The 'Ofarim case' or how ego weakened the fight against antisemitism

It has been the trial of the century. Every gesture of the accused, every phrase of the president of the court, every reply of the four defense lawyers, every detail of the witnesses' statements immediately jumped to the media and social networks.. The recent ruling of the Constitutional Court against the budgetary tricks of the Government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz did not have as much echo, it did not awaken the voracity of the Germans.

But anyone who thinks that a mass murderer, a former Nazi, a pedophile or a corrupt head of state sat on the bench is wrong.. On the bench was the Jewish musician Gil Ofarim, 41 years old.. He was accused of defamation and false accusations for a video published two years ago on Instagram in which he accused reception staff at The Westin hotel in Leipzig of anti-Semitic discrimination..

Apparently, when Ofarim tried to check in, the manager Markus W. He rejected him and asked him – according to the singer's vision – to “keep” his necklace with the Star of David.. Ofarim, offended, recorded a video narrating what happened and four million followers clicked on it.

National outrage spread to Berlin government circles. The hotel was seen as a haven for racists, its manager was publicly criticized on social media and the receptionist was fired.. In addition, his address was published on the Internet and he received death threats..

The Government's Anti-Semitism Commissioner, Felix Klein, expressed his condolences to Ofarim, Schleswig-Holstein's Education Minister, Karin Prien, immediately demanded “personal consequences” and the Federal Government's Commissioner for East Germany, Marco Wanderwitz encouraged society. to rise up against “the anti-Semitism that is among us.

The trial started with a spectacle. Ofarim's defense lawyer, Alexander Stevens, opened his intervention with a plea of almost an hour, when the normal time is between five and 10 minutes.. Stevens spoke on the subject of “truth” as if he were in the pulpit. He compared the 'Ofarim case' with the classic 'Me too' cases, and, logically, spoke of anti-Semitism.

But his client's version fell apart. Ofarim's four lawyers tried to discredit the prosecution witnesses as unreliable with sometimes scandalous accusations, until the experts spoke.

The hotel's surveillance cameras had documented the musician's angry gestures, but experts could not confirm that the singer was wearing the chain with the Star of David at that time, which was hanging from his neck when the video was recorded.. Anti-Semitic resentment evaporated. The hypothesis was imposed that Ofarim decided to assert his Jewish status to accuse the hotel of anti-Semitism for the simple reason that the reception did not give him VIP treatment allowing him to skip the line to check in.. What hurt him was his ego.

For Ofarim, the result of the trial has been a moral disaster. Before the sentence was read, he admitted having invented the incident at the hotel and apologized.. The scandal was huge. The politicians who threw the stone in his favor hid their hands and the Jewish community accused him of having weakened the fight against anti-Semitism.. To try to fix it, Ofarim's lawyers explained that he decided to confess to avoid an unfair sentence.. They made it worse.