Jewish community leaders in Germany voiced alarm Monday over a surge in support for the far-right AfD in a regional election Thuringia state, just weeks after an anti-Semitic attack. Led by one of its most radical figures, Bjoern Hoecke, the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim Alternative for Germany party doubled its score from the previous election in 2014 to 23.4 percent in the ex-communist region, knocking Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party off second spot. The head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, said the AfD’s success could no longer be dismissed merely as “protest votes” because there was no denying the hard-right extremist ideology of Thuringia’s AfD branch.