread by the AfD that gave the far-Right a voice. This hate speech legitimized individual perpetrators to commit such acts of cruelty. These criminals want to do the AfD's bidding. The AfD carries a large share of the blame for this attack."

The AfD quickly tried to deflect such accusations, with party leaders condemning the attack with its own political twist: "Jewish life belongs to Germany. We must defend it against the attacks of neo-Nazis, left-wing extremists, and Islamists!" declared party leader Beatrix von Storch in a statement.

Von Storch was a mastermind behind a motion in the Bundestag to ban Hezbollah that was rejected in large part due to the party of the messenger, which was accused of using Jews to bash Muslims.

Vice president of the Jews in the AfD faction, Artur Abramovych, conceded that had the attack been motivated by Islam, the AfD would have likewise used it to castigate Merkel's seeming Islamic appeasement. A popular AfD refrain is: "Islam does not belong to Germany."

"But at least the AfD isn't ignoring the far-right anti-Semitism," he said. "There were many statements today, and already yesterday, while the mainstream is trying to ignore the Islamist and leftist anti-Semitism."

One case in point: Merkel issued no statement after an attempted knife attack by a Syrian refugee at the central New Synagogue in Berlin days before Yom Kippur. The perpetrator was let go by authorities the next day, much to the anger of Boldt and other pro-Jewish activists.

"When a Muslim attacks a synagogue, they will release him a few days after as if nothing happened, and nobody comes out in solidarity. They even try to understand him and try to explain why he did it," said Boldt.

In another example, a German court ruled that a 2014 firebombing of a Wuppertal synagogue by Palestinians was not anti-Semitic, but a protest against Israeli policies.

"It is incomprehensible how someone who tries to infiltrate a synagogue with a knife can be free again after less than 24 hours, as was the case last weekend in Berlin," acting director of AJC Berlin, Dr. Remko Leemhuis, said in a press release on the Halle attack, concluding: "The time of abstract confessions against anti-Semitism is over. Anyone who wants to do something against Jew-hatred must above all begin by relentlessly naming it from every direction and in every shade, and not always picking out the group of perpetrators that fits into their own political agenda."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Lange was shot by extremist anti-Semite Stephan Balliet, who livestreamed the attack via a helmet camera as she attempted to stop him from shooting up the synagogue.

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Balliet went on to shoot Kevin, whom local media described as a soccer fan, who was at a nearby kebab stand during the terrorist attack.

German media described Lange as a "warm, funny" person and a devoted music lover. She liked to share pictures of artists she admired on social media.

Kevin, the second victim, was a painter. He worked at a building site near the synagogue.

Kevin's father began to fear the worst when reports about the shooting began to circulate.

"All we know is that you're at the construction site nearby and you lost your phone. Kevin, we love you more than anything," the father wrote on his Facebook page prior to receiving the news of his son's tragic death.

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The attack on a synagogue in central Germany, where the community had gathered to mark the holiest day, Yom Kippur, attacked the very heart of Germany.

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The attack was not aimed only at the worshippers who were there. It also comprises an attack on our open German society. It was an attack on us all. Because for Germany, the obligation to ensure the security of Jewish men and women is as vital as the friendship between Israel and Germany.

How can it be that Jewish men and women in my native land must once again fear for their lives? As the German ambassador, who has had close ties with Israel for many years, that question does not leave me.

On Wednesday afternoon, 80 members of the Jewish community had gathered in their synagogue in the Paulus neighborhood of Halle. The armed attacker used many different weapons to try and break into the synagogue, but did not succeed. It was fortunate that the door blocked his shots.

During the course of the attack, he fatally shot a woman who was passing by. He livestreamed it all via a helmet camera. German media outlets are reporting that he had been "inspired" by the terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand. On Wednesday evening, police announced that the perpetrator was a man who held extremist right-wing views and was motivated by racism and anti-Semitism.

I want to emphasize this: The attacker does not represent Germany. The solidarity rally outside the new synagogue in Berlin, in which Chancellor Angela Merkel took part, proves that not only the German government, but the vast majority of Germany's people are staunchly opposed to violent right-wing, anti-Semitic ideologies.

We must all view this horrifying incident as a call for even stronger action against anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism. Extremists must not have any place in our society, and we must protect the lives of the Jews. The sad reality is that we have to further step up security at Jewish institutions in Germany. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has promised to do so.

The German government and many civil society initiatives will continue to fight anti-Semitism and work on behalf of an open, liberal society. In 2020, we will make this a central issue when Germany takes over the presidency of the European Council and the role of chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

In the next few days, 20 Israeli students who were awarded scholarships by the German government will travel to Germany. They will spend a few days with German host families. Despite, and possibly because of, the incidents, they didn't want to cancel their visit. That encourages me and gives me strength.

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The attack, in which two people were killed outside the synagogue and in a kebab shop, stoked renewed concern about rising far-right extremism and questions about the police response.

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The head of Germany's Jewish community, Josef Schuster, called the absence of police guards outside the synagogue on Yom Kippur "scandalous" as members of the congregation described waiting behind locked doors for the police to arrive, which took more than 10 minutes.

The assailant – a German citizen identified by prosecutors as Stephan B., firing what appeared to be homemade weapons – tried and failed to force his way into the synagogue as around 80 people were inside, then shot and killed a woman in the street outside and a man at a nearby kebab shop.

The attack, with the gunman ranting about Jews and denying the Holocaust in English, was livestreamed on Twitch, a popular gaming site.

The head of the city's Jewish community, Max Privorozki, was among those inside who watched the man trying to break in on monitors linked to a surveillance camera. "We saw everything, also how he shot and how he killed someone," he said.

"I thought this door wouldn't hold," Privorozki said outside the damaged door.

"That was a shock for us, that was Yom Kippur, all phones were switched off, we had to understand what was going on first – then switch on my phone and then call the police," he said. "It was really panic but I have to say after that, when the police came, we continued with the worship service, that lasted another three hours, the synagogue worship service."

The worshippers were brought out on buses several hours later. A video posted by a reporter for Channel 11 News showed people on a bus dancing, embracing and singing.

A worshipper who was at the synagogue, identified only as Christina, told Israel Radio that "it's not easy being openly Jewish in Germany," but "the main message is we can't give up. We won't give up on Jewish existence in Germany."

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier laid flowers outside the synagogue and met with community representatives, the first of several officials who were due to visit.

Ahead of the visit, Schuster was sharply critical Wednesday night of the lack of a police presence outside. "I am convinced that if there had been police protection there, in all probability the assailant would not have been able to attack a second site," he said.

Christoph Bernstiel, a local councilor who also represents Halle in the national parliament, told n-tv television that there will be a careful examination of how long the response took, "but at this point, it would be too early to draw premature conclusions."

Synagogues are often protected by police in Germany and have been for many years amid concerns over far-right and Islamic extremism. There has been rising concern lately about both anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism.

Germany's domestic intelligence agency has said that the number of anti-Semitic acts of violence rose to 48 last year from 21 the previous year. It also said that the number of far-right extremists rose by 100 to 24,100 people last year, with more than half of them considered potentially violent.

In June, Walter Lübcke, a regional politician from Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, was fatally shot at his home. Lübcke was known for supporting the welcoming refugee policy that Merkel adopted during an influx of migrants in 2015. The suspect is a far-right extremist with a string of convictions for violent anti-migrant crimes.

Joachim Herrmann, Bavaria's state interior minister, accused members of the nationalist, anti-migrant Alternative for Germany party of helping stir up anti-Semitism, an accusation the party rejected. Some figures in the party, which entered the national parliament in 2017, have made comments appearing to downplay the Nazi past.

The video streamed on Twitch, which apparently was filmed with a head-mounted camera, showed the perpetrator driving up to the synagogue in a car packed with ammunition and what appeared to be homemade explosives.

He tried two doors and placed a device at the bottom of a gate, then fired at a woman trying to walk past his parked car. The assailant then fired rounds into the synagogue's door, which didn't open. He drove a short distance to park opposite the kebab shop. He fired at what appeared to be an employee, while customers scrambled away.

What appeared to be a manifesto also appeared online, according to Rita Katz, the head of the SITE Intelligence Group.

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The man, Stephan B., modeled Wednesday's attack on a shooting spree at New Zealand mosques earlier this year in which 51 people were killed. He wanted to kill as many people as possible in the synagogue in the eastern city of Halle, the prosecutor said.

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Dozens of people were at the synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, when the gunman tried to blast his way in – only to fail to breach the solidly locked gates.

"What we experienced yesterday was terrorism. According to our findings, the suspect Stephan B. aimed to carry out a massacre," federal prosecutor Peter Frank told reporters.

"Stephan B., a man who was influenced by scary anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racism, was heavily armed," Frank added. "He armed himself with many weapons, some possibly self-made, and had a large quantity of explosives."

Investigators found 4 kilograms of explosives in his car.

In a video of more than 30 minutes that the attacker livestreamed from a helmet camera, he was heard cursing his failure to enter the synagogue before shooting dead a woman passerby in the street and a man in a nearby kebab restaurant.

Two other people were injured but not critically.

"Stephan B. wanted to be copycat in two senses," said Frank. "He wanted to mimic similar acts that happened in the past, and he also wanted to incite others to copycat his acts."

Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht said right-wing extremism "is one of the biggest threats facing us." She vowed to get tougher on online platforms if they carry threats or material that incites hatred.

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Though the gunman did not get into the building in Wednesday's attack, he killed two bystanders in a subsequent livestreamed rampage, which appeared to be modeled on the gun attack on a New Zealand mosque.

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"If police had been stationed outside the synagogue, then this man could have been disarmed before he could attack others," Josef Schuster, president of the council of Germany's Jewish community, told Deutschlandfunk public radio.

Most Jewish institutions in Germany's large cities have a near-permanent police guard due to occasional anti-Semitic attacks by both far-right activists and Islamist militants.

In a video of more than 30 minutes that the attacker livestreamed from a helmet camera, the perpetrator was heard cursing his failure to enter the synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle before shooting dead a woman passerby in the street and a man inside a nearby kebab restaurant.

Two other people were injured but regional braodcaster MDR said their condition was not critical.

Police said they had detained one person, identified by the magazines Spiegel and Focus Online as a 27-year-old German, Stephan B. His full name cannot be published under German privacy laws.

Schuster said that while it was normal practice in his experience for all synagogues to have police guards while services were being conducted inside, this appeared not to be the case in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where Halle is located.

However, the head of Germany's police union was skeptical about the feasibility of providing that level of protection.

"We'd have to guard every synagogue, every church, every mosque, every holy place in Germany around the clock, so I don't know if this was a mistake or if this really couldn't have been foreseen," Oliver Malchow told public television.

In the event, the synagogue's solid locked gates and high walls provided ample protection against the attacker's seemingly improvised weapons.

Malchow also defended police in Halle who took 15 minutes to reach the synagogue, saying they could only respond after receiving reports about the incident, and that armored units often had to come from greater distances.

"This shows how thin the level of police coverage is," he said. "Nobody is holding back ... it probably wasn't possible to be quicker."

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The attacker in Germany, who livestreamed his rampage on Amazon's gaming subsidiary Twitch, shot dead two people after failing to gain entry to the synagogue on the High Holiday of Yom Kippur.

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The nearly 36-minute-long video closely resembled footage livestreamed in March in Christchurch, where the gunman also wore a camera to capture a first-person perspective as he killed 51 people at two mosques.

As with Christchurch, full copies and portions of the German video quickly began appearing elsewhere online, shared both by supporters of the gunman's anti-Semitic ideology and critics condemning his actions.

Reuters viewed copies and links to the footage posted on Twitter, 4chan, and message boards focused on trolling and harassment, as well as multiple white supremacist channels on messaging app Telegram.

The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, whose members include Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, said they were collaborating to take down the videos using "hashing" technology, which reduces content to code so it can be spotted and removed automatically.

"We are in close contact with each other and remain committed to disrupting the online spread of violent and extremist content," the group said in a statement.

In statements posted to its official Twitter account, Twitch said the footage was viewed live by five people and then seen by 2,200 before the company took it down 30 minutes later.

It said the suspect's account had attempted to stream only once before and its investigation suggested that "people were coordinating and sharing the video via other online messaging services," but did not elaborate.

A spokeswoman for Amazon said Twitch "worked with urgency to remove this content and will permanently suspend any accounts found to be posting or reposting content of this abhorrent act."

Twitch issued a statement on its Twitter account reading: "We are shocked and saddened by the tragedy that took place in Germany today, and our deepest condolences go out to all those affected. Twitch has a zero-tolerance policy against hateful conduct, and any act of violence is taken extremely seriously."

Facebook said it did not yet have details of how many times the video had been posted on its platforms or how many users saw it, while Twitter referred Reuters to the forum's statement.

Google and Telegram did not respond to requests for comment.

Silicon Valley tech giants have endorsed New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's "Christchurch Call," which aims to establish ethical standards for tech companies and media outlets to avoid amplifying violent extremist content online.

The companies, which face intense scrutiny over hate speech and are trying to avert more strenuous action by regulators, pledged to tighten rules and share more information around abusive content.

The call came after years of spotty enforcement of companies' policies around hateful and violent content, often reposted millions of times between fringe and mainstream sites.

Attackers began accompanying assaults with highly orchestrated digital announcements, spurring followers to capture the content and post it to different platforms before it could be taken down.

In 2018, the gunman who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue posted his manifesto on social network Gab, saying a non-profit that helped refugees relocate to the United States was hurting "my people."

Online message board 8chan was used by mass shooters to announce attacks three times in 2019, including the posting of a four-page statement by the gunman behind the attack at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas.

Oren Segal, who heads the Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, said violent imagery spreads across the internet and cannot be stopped by individual firms.

"A couple of months ago, the conversation was about 8chan. Now it's about Twitch and Telegram. The names will change, but the threat remains the same and is one that affects the entire online ecosystem," he said.

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