"The pantomime about opposing anti-zionist movements because of 'imprecise language' and poorly-thought-out slogans is IMO just a smokescreen..."

-I've never quite worked out what his opposition to BDS was based on either. It appears unclear:a similar kind of flannel?

On the Jews in Germany, as I recall they were well on their way to being fully assimilated, but there was a large influx of "Ostjuden" which perhaps presented a renewed opportunity for wholesale collective persecution.
-The settled and wealthy Jewish community would have been, after all, a lucrative financial target.