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Manifestations of anti-Semitism in the European Union |
Manifestations of anti-Semitism in
the European Union
First Semester 2002
Synthesis Report on behalf of the EUMC [European Monitoring Centre] on Racism
and Xenophobia
by Werner Bergmann and Juliane Wetzel
Zentrum fur Antisemitismusforschung / Center for Research on Antisemitism
Technische Universiteit Berlin.
Vienna, March 2003
Preface
Although we know - and opinion polls show - that anti-Semitism is permanently
present in Europe in a more or less hidden way, many of us have hoped that
manifest forms of anti-Semitism will not see any revival in Europe again. At
present, Jews are rather well integrated economically, socially and culturally
in the Member States of the European Union (EU). But the attacks in New York
and Washington on September 11 and the conflict in the Middle East have
contributed to an atmosphere in Europe, which gives latent anti-Semitism and
hate and incitement a new strength and power of seduction. Even rumours that
Israel was responsible for 11 September 2001, for the attacks on the World
Trade Centre and the Pentagon, and that Jews bring about a situation in their
interest in order to put the blame on somebody else, found a receptive
audience in some places. Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are spreading over
the Internet, which provides a cheap vehicle for the distribution of hate.
Immediately after 11 September our primary concern was increased Islamophobia
in the European Union. Right away the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and
Xenophobia implemented a monitoring process in the Member States. The
country-by-country results and a synthesis report have already been published.
But early in 2002 there was additional concern about open anti-Semitic
incidents in several Member States. The European Monitoring Centre on Racism
and Xenophobia found it necessary to carry out a more detailed investigation
of the prevalence and kinds of anti-Semitism and to study, how it affects
Jewish people living in Europe. It is the first study of this kind. It
provides a flashlight on anti-Semitism in each of the 15 Member States.
The EUMC, through its RAXEN Information Network of National Focal Points in
the EU Member States, received reports on anti-Semitism in the 15 Member
States. The Center for Research on Anti-Semitism (CRA), Berlin, supplemented
the country reports and brought them into a European perspective.
The report shows clearly an increase of anti-Semitic activities since the
escalation of the Middle East conflict in 2000 with a peak in early spring
2002. But it reveals also positive developments. By 2003 the legal basis to
fight against any discrimination on ethnic or religious grounds will be
implemented in each of the EU Member States; all the governments and leading
statesmen condemned anti-Semitic events and attitudes; many leaders of
religious communities, political parties and NGOs are currently cooperating in
the fight against anti-Semitism.
On the other hand, the EUMC is aware that more than only short-term measures
have to be done. There is a need to implement activities on a continuous,
long-term basis. For that end the report offers examples and recommendations
to various groups of society on how to proceed and succeed in the struggle
against the shadows of the European past.
Bob Purkiss, Beate Winkler
Chair of the EUMC, Director of the EUMC
Executive Summary
Alerted early in 2002 by worrying news on anti-Semitic incidents in some
Member States the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC)
decided to commission a report on "Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the EU"
covering the first half of 2002. The report is based partly on short-term
information provided to the authors by National Focal Points (NFPs) of the
EUMC, giving special emphasis to the period between May 15 and June 15. The
NFPs are the contact points to national networks in the Member States
reporting regularly to the EUMC within its European Information Network RAXEN.
In their reports the National Focal Points were asked to cover the following
issues:
-Physical acts of violence towards Jews, their communities, organisations or
their
property;
-Verbal aggression/hate speech and other, subtler forms of discrimination
towards Jews;
-Research studies reporting anti-Semitic violence or opinion polls on changed
attitudes towards Jews;
-Good practices for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression by NGOs;
-Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders including initiatives to
reduce polarization and counteract negative national trends.
The situation in the EU Member States
The reports and our own investigations show that in spring 2002 many EU Member
States experienced a wave of anti-Semitic incidents. They were tied to public
discussion on the dividing line between legitimate criticism of Israeli
government policy and anti-Semitic argumentation. This wave of anti-Semitism
started with the "Al-Aqsa-Intifada" in October 2000 and was fuelled by the
conflict in the Middle East and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon on 11September 2001 , which triggered off a fierce debate on the
causes of radical Islamic terrorism.
During the first half of 2002 the rise of anti-Semitism reached a climax in
the period between the end of March and mid-May, running parallel to the
escalation of the Middle East conflict, whereas factors which usually
determine the frequency of anti-Semitic incidents in the respective countries,
such as the strength and the degree of mobilisation extremist far-right
parties and groups can generate, have not played the decisive role.
In the months following the monitoring period the sometimes heated discussions
about the Middle East conflict in the public sphere and the media died down
and the number of incidents decreased. In countries like Denmark, Greece,
Spain, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Austria, Portugal and
Finland there are only a few or no incidents known for the period after July
2002. In some Member States like Belgium, France and Sweden anti-Semitic
incidents, including violent attacks and threatening phone calls, increased
again in September and October, but not that much as in the period monitored.
Anti-Semitic leaflets, hate mail and phone calls were also reported for
Germany and the United Kingdom.
This leads to the conclusion that the increase in anti-Semitic attacks was in
this case set off by the events in the Middle East, a foreign event that
however exerted a varying impact on the individual Member States. An exact
quantitative comparison is not possible because of:
1)the difficult and varied classification of anti-Semitic incidents;
2)the difficulty of differentiating between criticism of Israeli governmental
policy and anti-Semitism; and
3)the differences in systematically collating information about anti-Semitic
incidents in the EU Member States.
While there is no common pattern of incidents for all countries, some
similarities occur. But it must be underlined that some countries (such as
Germany, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) have a very effective
data and monitoring system, and this is not the case elsewhere .
There are a number of EU Member States, namely Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal
and Finland, where the Jewish communities are rather small and anti-Semitic
incidents in general seldom occur. This was true during the monitoring period.
At most, threatening letters were sent to the Israeli consulate or to local
Jews. Portugal and Finland each also suffered one attack on a synagogue.
On the other hand, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK witnessed
rather serious anti-Semitic incidents (see the respective country reports)
such as numerous physical attacks and insults directed against Jews and the
vandalism of Jewish institutions (synagogues, shops, cemeteries). Fewer
anti-Semitic attacks were reported from Denmark and Sweden.
Other countries also experienced incidents of anti-Semitism. Greece suffered
desecrations of cemeteries and memorials by the far-right . Anti-Semitic
statements and sentiments often linked to Israeli government policy were found
in the mass media and were also expressed by some politicians and opinion
leaders. Spain, where the traditionally strong presence of neo-Nazi groups was
evident suffered a series of attacks by people with a radical Islamist
background . Italy showed a certain similarity with Germany; although no
physical attacks were evident, there were threatening telephone calls,
insulting letters, slogans and graffiti. From Austria no physical attacks were
reported; and few verbal threats and insults. Anti-Semitic stereotypes in
relation to Israel were to be found essentially in right-wing newspapers and
amongst far-right groups.
In the public domain in Spain, France, Italy and Sweden, sections of the
political left and Arab-Muslim groups unified to stage pro-Palestinian
demonstrations. While the right to demonstrate is of course a civil right, and
these demonstrations are not intrinsically anti-Semitic, at some of these
anti-Semitic slogans could be heard and placards seen; and some demonstrations
resulted in attacks upon Jews or Jewish institutions. In the Netherlands
pro-Palestine demonstrators of Moroccan origin used anti-Semitic symbols and
slogans. In Finland however, pro-Palestinian demonstrations passed without any
anti-Semitic incidents.
In Germany, and less so in Austria, public political discourse was dominated
by a debate on the link between Israeli policy in the Middle East conflict and
anti-Semitism, a debate in which the cultural and political elite were
involved. In Germany and the United Kingdom the critical reporting of the
media was also a topic for controversy. In other countries such as Denmark,
Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, and Finland there was no such heated public
discussion on the theme of criticism of Israel/anti-Semitism (see country
reports).
Perpetrators and kinds of anti-Semitic activities
For many anti-Semitic incidents, especially for violent and other punishable
offences, it is typical that the perpetrators attempt to remain anonymous.
Thus, in many cases the perpetrators could not be identified, so an assignment
to a political or ideological camp must remain open.
Nevertheless, from the perpetrators identified or at least identifiable with
some certainty, it can be concluded that the anti-Semitic incidents in the
monitoring period were committed above all either by right-wing extremists or
radical Islamists or young Muslims mostly of Arab descent, who are often
themselves potential victims of exclusion and racism ; but also that
anti-Semitic statements came from pro-Palestinian groups (see country report
Italy: public discourse) as well as from politicians (see country reports
Germany, Greece, Finland, Austria) and citizens from the political mainstream
(see anti-Semitic letters, e-mails and phone calls in Germany as well as in
other countries).
The following forms of anti-Semitic activities have been experienced:
-Desecration of synagogues, cemeteries, swastika graffiti, threatening and
insulting mail as well as the denial of the Holocaust as a theme, particularly
on the Internet. These are the forms of action to be primarily assigned to the
far-right.
-Physical attacks on Jews and the desecration and destruction of synagogues
were acts often committed by young Muslim perpetrators in the monitoring
period. Many of these attacks occurred either during or after pro-Palestinian
demonstrations, which were also used by radical Islamists for hurling verbal
abuse. In addition, radical Islamist circles were responsible for placing
anti-Semitic propaganda on the Internet and in Arab-language media.
-Anti-Semitism on the streets also appears to be expressed by young people
without any specific anti-Semitic prejudices, so that "many incidents are
committed just for fun". Other cases where young people were the perpetrators
could be classified as "thrill hate crimes", a well-known type of xenophobic
attack.
-In the extreme left-wing scene anti-Semitic remarks were to be found mainly
in the context of pro-Palestinian and anti-globalisation rallies and in
newspaper articles using anti-Semitic stereotypes in their criticism of
Israel. Often this generated a combination of anti-Zionist and anti-American
views that formed an important element in the emergence of an anti-Semitic
mood in Europe. Israel, seen as a capitalistic, imperialistic power, the
"Zionist lobby", and the United States are depicted as the evildoers in the
Middle East conflict as well as exerting negative influence on global affairs.
The convergence of these motives served both critics of colonialism and
globalisation from the extreme left and the traditional anti-Semitic
right-wing extremism as well as parts of the radical Islamists in some
European countries.
-More difficult to record and to evaluate in its scale than the "street-level
violence" against Jews is "salon anti-Semitism" as it is manifested "in the
media, university common rooms, and at dinner parties of the chattering
classes".
-In the heated public debate on Israeli politics and the boundary between
criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism, individuals who are not politically
active and do not belong to one of the ideological camps mentioned above
become motivated to voice their latent anti-Semitic attitudes (mostly in the
form of telephone calls and insulting letters). Opinion polls prove that in
some European countries a large percentage of the population harbours
anti-Semitic attitudes and views, but that these usually remain latent.
Media
Some commentators discuss the possible influence of the mass media on an
escalation of anti-Semitic incidents. The question at issue is whether this
escalation was merely an agenda setting effect of the daily media coverage of
the violence in the Middle East or whether the reporting itself had an
anti-Semitic bias.
-The Jewish communities regarded the one-sidedness, the aggressive tone of the
reporting on Israeli policy in the Middle East conflict and references to old
Christian anti-Jewish sentiments as problematic.
-The country reports (Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden) list some
cases of anti-Semitic arguments or stereotypes (cartoons) in the quality
press, but only very few systematic media analyses are available. Anti-Semitic
reporting can mainly be found in the far-right spectrum of the European press.
-One study of the German quality press (see country report on Germany)
concludes that the reporting concentrated greatly on the violent events and
the conflicts and was not free of anti-Semitic clich s; at the same time this
negative view also applies to the description of the Palestinian actors. The
report on Austria identified anti-Semitic allusions in the far right press.
-Observers point to an "increasingly blatant anti-Semitic Arab and Muslim
media", including audiotapes and sermons, in which the call is not only made
to join the struggle against Israel but also against Jews across the world.
Although leading Muslim organisations express their opposition to this
propaganda, observers assume that calling for the use of violence may
influence readers and listeners.
Internet
The Internet reflects a development observable since 2000, namely the
networking of the extreme right via links with sections of radical Islamists,
some sites from anti-globalisation campaigners and from the anti-American far
left. Since the end of the 1990s there has been a dramatic increase in the
number of homepages present on the web from far-right groups and parties,
which quite often also have ties to radical Islamic fundamentalists. In
addition, the Internet provides easy access to music from the far right, which
glorifies violence and is often anti-Semitic. Sales and distribution centres
for such music are mainly located in Scandinavia. Up till now, state organs
have paid too little attention to the Arab language publications which spread
anti-Semitic propaganda in European countries, whether through newspapers,
audiotapes or the Internet .
Prevalent anti-Semitic prejudices
As almost all reports emphasise, Jews in the EU Member States are well
integrated socially, economically and culturally, and as such the typical
motives of xenophobia (fear of competition for jobs, housing and social
welfare, linguistic and cultural otherness of migrants, external appearance)
are hardly of consequence. Instead, the Jews are basically imagined to be a
nationally and internationally influential group, allegedly controlling
politics and the economy. Hence, anti-Semitism has other motives and a
different structure from racism.
-The dominating assumption of contemporary anti-Semitism is still that of a
Jewish world conspiracy, i.e. the assumption that Jews are in control of what
happens in the world, whether it be through financial or media power, whether
it be the concealed political influence mainly exerted on the USA, but also on
European countries.
This basic assumption is applied to explain very different phenomena. The
Holocaust denial assumes a central role in European right-wing extremism. It
is purported that the Holocaust has never taken place and that the Jewish
side, exploiting their victim status, use the "Auschwitz lie" to apply moral
pressure on mainly European governments (restitution, support for Israeli
policies), but also to influence US policy towards Israel. Furthermore, the
thesis of the "Auschwitz lie" naturally also negates the assertion that the
foundation of the state of Israel was historically necessary in order to
create a secure homeland for the survivors of the Holocaust and Jews in
general. Precisely at this point, extreme right-wing propaganda becomes
employable ideologically for radical Islamist groups in their struggle against
Israel, for the victim status and Israel's right to exist are challenged by
the "Auschwitz lie".
Here a learning process has taken place in which "revisionist" thought has
been adopted by some people in the Arab world. The influence of these ideas is
supported by a number of Western Holocaust deniers like J rgen Graf, Gerd
Honsik, Wolfgang Fr hlich who fled prosecution in their homelands and found
asylum in Arab countries, and last but not least by Roger Garaudy who was
hailed as a hero throughout the Middle East when he faced prosecution by the
French government for inciting racial hatred. Via Arab-language media
(newspapers, satellite TV and internet) in Europe these notions reach a small
section of the Arab speaking population in European countries.
-Following September 11, 2001, some hold that Islamist terrorism is a natural
consequence of the unsolved Middle East conflict, for which Israel alone is
held responsible. They ascribe to Jews a major influence over the USA's
allegedly biased pro-Israel policies. This is where anti-American and
anti-Semitic attitudes could converge and conspiracy theories over "Jewish
world domination" might flare up again.
-The assumption of close ties between the US and Israel gives rise to a
further motive for an anti-Semitic attitude. Amongst the political left,
anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism are very closely tied together. Due to its
occupation policy, sections of the peace movement, opponents of globalisation
as well as some Third World countries view Israel as aggressive, imperialistic
and colonialist. Taken on its own terms this is naturally not to be viewed as
anti-Semitic; and yet there are exaggerated formulations which witness a turn
from criticism into anti-Semitism, for example when Israel and the Jews are
reproached for replicating the most horrific crimes of the National Socialists
like the Holocaust.
In the form of anti-Semitism it could be said that the tradition of demonising
Jews in the past is now being transferred to the state of Israel. In this way
traditional anti-Semitism is translated into a new form, less deprived of
legitimacy, whose employment today in Europe could become part of the
political mainstream.
-Israeli policies toward the Palestinians provide a reason to denounce Jews
generally as perpetrators, thereby questioning their moral status as victims
that they had assumed as a consequence of the Holocaust. The connection
between anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment lies in this opportunity for
a perpetrator-victim role reversal. In particular there is an attempt by the
right-wing to compare Israeli policies with the crimes perpetrated against
Jews throughout history in order to minimize or even deny the guilt and
responsibility of their own nations.
-The fact that the Middle East conflict is taking place in the Holy Land of
the Christians has led in a number of countries to a revitalisation of
anti-Judaist motives by church leaders, and confessional and some liberal
newspapers.
Recommendations
The upsurge of anti-Semitic criminal offences and verbal assaults against
Jewish citizens and institutions, but also against Muslims, indicates that
joint action has to be initiated. This action should not be restricted to one
area of society, but has to deal with a multitude of combined activities.
Actions on the political level should be backed by sound data and information
about the phenomena in question. The civil society has to be mobilized to
establish dialogues, the press, TV and the Internet has to be addressed to
report about ethnic and cultural groups in a responsible way. Also for
large-scale sporting events, preventive measures fighting racist attacks have
to be implemented.
We recommend that the EUMC requests state authorities to acknowledge at the
highest level the extraordinary dangers posed by anti-Semitic violence in the
European context.
Legal
The EUMC should propose to the Member States to adopt the proposed framework
decision on combating racism and xenophobia (COM 2001/664) as soon as possible
and call on the Council of Ministers to ensure that it is amended to be as
effective as possible to deal with reported incidents of anti-Semitism.
The EUMC should propose to the European Commission and to the Member States
that they consider a decision for police cooperation according to Article 34
of the Treaty of European Union, which shall bind all Member States to collect
and disseminate data on anti-Semitic offences. This decision should also
involve EUROPOL and EUROJUST.
To achieve effective regulation of the Internet concerning racist propaganda,
it is essential to extend the jurisdiction of European courts to include
detailed provisions on the responsibility of Internet service providers.
Registering anti-Semitic incidents
State institutions must assume responsibility for monitoring anti-Semitism in
the individual EU Member States. These institutions should work in accordance
with well-defined categories enabling them to recognise an anti-Semitic
element within any politically motivated criminal offences they register, and
to then incorporate them into their statistics.
In some Member States racist attacks are not identified separately in crime
statistics while others have at their disposal state-sponsored instruments
which monitor and pursue anti-Semitic incidents. We recommend joint strategies
for action to be developed, whereby those countries possessing years of
experience in this regard should pass this on to the other Member States.
In those countries in which racist and anti-Semitic incidents are already
registered by the security authorities, a swifter processing and publication
of the results must be ensured and not first presented - as in current
practice - in the middle of the following year.
There is a need to distinguish clearly in reporting between acts of violence,
threatening behaviour, and offensive speech, and to make transparent
government norms and procedures for registering and acting upon crimes and
offences motivated by anti-Semitism. Only in this way can a genuinely
comparative basis for incidents be attained for European countries.
Education and sport
We recommend that the governments of the EU Member States still absent should
undertake initiatives to become members of the Task Force for International
Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research, whose purpose
is to mobilise the support of political and social leaders to foster Holocaust
education, remembrance and research.
We recommend that NGOs engage in initiatives of intercultural and
inter-religious exchange and inter-religious dialogue, and cooperate in
educational information campaigns against racism and anti-Semitism.
National ministries of education should organise round tables and seminars on
mutual respect and tolerance; all teachers in the EU should be required to
learn about different religions and faiths, cultures and traditions; history
books used in schools around Europe should be examined for prejudice, or
one-sidedness.
In the area of European football a whole series of initiatives have been
started in the last few years, which combat racism and anti-Semitism in the
stadiums. We recommend that these activities be encouraged and extended.
Research
We recommend that research studies should be carried out on anti-Semitic
incidents in specific fields - e.g. sport, entertainment, public services -
and placed in an overall European context in order to establish a comparative
perspective on their occurrence.
Across all Member States there should be implemented a coordinated programme
of victim studies to overcome the problem of underreporting with regard to
incidents of anti-Semitism.
To date there has been no well-founded media analysis on how the European
press exploits and perpetuates anti-Semitic stereotypes. We recommend the
implementation of research studies to fill this gap.
Internet
State authorities, academics and research institutions engaged with racism and
anti-Semitism should establish joint committees at national and international
levels to monitor anti-Semitism on the Internet. Through mutual exchange these
committees should establish a basis for an improved recording and combating of
racist and anti-Semitic developments on the Internet.
Recent developments have shown that partly impeded or completely obstructed
access to some homepages at least hinders the possibility of placing racist
propaganda on the Internet. Thus private and state organisations should exert
continuing pressure on large Internet providers to remove racist and
anti-Semitic content from the net.
The enormous potential of the Internet for educational purposes has not yet
been recognised and utilised. We recommend that projects are developed to
utilise the Internet far more in order to combat anti-Semitic and racist
content with serious counter-information.
Contents
Executive Summary5
1. Introduction15
2. Analysis19
Forms of anti-Semitic prejudice21
Perpetrators and kinds of anti-Semitic activities24
The situation in the EU Member States25
The mass media27
Internet as an international action base28
3. Recommendations30
1. Introduction
Alerted during early 2002 by news on anti-Semitic incidents in some Member
States and also by information given to the European Monitoring Centre on
Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) by the European Jewish Congress, the EUMC asked
its RAXEN network of 15 National Focal Points (NFPs) to report on
anti-Semitism and to monitor the anti-Semitic aggression, violence and
attitudes in the Member States with a special focus on a one-month period
(from 15th May - 15th June 2002). The EUMC also asked for examples of good
practices implemented to prevent and reduce anti-Semitism.
The National Focal Points were asked to cover the following issues:
1. Physical acts of violence towards Jews, their communities, organisations or
their property (cemeteries, synagogues, religious symbols etc) and also any
measures seen as retaliation to other vulnerable groups, or ethnic, cultural,
and religious minorities, or new types of victims:
Have any physical attacks (harassment, verbal abuse, violent acts, etc.)
against Jews (or other people related to them) been reported (in the media, by
Jewish organisations, by human rights/anti-discrimination NGOs, by the police
etc.)? Please use the following categories as headlines: Arson; throwing
objects and/or tear gas; physical aggression; theft and burglary; vandalism
and disparagement; threatening intrusion; physical threat.
2. Verbal aggression/hate speech and other, subtler forms of discrimination
towards Jews:
Have there been any verbal attacks against Jews in the media, in the public
discourse, in politics? Are there any cases of incitement to hatred? Are there
court cases to be reported? What about hate speech on the Internet? Please use
the following categories as headlines: direct verbal threat; threats by
telephone; insults; graffiti and anti-Semitic inscriptions; publicly
distributed leaflets.
3. Research Studies reporting anti-Semitic violence or Opinion Polls on
changed attitudes towards Jews:
Are there any new or recent reports done on anti-Semitic aggression or
attitudes?
4. Good practices for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression:
Can you report of any good practice that has been successful in avoiding the
increase of prejudice and violence towards Jewish people and other groups?
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders including initiatives to
reduce polarization and counteract negative national trends:
How has the government reacted to increased anti-Semitic violence? What have
been the reactions of the politicians and other opinion leaders? Are there any
institutionalized proposals and implementations to be observed?
Political Background
The reports of the National Focal Points and our own investigations show that
in early 2002 several EU Member States experienced an increased number of
anti-Semitic incidents. The wave of anti-Semitism reached a climax in the
period between end of March and mid-May. But further examination shows that
the increase of anti-Semitism had already started with the "Al-Aqsa-Intifada"
in October 2000 and was fuelled by the conflict in the Middle East and the
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001 ,
which triggered off a fierce debate on the causes for radical Islamic
terrorism.
Into the summer of 2000 negotiations for obtaining a peaceful settlement of
the Middle East conflict seemed to be taking a promising course. The failure
of Camp David II and the "second Intifada" (al-Aqsa Intifada) beginning in
late September 2000 marked however a turning-point. Reports on anti-Semitism
from the year 2000 show a clear increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the
final months of the year.
Besides the continuing media interest in the violent conflict in the Middle
East, in 2001 the World Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Xenophobia and Related Tolerance, which was held in Durban, South Africa
between 31 August and 7 September encouraged anti-Semitism in an unexpected
way. The Member States of the United Nations adopted a Declaration and Action
Programme, which included demands for the recognition of a Palestinian state
and the right of security for Israel, as well as the demand for the end of
violence in the Middle East that would allow Israel and the Palestinians to
continue the peace process. But at the same conference vehement anti-Semitic
outbreaks took place, in particular at some meetings held between NGOs, which
were directed against representatives of Jewish groups. "These attacks were
fuelled by the heated debates at the meeting concerning the Israeli
government's practices in West Bank and Gaza Strip."
A few days later the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
triggered off a fierce debate on the causes of radical Islamic terrorism, seen
by many to lie primarily in the occupation policy pursued by the Israeli
government and the pro-Sharon stance taken by the US. For the Stephen Roth
Institute on Anti-Semitism and Racism, Tel Aviv, the events of September 11
also enhanced the wave of anti-Semitic manifestations and violence.
In our opinion one cannot deny that there exists a close link between the
increase of anti-Semitism and the escalation of the Middle East conflict,
whereas factors which usually determine the frequency of anti-Semitic
incidents in the respective countries, such as the strength and the degree of
mobilisation extremist far-right parties and groups can generate, have not
played the decisive role in the reporting period.
Defining anti-Semitism
Many of the National Focal Points mention that in their countries the dividing
line between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israeli government was a
controversial issue. The various political groups often have different
opinions on the threshold where justified criticism ends and anti-Semitic
argumentation begins.. In such a delicate situation it is advisable to study
the results of social research and to look for appropriate definitions of
anti-Semitism accepted by the research community. This also assures a sound
level of impartiality. After a detailed review of existing literature we
recommend the definition of anti-Semitism given by the well-known Holocaust
researcher Helen Fein:
Anti-Semitism is "a persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards
Jews as a collective manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as
myth, ideology, folklore and imagery, and in actions - social or legal
discrimination, political mobilisation against the Jews, and collective or
state violence - which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or
destroy Jews as Jews."
To specify the basic content of these hostile beliefs we refer to a summary
given by Dietz Bering:
Jews are not only partially but totally bad by nature, that is, their bad
traits are incorrigible. Because of this bad nature
-Jews have to be seen not as individuals but as a collective.
-Jews remain essentially alien in the surrounding societies.
-Jews bring disaster on their "host societies" or on the whole world, they are
doing it secretly, therefore the anti-Semites feel obliged to unmask the
conspiratorial, bad Jewish character.
With the help of the above definition the distinction between anti-Semitism
and criticism of Israeli government policy can be made in an easier way. From
there allusions to or comparisons with Israel's actions with the behaviour of
the Nazi regime have to be viewed as anti-Semitic. Those who identify Israel
and Nazi-Germany or see Israeli behaviour as the cause of anti-Semitism use
these arguments for their own ideological interests.
Also to be evaluated as a form of anti-Semitism are anti-Semitic stereotypes
when applied to Israeli policy: for example: the accusation that there is a
secret, world-encompassing Zionist conspiracy, the isolation of Israel as a
state that is fundamentally negatively distinct from all others, which
therefore has no right to exist, and negative historical recourses to ancient
Jewish history, which is to point to an immutable negative Jewish character.
All cases in which the Jews are made collectively responsible for the policy
of the Israeli government represent a form of anti-Semitism. That means, the
moment when criticism on Israel turns into criticism of Jews in general or
Jews living in other countries has at least an anti-Semitic connotation.
This report analyses the current manifestations of anti-Semitism as far as it
is possible so close to the time period under observation. It does not try to
chart its history or analyse its historical roots in the countries concerned.
2. Analysis
According to some observers, a new wave of anti-Semitism is sweeping across
Europe; many are even speaking of the worst anti-Semitic wave since 1945. The
latter claim is historically inaccurate. Above all directly after the war, in
1946, and in the course of the Stalinist "purges" in the early 1950s there
were far more violent anti-Semitic excesses, persecution and discrimination.
Antony Lerman, former Executive Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy
Research in London, has correctly stressed, "that it is wrong to think that
increases in incidents must mean an overall worsening of the anti-Semitic
climate". Indeed, since 1945 there have been repeated waves of anti-Semitic
incidents in Europe (such as the graffiti wave of 1959/60, waves between 1990
and 1992 as well as waves tied to the periodic flare-ups in the Arab-Israeli
conflict in 1967, 1973 and, above all, 1982), whereby concrete causes could
not be given for these outbreaks in every case, nor had they resulted in a
long-term increase in anti-Semitism.
If, apart from incidents, further indicators are selected, such as anti-Jewish
attitudes, the electoral success of far-right extremist parties espousing
anti-Semitism, the membership numbers of right-wing extremist organisations,
social and legal discrimination of Jews etc., the picture becomes far more
differentiated - one that does not indicate a general increase in
anti-Semitism and, furthermore, turns out to be different across the EU Member
States. If we speak of a wave of anti-Semitism, we primarily mean incidents
for which, on the basis of contagion effects, such a wave-like and cyclical
course is typical.
The fact that a rise in anti-Semitic activities is clearly observable in most
of the EU Member States since the beginning of the so-called al-Aqsa Intifada,
which increased in frequency and the intensity of their violence parallel to
the escalation in the Middle East conflict in April/May 2002, points to a
connection between events in the Middle East with criticism of Israel's
politics on the one hand and mobilisation of anti-Semitism on the other.
According to an Anti-Defamation League survey, almost two-thirds of Europeans
(62%) believe "that the recent outbreak of violence against Jews in Europe is
a result of anti-Israel sentiment and not traditional anti-Semitic or
anti-Jewish feelings."
The international dimension of the problem was clearly evident as Shimon
Peres, Israel's Foreign Minister, told EU colleagues in Valencia in April 2002
that he saw a link between the growing anti-Semitism in Europe and the Union's
tilt towards the Palestinians. He added: "The issue is very sensitive in
Israel (...). We ask for memory." The Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Piqu
rejected this criticism: "Please don't confuse anti-Semitism with legitimate
criticism of policies of the current Israeli government." Peres' critical
remark and the reply given by the European Foreign Ministers indicates that
the core issue in this public conflict was the political question as to when
does anti-Israeli criticism assume anti-Semitic characteristics and whether
reproaches of anti-Semitism are being used as part of an attempt to silence
criticism of Israeli policies.
All NFP Reports point to this problem, one that was also discussed publicly in
all countries and was an essential point of dispute in discussions; namely how
to draw a clear distinction between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israeli
government's policies towards the Palestinians - even if it is extremely
sharp.
While it is certainly correct to view anti-Semitism as part of racism, at the
same time it possesses very specific traits. As almost all of the reports
emphasise, Jews in the European Union are well integrated socially,
economically and culturally. Thus, the typical motives of xenophobia are
hardly of consequence for the Jews (fear of competition for jobs, linguistic
and cultural differences of migrants, external appearance). Instead, Jews are
imagined to be a national and international influential group who allegedly
exert a bad influence on or even steer politics, the economy and the media,
which is a way of expressing the old anti-Semitic prejudice of hidden Jewish
power.
Furthermore, from within the culture of the Christian West, traditional
historical anti-Judaist and anti-Semitic prejudices are again and again liable
to be reactivated. On the level of accusations levelled against Jews,
traditional motives prevail (see below). Perception of the Jews as victims of
National Socialism is very strong, making them a preferred target for all
"revisionist/deniers/negationists" and right-wing extremists. Anti-Semitic
offenders make use of National Socialist symbols; but also the German language
itself is used in non-German speaking countries (expressions such as "Juden
raus!") so as to refer affirmatively to the National Socialist persecution of
the Jews.
A further aspect that needs to be noted is that the local Jewish population is
closely associated with the state of Israel and its politics. It can be said
that the native Jews have been made "hostages" of Israeli politics. Here
anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist motives are mixed together. What
is certainly quite new is the particular connection between anti-Semitism and
anti-Zionism made in the Arab and Muslim world, so that anti-Semitism, due to
its connection with a concrete political conflict, varies greatly with its
escalation and de-escalation.
That anti-Semitic offenders in some cases are drawn from Muslim minorities in
Europe - whether they be radical Islamist groups or young males of North
African descent - is certainly a new development for most Member States, one
that offers reason for concern for European governments and also the great
majority of its citizens. As members of the Arab-Muslim minorities in Europe
are themselves target of racist and Islamophobic attitudes, there arises the
precarious situation of a conflict that is primarily motivated by foreign
affairs but played out on the domestic front, a conflict in which the members
of one minority discriminate against another minority group.
Forms of anti-Semitic prejudice
Let us first of all look at the anti-Semitic prejudices and the groups
expressing them. The range of motives stretches from racist to
conspiratorial-oriented and religious prejudices; but anti-Zionist notions,
often coupled with anti-American patterns, were also activated. Anti-Zionism
here is to be seen as a form of anti-Semitism, because Zionism is described by
the extreme right, the extreme left and also by parts of Arab-Muslim circles
as the evil of the world and therefore can be used easily as a wanted
scapegoat. This implies the fight against the existence of Israel.
1)The dominating motive of contemporary anti-Semitism is still that of a
Jewish world conspiracy, i.e. the assumption that Jews are in control of what
happens in the world, whether it be through financial or media power, whether
it be the concealed political influence mainly exerted on the USA, but also on
European countries. This basic assumption is applied to explain very different
phenomena.
Here the Holocaust denial assumes a central role in European right-wing
extremism. It is purported that the Holocaust has never taken place and that
the Jewish side, exploiting their victim status, use the "Auschwitz lie" to
apply moral pressure on mainly European governments (restitution, support for
Israeli policies), but also to influence US policy towards Israel.
Furthermore, the thesis of the "Auschwitz lie" naturally also negates the
assertion that the foundation of the state of Israel was historically
necessary in order to create a secure homeland for the survivors of the
Holocaust and Jews in general.
Precisely at this point, extreme right-wing propaganda becomes employable
ideologically for radical Islamist groups in their struggle against Israel,
for the victim status and Israel's right to exist are challenged by the
"Auschwitz lie". Here a learning process has taken place in which
"revisionist" thought, that was propagated very early and very prominently by
French intellectuals (lastly by Roger Garaudy), was adopted by some people in
the Arab world.
The influence of these ideas is supported by a number of Western Holocaust
deniers like J rgen Graf, Gerd Honsik, Wolfgang Fr hlich, who fled persecution
in their homelands and found asylum in Arab countries, and last but not least
by Roger Garaudy who was hailed as a hero throughout the Middle East when he
faced persecution by the French government for inciting racial hatred. Via
Arab-language media (newspapers and satellite TV)in Europe these notions reach
in turn a small section of the Muslim population in European countries.
2) Reception of another European source has also influenced their conception
of the world, namely the infamous anti-Semitic fake the "Protocols of the
Learned Elders of Zion", which describes how a group of Jews apparently hold
the thread of world politics in their hands. With help of this conspiracy
theory explanations are found for why the politics of the United States and
most of the European countries display a pro-Israeli bias in the Middle East
conflict.
A current example of this conspiratorial thought is offered by the attacks of
11 September 2001, which in some Arab newspapers (e.g. in Jordan, Egypt and
Syria, but also in the London and Saudi-Arabian editions of Al-Hayat ) is
presented as an action initiated by the Israeli secret service or even the
Israeli Government itself, who were seeking to prevent the establishment of
closer ties between the US and the Arab world so as to gain a free hand for
their aggressive plans against the Palestinians. This rumour has also spread
through Europe, where it found great resonance above all in Greece.
3) Following 11 September 2001, some hold that Islamist terrorism is a natural
consequence of the unresolved Middle East conflict, for which Israel alone is
held responsible. They ascribe to Jews a major influence over America's
allegedly biased pro-Israel policies. This is where anti-American and
anti-Semitic attitudes converge and conspiracy theories over "Jewish world
domination" flare up again.
4) The supposed close ties between the US and Israel give rise to a further
motive for an anti-Semitic attitude, one that is also to be found amongst the
far left. Due to its occupation policy, sections of the peace movement,
opponents of globalisation as well as some Third World countries - as the
World Conference on Racism in Durban 2001 had shown - view Israel as
aggressive, imperialistic and colonialist. Taken on its own terms this is
naturally not to be viewed as anti-Semitic; and yet there are exaggerated
formulations which witness a turn from criticism into anti-Semitism, for
example when Israel and the Jews are reproached for replicating the most
horrific crimes of the National Socialists - apartheid, ethnic cleansing,
crimes against humanity, genocide.
In the form of anti-Zionism it could be said that the historical demonising of
the Jews is transferred to the state of Israel (striving for world power, the
vindictiveness and cruelty of "an eye for an eye", the greed of capitalism and
colonialism). In this way traditional anti-Semitism is translated into a new
form, less deprived of legitimacy, whose employment today in Europe could
extend more and more into the political mainstream. Thus, the issue at stake
in judging statements critical of Israel is whether a double standard is being
set, i.e. Israel is evaluated differently from other states, whether false
historical parallels are drawn (comparison with the National Socialists), and
whether anti-Semitic myths and stereotypes are used to characterise Israeli
politics.
5) The United States of America is also faced with sharp attacks from sections
of the peace movement, opponents of globalisation and some Third World
countries as well as from sections of the extreme right as a world power
categorised as imperialistic and as the protector of Israel. For example,
especially in German speaking countries various political extremists use the
word "East coast" ("Ostk ste") as synonymous to a supposed total Jewish
influence on the United States and their policy. Sympathisers to these
extremists immediately understand the meaning of this word without having to
get any background information. Therefore they may use it without being afraid
of any state persecution according to anti-discrimination laws. This makes
clear how anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism are sometimes very closely tied
together.
6) While the historical victim status of Jews continues to be acknowledged,
for many Europeans it no longer transfers to support of Israel. Israeli
policies toward the Palestinians provide a reason to denounce Jews as
perpetrators, thereby qualifying their moral status as victims that they had
assumed as a consequence of the Holocaust. The connection between
anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment lies in this opportunity for a
perpetrator-victim role reversal.
7) The fact that the Middle East conflict is taking place in the Holy Land of
the Christians has lead in various countries to a revitalisation of
anti-Judaist motives by church leaders and confessional as well as some
liberal newspapers. This takes the form of current events (the conflict over
the Church of Nativity, children and youths as the victims of military action)
being brought into connection with events in the New Testament, which
historically have clear anti-Jewish connotations (Massacre of the Innocents,
crucifixion of Christ). Such phenomena are particularly virulent in Italy, but
are also present in Protestant countries such as Denmark or the United
Kingdom.
Perpetrators and kinds of anti-Semitic activities
For many anti-Semitic incidents, above all naturally for the violent and other
punishable offences, it is typical that the perpetrators attempt to remain
anonymous. Thus, in many cases the perpetrators could not be identified, so an
assignment to a political or ideological camp must remain open. Nevertheless,
looking at the perpetrators identified or at least identifiable with some
certainty, it can be said that the anti-Semitic incidents in the monitoring
period were committed above all by right-wing extremists and radical Islamists
or young Muslims; but also that anti-Semitic statements came from the
pro-Palestinian left as well as politicians and citizens from the political
mainstream.
Specific forms of action can be assigned to each of these sections.
-Desecration of synagogues, cemeteries, swastika graffiti, threatening and
insulting mail as well as the denial of the Holocaust as a theme networking
various groupings, particularly in the Internet - these are the forms of
action to be primarily assigned to the far-right spectrum.
-Physical attacks on Jews and the desecration and destruction of synagogues
were acts mainly committed by young Muslim perpetrators mostly of an Arab
descent in the monitoring period. Many of these attacks occurred during or
after pro-Palestinian demonstrations, which were also used by radical
Islamists for hurling verbal abuse. In addition, Islamic circles were
responsible for placing anti-Semitic propaganda in the Internet and in
Arab-language media.
-Anti-Semitism on the streets also appears to be expressed by young culprits
without any specific anti-Semitic prejudices, so that "many incidents are
committed just for the fun of it". In the view of the sociologist Paul
Iganski, in many cases - at least in the UK - represent a type of "thrill hate
crimes", "likely to be committed by a group of young offenders, outside their
neighbourhood", a type of action we are familiar with in racist attacks in
other European countries and which Iganski views as "part of the repertoire of
routine incivilities and antisocial behaviour prevalent in the street,
shopping malls, cinemas, (...) and other public space".
-In the left-wing scene anti-Semitic remarks were to be found mainly in the
context of pro-Palestinian and anti-globalisation rallies and commentaries
critical of Israel in the respective media during the monitoring period.
-More difficult to record and to evaluate than the "street-level violence"
against Jews is the elite or salon anti-Semitism as it is manifested "in the
media, university common rooms, and at dinner parties of the chattering
classes". The development in some EU countries suggests that today it appears
legitimate, sometimes even en vogue to take an anti-Israeli stance.
While such a standpoint is legitimate politically, in many cases a boundary is
transgressed in the direction of anti-Semitic prejudices, for example when a
politician in Germany used the concept "war of extermination" to characterise
the actions of the Israeli army, thus equating it with the war of
extermination undertaken by the German army against the Soviet Union and
European Jewry. In this way anti-Semitic modes of thought can increasingly
creep into public and private discourses and are seldom picked out and
criticised by society, politicians and the press.
-During a wave of anti-Semitism like the one we could observe in April and May
2002, in which a heated public debate took place on Israeli politics and the
boundary between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism, persons become
motivated to voice their latent anti-Semitic attitudes (mostly in the form of
telephone calls and insulting letters) who are not politically active and do
not belong to one of the ideological camps sketched above. Opinion polls prove
that in some European countries a large percentage of the population harbours
anti-Semitic attitudes and views, but that these usually remain latent.
The situation in the EU Member States
The difficulty in classifying anti-Semitic incidents makes it impossible to
provide a quantitative comparison of the anti-Semitic manifestations in the EU
Member States. The difficulty is further compounded by the fact that in some
countries incidents are systematically recorded by state organs, while others
reveal a high level of monitoring by NGOs, or indeed in a third group the
collation of information proved to be extremely difficult. We thus have to
assume that some EU Member States, due to their history and the significance
anti-Semitism had and still has in their country, pay far greater attention to
monitoring anti-Semitic incidents as others.
The extent and kind of anti-Semitic incidents vary from country to country.
While a constant pattern valid for all countries is not recognisable, some
constellations are evident. Due to the plurality of the actors and motives,
the distribution of anti-Semitic manifestations only partially corresponds to
the distribution employed in the annual "Anti-Semitism Reports" from the
1990s. They thus show hardly any connection with the spread of anti-Semitic
attitudes and views in the population as a whole.
A rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents has been noticeable for almost
all of the fifteen Member States since the start of the "Al-Aqsa-Intifada". In
the monitoring period this rise reached a climax in the period between the end
of March and mid-May, running parallel to the escalation in the Middle East
conflict. This leads to the conclusion that the occasion for anti-Semitic
attacks was in this case triggered by a foreign event, one that however
exerted a varying impact in the individual Member States.
There are a number of EU Member States, namely Ireland and Luxembourg, where
anti-Semitic incidents in general seldom occur and were hardly evident in the
monitoring period. At most threatening letters were sent to the Israeli
consulate or to local Jews. The same applies to Portugal and Finland, where
such threatening letters and telephone calls were evident and where there was
one attack each on a synagogue, respectively.
On the other hand, a group of countries was identified with rather severe
anti-Semitic incidents. Here, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK have
to be mentioned. They witnessed numerous physical attacks and insults directed
against Jews and vandalism of Jewish institutions (synagogues, shops,
cemeteries). In these countries the violent attacks on Jews and/or synagogues
were reported to be committed often by members of the Muslim-Arab minority,
frequently youths (see reports on these countries). The observers agree that
these are disaffected young men who themselves are frequently targets of
racist attacks, i.e. here the social problems of these migrant minorities are
obviously an essential factor for their propensity to violence and
susceptibility to anti-Semitism.
Far fewer anti-Semitic attacks committed by members of this group were evident
in countries like Sweden and Denmark, where attacks - similarly to the
Netherlands - were only seldom evident in the 1990s given general populations
in which, according to polls, anti-Semitic attitudes are not widespread.
Other countries show a very specific expression of anti-Semitism. In Greece we
find a series of cemetery and memorial desecrations, which point to a
far-right background. Anti-Semitic/anti-Zionist statements and sentiments were
found in the mass media and were also expressed by some politicians and
opinion leaders. Here the Greek foreign policy position perhaps plays a role;
since the Second World War Greece has opposed Israel because of its alliance
with Turkey. Spain offered a mixed picture where the traditional strong
presence of neo-Nazi groups was evident alongside a series of attacks, with an
Islamist background.
In Germany, where a large number of anti-Semitic offences have been registered
annually since the 1990s, persons of Arab descent committed some of the few
attacks on Jews in the monitoring period. Anti-Semitism manifested itself less
in a higher number of attacks (between May-June there were no physical
attacks) but more in the form of a flood of anti-Semitic letters to the Jewish
Communities and prominent Jews sent by German citizens who by no means all
belong politically to the far right. This was in part a reaction to a hefty
political controversy (see the country report on Germany). The explosiveness
in this controversy lay in how a well-known German politician and the Central
Council of Jews stood opposed face to face, so that in the end all the
political partners took a clear position against the FDP politician J rgen M
llemann.
Italy showed a certain similarity with Germany; although no physical attacks
were evident, there were threatening telephone calls, insulting letters,
slogans and graffiti, whereby the perpetrators did not come from the Muslim
population. However, particularly pronounced in Italy is a pro-Palestinian
mobilisation within left-wing parties, organisations and newspapers, which in
connection with public rallies partially took an anti-Semitic turn. From
Austria no physical attacks were reported; verbal threats and insults were
seldom. Anti-Semitic stereotypes in relation to Israel were found essentially
in right-wing newspapers and amongst far-right groupings.
The countries can also be grouped together in another constellation when focus
is switched to those actors who are present in the public discourse. In Italy,
France, Spain and Sweden sections of the far left and Muslim groups unified to
stage pro-Palestinian demonstrations. At some of these demonstrations
anti-Semitic slogans and placards were to be seen and heard and some even
resulted in attacks upon Jews or Jewish institutions. A similar trend was
observed in the Netherlands, though without any great participation from the
political left.
In Finland, pro-Palestinian demonstrations passed without any anti-Semitic
incidents. In Germany, and also less so in Austria, public political discourse
was dominated by a debate on the link between Israeli policy in the Middle
East conflict and anti-Semitism, a debate in which the cultural and political
elite were involved, whereas the mobilisation of the extreme left remained
low-key. In Germany the critical reporting of the media was also a topic for
controversy, as it was also in the United Kingdom, where left-liberal papers
(The Guardian and The Independent) were heavily criticised by Jewish
representatives. In other countries such as Luxembourg, Ireland, Portugal,
Denmark and Finland there was obvious no prominent public discussion on this
subject.
The mass media
Some commentators discuss the possible influence of the mass media on an
escalation of the number of anti-Semitic incidents. There is a connection seen
between the sharp increase in anti-Semitic attacks in April 2002 and the
events in Jenin at the end of March and in Bethlehem in April. Here the
question at issue is whether this escalation was merely the result of the
daily news reports on the violence in the Middle East, in the sense of an
agenda-setting effect, or whether the reporting itself reveals an anti-Semitic
bias.
Judgement upon this is dependent on partisanship in the Middle East conflict.
The Jewish communities regarded the one-sidedness, the aggressive tone of the
reporting on Israeli policy in the Middle East conflict and references to old
Christian anti-Jewish sentiments as problematic. The country reports (Greece,
Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden) list some cases of anti-Semitic argument
or stereotypes (cartoons) in the quality press, but as of yet no systematic
media analyses are available. One study of the German quality press (see
Germany) comes to the conclusion that the reporting concentrated greatly on
the violent events and the conflicts and was not free of anti-Semitic clich s;
at the same time though this negative view also applies to the description of
the Palestinian actors.
The report on Austria identified anti-Semitic allusions in the right-wing
press. Here there is a need for further empirical studies. One study on the
impact of the very critical reporting on the wave of right-wing extremist
violence in Germany in the early 1990s concluded that the daily news coverage
through television and the press had a "contagion effect" and contributed to a
further escalation in violence; this though could not be said to be the case
of the commentary-oriented background reports in the daily press.
This means that the impact is not generated by the content of the reporting,
which naturally evaluates the violence negatively, but rather from the
massiveness and consonance of the overall media coverage. The intensive and
consonant focus on events thus has a clear effect on the climate of opinion.
In fact, those Europeans who followed media coverage of the events in the
Middle East the closest were more likely to be sympathetic to the Palestinian
case.
Openly anti-Semitic reporting is rather seldom in the European press, with the
exception of the far-right spectrum. However, observers point to an
"increasingly blatantly anti-Semitic Arab and Muslim media", including audio
tapes and sermons, in which the call is not only made to join the struggle
against Israel but also against Jews across the world. Although leading Muslim
organisations express their opposition to this propaganda, observers assume
that its calling for the use of violence may exert a certain influence on
readers and listeners.
Internet as an international action base
The Internet is named in almost all of the country reports as an important
medium for anti-Semitic propaganda, precisely because it is suited to the
international dissemination of anti-Semitism due to the difficulty in
identifying the perpetrators. As the Internet represents an international
medium, only those homepages have been included in the individual country
reports, which have a direct relationship to the nationalist - mostly then
far-right - spectrum.
The international character of the medium itself allows only a trans-national
assessment and so, correspondingly, a joint strategy in formulating and
implementing counter measures.
In addition, the dissemination of anti-Semitic thought via the Internet cannot
be circumscribed to fit a specific period, for this worldwide transference of
data is fast-moving, meaning that much of the information is accessible only
for a short time or the relevant homepages are switched on and then off.
Inherent to the medium, this is only seldom for political reasons.
At the same time though, there are a whole series of homepages available,
which are never or only seldom updated, but nevertheless are permanently
present as a propaganda medium. The evaluation and monitoring of this organ
for disseminating anti-Semitic stereotypes, particularly those with
revisionist/denial and conspiracy theory content, must therefore be limited to
a more general survey.
The Internet reflects a development observable since 2000, namely the
networking of the extreme right scene via links with sections of the radical
Islamist spectrum, some sites from anti-globalisation campaigners and from the
anti-American far left. Since the end of the 1990s there has been a dramatic
increase in the number of homepages present on the web from far-right groups
and parties, which quite often also have ties to radical Islamic
fundamentalists.
Observers start from the assumption that there are some 3000 homepages with
extreme rightist content on the web; in addition, there are discussion forums
and chat rooms in which the corresponding body of thought is spread, mostly
anonymously. Such groups create ideological ties, in particular by utilising
the denial of the Holocaust as a component of anti-Semitic agitation, and
build up a network.
Revisionism is spread by European organisations such as the Belgian "Vrij
historisch Onderzoek" (vho), the Swedish "Radio Islam", the French
"L'Association des Anciens Amateurs de R cits de Guerres et d'Holocaustes"
(AAARGH), the Danish site "Patriot" or numerous homepages in German that are
hosted in various countries.
These are in turn linked to the entire international scene, i.e. the
respective leading revisionist homepages in America, Australia and Canada are
then accessible. Right-wing extremists have discovered how to conduct their
war via the Internet, i.e. how to use "electronic warfare". Such tactics have
lead to state authorities warning of terrorist tendencies in the far-right
spectrum. Furthermore, the potential for violence is fostered by the worst
kinds of computer games. These are upgraded to a political weapon when
neo-Nazis convert well-known apolitical games into malicious anti-Semitic hate
campaigns.
In summary it can be said that the threatening nature of the situation, in
particular for the Jewish communities, arose because in most of the countries
monitored the increasing number of anti-Semitic attacks, committed frequently
by young Arabs/Muslims and by far-right extremists, was accompanied by a sharp
criticism of Israeli politics across the entire political spectrum, a
criticism that in some cases employed anti-Semitic stereotypes.
This parallel character arose out of the joint reference to the escalating
situation in the Middle East; both phenomena, the attacks and the public
discussion, have significantly receded since June 2002. In countries such as
Denmark, Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria,
Portugal and Finland there are only a few or no incidents known for the period
after July 2002.
In some Member States such as Belgium, France and Sweden the number of
anti-Semitic incidents, including violent attacks and threatening phone calls,
increased again in September and October, but it does not compare to the
period monitored. Anti-Semitic leaflets, hate mail and phone calls were also
reported in Germany and the United Kingdom.
Factors which usually determine the frequency of anti-Semitic incidents in the
respective countries, such as the strength and the degree of mobilisation
extremist far-right parties and groupings can generate, have obviously not
played the decisive role in the monitoring period.
3. Recommendations
The upsurge of anti-Semitic criminal offences and verbal assaults against
Jewish citizens and institutions, but also against Muslims, prompted the
Interior Ministers of five EU Member States (Belgium, Germany, Spain, France
and the United Kingdom) to issue a "Declaration against Racism, Xenophobia and
Anti-Semitism" in April 2002.
The Ministers said that they had already introduced preventive measures (in
particular the surveillance and protection of places of worship) on a national
level against the violent attacks occurring in connection with the Middle East
conflict. It appears to them in the future to be of particular importance that
"joint measures are undertaken on a European level" and "that a series of
actions are to be resolved which encompass the rapid acceptance and
implementation of concentrated measures, such as an intensifying of the
exchange of information and experience between the law enforcement agencies in
the Member States and Europol and providing more support for the EUMC, using
the data collated by the EUMC. We consider it to be particularly useful that
suitable penalties can be applied for racist offences in a comparable way in
every Member State."
To be able to do that, state institutions must assume responsibility for
monitoring anti-Semitism in the individual EU Member States. These
institutions should work in accordance with well-defined categories (see
below), enabling them to recognise an anti-Semitic element within any
politically motivated criminal offences they register and to then incorporate
them into their statistics.
The NFPs' reports make it clear that information on anti-Semitic attacks in
many countries is mainly presented by Jewish institutions or NGOs registering
incidents - and they often only do so when they have received reports from the
persons affected. All too often we are faced with chance findings, which, for
example, have only become public through the regional press release of a
committed journalist.
Thus, NGOs have recorded 259 racially motivated murders between 1995 and 2000
in Italy; whereas the Italian police have not registered a single case. In
Germany NGOs registered five times as many racist murders as the police.
Although the violent attacks upon minorities with a racist background has
raised the sensitivity of state agencies to such criminal offences in the last
few years, the attention required to accept and perceive incidents motivated
by anti-Semitism is still lacking in many countries.
In those countries in which incidents are already registered by the security
authorities, a swifter processing and publication of the results must be
ensured, and not first presented - as in current practice -in the middle of
the following year by the police, the authority responsible for the protection
of the constitution etc.
We recommend that:
The EUMC requests state authorities to acknowledge at the highest level the
extraordinary dangers posed by anti-Semitic violence in the European context.
There is a definite need to distinguish clearly in reporting between acts of
violence, threatening behaviour, and offensive speech, and to make transparent
government norms and procedures for registering and acting upon racially
motivated crimes and offences motivated by anti-Semitism. Only in this way can
a genuinely comparative basis for incidents be attained for European
countries, a comparison that till now has been limited to a mere juxtaposition
of incomparable individual results.
The EUMC should propose to the European Commission and to the Member States to
consider a decision for police cooperation according to Article 34 of the
Treaty of European Union, which shall bind all Member States to collect and
disseminate data on relevant offences, following the model of States such as
Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. This decision should also involve EUROPOL
and EUROJUST. Such a decision needs to be complemented in all Member States by
a coordinated programme of victim studies to overcome the problem of
underreporting, which is generally recognised by experts in this area.
The EUMC should propose to the Member States to adopt the proposed framework
decision on combating racism and xenophobia (COM 2001/664) as soon as possible
and call on the Council of Ministers to ensure that it is amended to be as
effective as possible to deal with the reported incidents.
To achieve effective regulation of the Internet concerning racist propaganda,
it is essential to extend the jurisdiction of European courts to include
detailed provisions on the responsibility of Internet service providers.
As the Internet must be seen as the central networking medium of the different
ideological directions as regards anti-Semitism, it is precisely here where a
particularly intensive monitoring is required, one which in the first instance
must be undertaken by state authorities, but also by academic and research
institutions engaged with racism and anti-Semitism. For this purpose it is
thus necessary to establish joint committees at national and international
levels. Through mutual exchange these committees shall make available research
results, cases of police prosecution and information from state security
authorities, establishing a basis for an improved recording and combating of
racist and anti-Semitic developments.
The EUMC should encourage and assist civil society to complement the improved
legal basis. Most of the EU Member States in recent years already have enacted
laws against hate crime or the "Holocaust lie" as well as anti-discrimination
laws, which include religious or racial discrimination.
Due to these improvements in legislation and law enforcement, and as a result
of intensified police activities and increased public awareness, anti-Semitic
incidents and violent attacks as well as Holocaust denial have less chance to
evade punishment. But as the increase of anti-Semitic attacks shows, laws -
although necessary - are not sufficient to stave off incidents, and in most
cases do not cover verbal threats.
Registering anti-Semitic incidents
The measures put forward by the five Ministers already imply improvements in
monitoring and combating anti-Semitic and racist attacks. In some Member
States (Belgium, Ireland, Greece and Portugal) "racist attacks were simply not
identified separately in crime statistics", while others (Germany, France,
Sweden and the United Kingdom) have at their disposal state-sponsored
instruments which monitor and pursue anti-Semitic incidents.
In Germany for instance this is incumbent upon the Federal Office for the
Protection of the Constitution, which in turn receives its information from
the various State Offices for Criminal Investigation. However, these offices
record and investigate only punishable offences.
In Sweden the Swedish Security Police (S po) records systematically
anti-Semitic incidents. Since 2001 in the United Kingdom the Community
Security Trust (CST), the monitoring body, has been accorded third-party
reporting status by the police, allowing it to report anti-Semitic incidents
to the police and act as a go-between between them and those victims who are
unable or unwilling to report to the police directly.
The function performed by the CST thus goes beyond the possibilities accorded
to the German agencies and also involves the victims themselves. Other
countries, which till now have hardly known any anti-Semitic incidents, do not
possess such instruments and were till now not forced to develop monitoring
guidelines. The European-wide wave of anti-Semitic incidents has shown that
there is now an urgent need for action in these countries as well.
We recommend joint strategies for action to be developed, whereby those
countries possessing years of experience in this regard should pass this on to
the other Member States.
A prerequisite for such joint action must be to establish common guidelines
for categorising anti-Semitic incidents. Some countries have for some years
now already based their activities on prescribed guidelines for registering
anti-Semitic incidents; these though have not been coordinated with one
another and hence the results have only a limited comparative value.
The most recent definition of anti-Semitic incidents used by the Community
Security Trust in the United Kingdom appears to us to be the most suitable for
dealing with the demands of a European-wide phenomenon.
This definition goes beyond the usual criteria for registering racist
incidents, focusing specifically on criteria geared towards anti-Semitism:
1.Extreme violence: any attack potentially causing loss of life;
2.Assault: any physical
attack against people, which is not a threat to life;
3.Damage and Desecration of Property: any physical attack directed against
Jewish property, which is not life threatening;
4.Threats: includes only clear threats, whether verbal or written;
5.Abusive Behaviour: face-to-face, telephone and targeted abusive/anti-Semitic
letters (inter alia those aimed at and sent to a specific individual) as
opposed to a mail shot of anti-Semitic literature, which will be included
under Category
4. Anti-Semitic graffiti on non-Jewish property is also included in the
category;
6.Literature: includes distribution of anti-Semitic literature, based on the
following criteria:
a.the content must be anti-Semitic (except see (d) below);
b.the recipient may be either Jewish or non-Jewish;
c.the literature must be part of a mass distribution, as opposed to that
directed at a specific individual;
d.racist literature that is not anti-Semitic is included when it is clear that
Jews are being deliberately targeted for receipt because they are Jews
(implying an anti-Semitic motive behind the distribution);
e.It should be noted that the statistics for this category does not give any
indication of the extent of distribution. Mass mailings of propaganda are only
counted as one incident, although anti-Semitic leaflets have been circulated
to hundreds and possibly thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish individuals and
organisations.
Education
As already established, laws offer only limited means to counteract
anti-Semitism because it is after all a problem of society as a whole. Changes
in anti-Jewish attitudes can only be achieved by education.
Parents, teachers and day care providers can provide opportunities for
children to express their feelings and channel them into positive direction.
The most important issue is to promote knowledge on Jewish history, on all
dimensions of Jewish-Christian relations and on the Holocaust but without
moralising admonitions.
To learn about the Holocaust and apply the lessons of the past to contemporary
issues of prejudice, racism and moral decision-making is an important aim for
the future.
The Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education,
Remembrance, and Research, founded in 1998 on the initiative of the Swedish
Government, is composed of representatives of government, as well as
governmental and non-governmental organisations. Its purpose is to mobilise
the support of political and social leaders to foster Holocaust education,
remembrance, and research both nationally and internationally.
The ITF creates programmes and develops guidelines for teaching about the
Holocaust. Currently fourteen countries are members of the ITF: Argentina,
Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy,
Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United
States.
We recommend that the governments of the EU Member States still absent should
undertake initiatives to become members of this international board.
The guidelines of the ITF are an important basis for counteracting prejudices
and anti-Semitism especially not only because Holocaust denial is part of
radical groups (right-wing and radical Islamist groups) who practise
anti-Semitism but also because Holocaust education must be part of European
historical knowledge.
According to the ITF in general, teaching about the Holocaust should advance
knowledge of this unprecedented destruction, preserve the memory of the
victims, encourage educators and students to reflect upon the moral and
spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as they could be
applied to world of today.
In order to see the differences between the Holocaust and other genocides,
comparisons should be carefully distinguished and similarities also should be
articulated. The study of the Holocaust must be studied within the context of
European history as a whole.
Educators should provide context for the events of the Holocaust by including
information about anti-Semitism and Jewish life in Europe before the
Holocaust. The main task is to provide teacher seminars on these subjects but
also on racism and intolerance and on neo-Nazi music and propaganda.
Media
The fact that in connection with the radicalisation of the Middle East
conflict an anti-Semitic body of thought has gained currency and become
relevant in many Arab countries, or that an already virulent anti-Semitism,
circulating since the Six Day War and which in the last few years has become
more and more focused on the denial of the Holocaust, has once again broken
out, raises the issue of how the media exploits and hands down anti-Semitic
stereotypes.
State authorities have obviously till now paid too little attention to
Arab-language publications which spread anti-Semitic propaganda in European
countries, whether they be newspapers, audio tapes or the Internet, which in
the view of British authors "enjoy, as far as one can tell, nearly total
impunity" in the United Kingdom.
In order to acquire knowledge of the degree of media influence upon sections
of the European population with Arab or North African descent, a research
study should be undertaken on the Arab-language television, press and
homepages operating in the 15 Member States.
Until now it is known that the Arab newspaper "al-Hayat" published in London
and "explicit - the political magazine for an Islamic Consciousness" both
spread radical anti-Semitism. This is also the case with the Internet, where
Hizb-ut-tahrir (the party of Islamic Liberation) operates a site containing
anti-Semitic propaganda in German, English, Danish and French, incidentally
via a Russian server.
Press reporting of the Middle East conflict was frequently lacking in balance
as well as in a perspective on the contexts and the formative background
history of the current conflict. Partisanship for the Palestinians as a people
allegedly oppressed by a so-called imperialist Israeli state was mainly to be
found in the left-oriented media.
Quite often there were also caricatures, which used anti-Semitic stereotypes
(see Italy, La Stampa). To date there has been no well-founded media analysis
of the European press on this subject.
We recommend studies such as the one about how the German print media reported
four important incidents in the Middle East during the second Intifada between
September 2000 and August 2001, initiated by the American Jewish Committee
(AJC), should be organised also for the other Member States.
Internet
One of the effective counter-strategies against anti-Semitic agitation on the
Internet stems from the providers themselves. They remove upon notification -
often only after outside pressure - such websites from the net, or
increasingly undertake voluntary self-monitoring.
The developments in the last months in partly impeded or completely obstructed
access to some homepages have shown that such an approach at least hinders the
possibility of placing propaganda on the Internet, even if some suppliers of
the homepages removed from the net find alternatives for spreading their
material through smaller American or Russian providers.
There exists a genuine danger that the far-right extremists can achieve an
even more intensive networking through the Internet, although the respective
links offered, which suggest close co-operation, are often completely
obsolete. Some may lead to the next related homepage, but this does not
necessarily mean that there is automatically a close connection with the link
partner. In addition, the relevant sites realised with the latest technology
are often the work of a single individual or, at the most, of a few persons
whose circle of sympathisers is small.
A whole series of private initiatives have already originated in the last few
years, which combat anti-Semitic and racist content on the Internet, and with
serious information and lexical entries counteract, for instance, the denial
of the Holocaust on the Internet.
In the Netherlands (state-funded) and the United Kingdom (funded by local
Internet Service Providers), Bureaux for Discrimination on the Internet were
founded.
In addition, private and state organisations exert pressure on large Internet
providers such as Yahoo and AOL to remove racist and anti-Semitic content from
the net.
Legislation recently passed in some countries (Germany, Sweden) prohibiting
Internet-based hate speech exerts in the first instance a moral pressure, for
it is hardly possible to deal with an international medium which is difficult
to control with legislative means on a national level.
We recommend that apart from state approaches for combating Internet-based
racism and anti-Semitism, which are in a state of flux, the enormous potential
for educational purposes must be utilised far more than is presently the case.
The extent to which anti-Semitic and racist content is also conveyed via
websites from football fans and how effective they are in mobilising support
is being investigated by a joint study undertaken by the EUMC, the Italian
organisation Unione Italiana Sport Per Tutti (UISP) and the Internet company
ERIN based in Luxembourg.
Sport
Above all in the area of European football a whole series of initiatives have
been started in the last few years, which combat racism and anti-Semitism in
the stadia, following the initiative "Football against Racism".
The "Let's Kick Racism out of Football" (LKROOF) campaign is the product of
the United Kingdom's Commission for Racial Equality, working in conjunction
with the football associations of England, Wales and Scotland.
A Jewish Policy Research (JPR) seminar in London for academics and
sportswriters examined the issues concerning anti-Semitism, xenophobia, racism
and violence that frequently surround football.
The research study on "Racism, Football and the Internet" on behalf of the
EUMC analysed football supporter sites carrying violence and racism often
combined with anti-Semitism.
We recommend similar studies should also be carried out on other issues in the
area of anti-Semitic incidents and placed in an overall European context in
order to establish a comparative basis.
For this purpose close co-operation is also needed between European research
institutions, which would submit their regional studies to, for example, the
EUMC to form an information pool.
This is the prerequisite for the comparison that in turn - based on specific
regional symptoms - opens up the possibility of locating and analysing common
patterns, the formation of stereotypes and the different determining political
and social conditions.
Only on this basis, which needs to be interdisciplinary so as to illuminate
the various facets of anti-Semitism from different disciplines and so
ultimately provide a comprehensive picture, can measures and strategies be
developed which lead to a genuinely effective combating of anti-Semitic
tendencies.
Other initiatives by NGOs
During the "European-wide Action Week against Racism 2002" in March 2002,
activists in 33 countries all over Europe showed their commitment against
racism. In France, many organisations co-operated and focussed on anti-racist
education. Their activities included meetings, discussions, concerts and
theatre performances.
In Germany, immigration was the most central issue in debates, demonstrations
and games. In the Netherlands anti-racist organisations discussed recent
changes in politics related to migration and integration issues.
AMARC Europe, the European branch of the World Association of Community Radio
Broadcasters, prepared a 24-hour radio-campaign relayed through the Internet.
Initiatives such as the International Day against Fascism and Anti-Semitism
(9/11/2002) are especially devoted to issues of anti-Semitism, in which most
of the European countries - non-profit organisations of the UNITED-network -
are involved with corresponding programmes.
The strategies for dismantling prejudices against Jews have till now included
exhibition projects (see the reports on Austria: The Jews of Mistelbach;
Jewish Museum Hohenems; on Luxembourg and on Germany) and educational projects
and pedagogical tools to improve and foster interculturalism and diversity in
society (see the reports on Belgium and Italy).
It is precisely the efforts undertaken in the school and education sector that
are suitable for incorporating the new challenges posed by anti-Semitic
prejudices amongst the Arab/north-African Muslim immigrants. In the United
Kingdom the teaching method called "Abrahams barn" ("Abraham's children"),
pointing out similarities between Christianity, Islam and Judaism, has -
according to teachers - been reported to be fairly successful in schools with
a high percentage of immigrants.
Along with this, teachers in some schools have reported that a generally
increased vigilance against racist and anti-Semitic expressions has been
successful in curbing such sentiments. The Swedish Committee against
anti-Semitism has been writing articles and arranging a series of seminars in
different cities and towns.
The seminars were called "Stereotyping immigrants, Jews and Muslims in media
and debate" and got a very good response in the evaluations. The
Samordningskommitt n for Europa ret mot rasism i Sverige (Swedish Commission
against Racism and Xenophobia), established in 1996 by Mona Sahlin, former
vice-premier of Sweden, continues to organise seminars and support anti-racist
projects.
In order to do justice to the current development of anti-Semitism within the
Muslim population in Europe, other ways of dismantling prejudices must also be
developed. One important component is intercultural and inter-religious
exchange (see Belgium: Jewish-Muslim meeting; Germany: inter-religious
dialogue; the Netherlands: organised meeting between CIDI youth group and the
youth organisation of the Moroccan association Tans).
Also of importance are clear statements from leading personalities in the
Muslim community (see country report on Denmark: "Hate of the Jews is not
Islamic"; United Kingdom: Condemning the desecration of a synagogue; Germany:
protest by the Turkish Association Berlin-Brandenburg against "playing with
anti-Semitism"), which are explicitly directed against anti-Semitism and
radical Islamic forms of animosity towards Jews.
The educational information campaigns within Muslim groups, such as on the
theme "to burn a synagogue is like burning a mosque", have encouraged people
to talk again and have improved solidarity between the different communities
in this field. Thus, the gesture of a local Muslim group in Aubervilliers (a
northern suburb of Paris) is particularly symbolic: it lent its school bus to
a Jewish school of the same area after its buses were destroyed during an
attack.
Beyond inter-religious dialogue, the spontaneous or organised mobilisation of
civil society against the far right has reaffirmed the Republic of France's
common values. Such reactions have at least reminded us that the fight against
racism, xenophobia and discrimination remains a common struggle (see country
report on France).
Further research
Many of the issues raised above have specific implications for further
research. In particular we recommend that research studies should be carried
out on anti-Semitic incidents in various fields - for example, sport,
entertainment, public service provision - and placed in an overall European
context in order to establish a comparative perspective on their occurrence.
As stated earlier, a major difficulty with attempting to gain an overview of
anti-Semitic incidents is the general problem of under-reporting. To help to
overcome this problem it would be helpful to have a programme of victim
studies across the different Member States. Another observation has been that
the way that the European press draws on and perpetuates anti-Semitic
stereotypes has not yet been subject to systematic research analysis. This is
another area where research studies should be implemented in order to fill a
gap.
Concluding remarks
The public expects from the police, state security agencies and also
monitoring offices rapid results and from scientific research bodies a short
and precise assessment of the prevailing situation.
But unfortunately, there are no patent remedies and quick solutions available.
Just as there is no simple and clear solution for explaining anti-Semitic
prejudices and stereotype patterns, it is not possible to formulate a once and
for all strategy, which is effective everywhere. The strategies are always
dependent upon specific situations and must react to the specific national
conditions.
The individual Member States have to create necessary framework conditions,
which has already occurred in many cases, and coordinate these with their
European partners, not the least in the face of increasing globalisation - and
this has also already taken place in part.
At the same time though, state sanctions, legislative regulations and
institutionalised monitoring can only then bite when they also lead to changes
and the dismantling of prejudices within society.
This can only be successful when a re-thinking takes place in society itself
that is not directed only by the state. Initiatives from NGOs, religious
institutions, trade unions, educational institutions and, not the least,
private initiatives therefore assume an extremely important role in reaching
as broad a spectrum of the public as possible through dialogue and various
actions.
Besides initiating intercultural and inter-religious dialogues, generating a
greater sensitivity for terminology and themes belongs to their most important
tasks in working together with the media, as well as reminding journalists of
their public responsibility.
The results of the study by Hans Bernd Brosius and Frank Esser on the
connection between media reporting and xenophobic violence against foreigners
can also be applied to anti-Semitism. Brosius and Esser established that a
connection between close-up reporting and violence towards foreigners exists,
following the mechanism that the more up to date and current the medial
presence is, then the more likely it is that reporting is structured more in a
xenophobic form, setting off a rapid spiral of violence. But this also means
that journalists must be conscious of their influence on society and act
accordingly in a responsible way.
4. Country Reports
Bringing together data on current or recent events poses special problems,
mainly because in most cases the results of investigations undertaken by state
organs take a long time to become available. In addition, the data collection
takes place under severe time pressure, and scientific studies covering the
monitoring period are often yet to be presented.
Furthermore, the NFPs in the individual Member States are faced with very
different starting conditions as to the collation of data on anti-Semitic
incidents. In Greece, Spain, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Finland there
is neither a specific recording of anti-Semitic incidents by the police or
responsible state security agencies, nor NGOs, which specialise in the
collection of such data.
In these countries the information comes almost exclusively from Jewish
organisations and the media. In other countries, such as Denmark, France,
Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, no data from state
agencies was available at the time this report was compiled (data collated by
state agencies is mostly published annually, in the second half of the
following year); however, at the same time there exist networks of NGOs in
these countries which deal with racism and anti-Semitism and, besides the
aforementioned data sources, collect and provide information.
Finally, there are countries, like Germany and Austria, in which state
agencies record and classify anti-Semitic crimes according to specific
categories; here, too, there are also numerous NGOs and research institutions
dealing with racism and anti-Semitism.
In addition, with the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the American
Jewish Committee there are organizations, which monitor anti-Semitic incidents
worldwide, commission polls on current public opinion and media analyses, and
immediately publish (reports, Internet) their findings. The Stephen Roth
Institute (Tel Aviv) and the Institute of Jewish Policy Research (London) also
compile national reports on anti-Semitism covering almost all EU Member
States, whereby these reports are naturally first published one or two years
later.
The data was collected essentially through the following methods:
-Inquiries at the police, state security agencies and ministries of the
interior
-Interviews with or questions posed by telephone/in writing to Jewish
organisations
-Inquiries at NGOs which have specialised in monitoring racism and
anti-Semitism
-Analysis and evaluation of the media (newspapers, TV)
-Research on the Internet
-Evaluation of research studies, media analyses, opinion polls.
A detailed description of sources used can be found in the Annex "Reporting
institutions and data sources".
For this Synthesis Report, the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism (CRA),
Berlin, unified and supplemented the submitted NFP reports. Furthermore, the
attempt was made to balance out the different evaluations provided by the NFPs
on anti-Israeli prejudices.
Some NFPs have not classified anti-Israeli prejudices as anti-Semitic, whereas
others have very precisely distinguished between a criticism of Israel that is
not to be evaluated per se as anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli stereotypes which
clearly utilise anti-Semitic prejudices.
In compiling the Synthesis Report the CRA was able to draw on surveys, data
and some media and Internet sources published after the deadline for
submitting the NFP reports. These sources provided additional information on
the individual countries. Furthermore, to be able to identify trends and
developments over time, the CRA studied materials on anti-Semitic incidents
prior to 2002 for the individual countries. Based on anti-Semitism reports up
to 2001 and other sources, the aim of this presentation was to provide a
context for the evaluation of the monitoring period.
Also the CRA had to compile reports for two countries on its own: neither the
National Focal Points from the Netherlands nor from the United Kingdom
provided reports. The differing length of the individual country reports
mirrors not only the degree and frequency of anti-Semitic attacks and
prejudices in the individual countries (Belgium, Germany, France, the
Netherlands, the United Kingdom), but also the intensity of monitoring by
institutional and state agencies and the sensitivity towards anti-Semitic
incidents.
Belgium
Within the Belgian population (10.3 million; 55% Flemish, 33% Walloon) Jews
represent a minority of some 35,000, most of whom live in Antwerp and
Brussels.
In recent years racism has been on the increase, both in terms of
discrimination against immigrants in general and against Arabs in particular.
The Eurobarometer 2000 compiled by the EUMC came to the conclusion that the
attitudes towards ethnic and religious minorities in Belgium show a more
negative set of views than the EU average.
Although racially motivated attacks from extreme right-wing groups, resurgent
since the 1990s, are in the first instance directed against foreigners,
running parallel to this is a strong increase in anti-Semitic tendencies.
In particular since the beginning of the "al-Aqsa Intifada" in the autumn of
2000, the number of violent actions against Jews and Jewish institutions has
increased, with the suspected perpetrators mainly from Muslim and Arab
communities, especially from those of Maghreb origin which itself is most
vulnerable to xenophobia.
But right-wing extremist groups also used the situation for an "anti-Zionist"
campaign. In addition, a certain influence was exerted by legal proceedings
started in June 2001, based on a law passed in Belgium in 1993 that also
enables criminal prosecution of crimes committed in foreign countries.
Survivors of the massacre in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982
used this law to undertake legal proceedings against the then Defence Minister
of Israel Ariel Sharon for crimes against humanity. An Israeli inquiry had
found that Sharon was indirectly responsible, prompting his resignation.
The attempted prosecution itself, but also the delaying of a decision over
many months, caused an international stir, not the least because Belgium
assumed the EU Presidency on 1 July 2001 and had the request seriously
examined.
On 26 June 2002 the court dismissed the charges.
On 30 May, Reuters reported that a confidential Senate Report, based on
evidence from the State Security Service, stated that Belgium is a recruiting
ground for Islamic militants. Apparently, the Saudi-backed Salafi Movement has
created some sort of religious "state within Belgium."
1. Physical acts of violence
According to the current report of the American Lawyers Committee for Human
Rights, since 11 September 2001 around 2000 anti-Semitic incidents have taken
place, whereby no distinction has been made between violent attacks and other
forms. Already on 5December 2001, the Chief Rabbi of Brussels, Albert Gigi,
was physically assaulted by a group of youths in Anderlecht (Brussels).
After shouting at him and his companion "dirty Jew" in Arab, they followed
them into the subway and one of them kicked the Rabbi in the face, breaking
his glasses. After the first graffiti appeared on Jewish shops in February
2002, demanding "Death to the Jews", the synagogue in the Anderlecht district
of Brussels was severely damaged by two Molotov cocktails in the night of 31
March / 1 April.
In the following weeks the attacks increased: on 17 April unknown persons set
fire to a Jewish bookshop in Brussels and on the following day the front
window of a kosher restaurant were shattered by an air rifle; during the night
of 20 - 21 April 18 shots were fired at the fa ade of the synagogue in
Charleroi. During a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Antwerp on 1 April, which
took place near a Jewish area and in which ca. 2000 persons took part, front
windows were shattered and an Israeli flag burnt.
Between 15 May and 15 June 2002 the following attacks or violent acts against
Jews have been recorded. Compared with the attacks the month before, the
number of incidents was relatively low.
19 May: a group of Jewish youngsters aged 13 were threatened by a group of
Arab youths at the City Park. One of them menaced the Jewish youngsters with a
mock rifle. The police intervened and arrested the youth.
25 May: a group of adolescent immigrants (around the age of 13) vandalized the
restaurant of the Maccabi Soccer Club belonging to the Jewish community of
Antwerp. They spread anti-Jewish slogans across the club walls, destroyed
doors, windows and furniture. The youngsters were caught by the police. After
interrogation and an interview with their parents, they were released.
28 May: a shop on the Frankrijklei, a major avenue in Antwerp, was smeared
with the following slogans: "Kill the juif. Laat ze lijden (let them suffer),
fuck Belgium".
The Antwerp police have also gathered evidence of damage to bus stops, shops
or public buildings. In most cases these were graffiti of the SS insignia, the
swastika and the Star of David.
2. Verbal aggression/hate speech
Newspapers reported the following incidents:
On 19 April unknown persons smeared a Jewish shop in Brussels with slogans
such as "Dirty Jew" and "We will burn you".
In the second half of May an anonymous letter of anti-Semitic and revisionist
character was sent to a survivor of the concentration camps after this person
had published an article in a widely circulated public newsletter.
In the second half of May 2002 an article of highly anti-Semitic nature was
published in a free journal published in the Charleroi region.
On 3 June an anti-Semitic letter, originating in France, was sent to an
individual in Belgium.
Racist and anti-Semitic slogans continue to belong to the repertoire of many
football fans.
Internet
Websites of Belgian origin with racist and anti-Semitic texts have
increasingly gone online in recent times. The Centre for Equal Opportunity and
Combating Racism was able to identify 82 Belgian sites, which spread such
material. On 6 June a complaint about racism was introduced at the CEOOR
against Dyab Abou Jahjah, President of the Arabian European League (AEL).
His Internet site encourages hatred, discrimination and violence towards the
Jewish community. The complaint concerns a press statement in which the AEL
urged people to join a demonstration in Antwerp to be held on 8 June 2002.
According to the League, this demonstration has to take place in Antwerp since
"the power (there) is in the hands of a Zionist lobby and extreme right
racists" and, furthermore, because "Antwerp represents the bastion of Zionism
in Europe" and is a city "where pro-Sharon gangs of Zionists are dictating the
rules". Instead, Antwerp needs to become the "Mecca of pro-Palestinian
action".
On 17 January the far left anti-globalisation website Indymedia Belgium
relayed photographs of three corpses of children who should have fallen victim
of the supposed Israeli practice to use bodies of Palestinians for organ
theft.
MediaJoel Kotek, professor at the Free University of Brussels refers to the
one sided reports on Israel in the Belgium media: "Israel is portrayed by the
Belgian media, notably "Le Soir", the most widely circulated French-language
newspaper in Belgium, as well as by "Vif l'Express", its weekly supplement, as
solely responsible for the violence which has shaken the Middle East for
almost two years.
Frequently, in their forum pages and in letters to the editor, Israelis are
equated with Nazis and in more extreme publications anti-Semitic motifs appear
in anti-Israel propaganda."
3. Research studies
The survey commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in ten European
countries has collected information on "European Attitudes towards Jews,
Israel and the Palestinian-Israel Conflict" between 16 May and 4 June
respectively between 9 and 29 September.
European Attitudes towards Jews, Israel and the Palestinian-Israel Conflict
StatementBelgiumDenmarkFranceGermanyUnited KingdomSpainItalyAustriaThe
Netherlands
Jews don t care what happens to anyone but their own kind25%16
%24%10%34%30%29%15%
Jews are more willing to use shady practices to get what they
want18%13%16%21%11%33%27%28%9%
Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country50%45%42%55%34%72%58%54%48%
Jews have too much power in the business world44%13%42%32%21%63%42%40 %
Percent responding "probably true" to each statement / 500 respondents in each
country
Taylor Nelson Sofres, margin of error +/-4.4% at 95% level of confidence
For Belgium a clear agreement emerged with anti-Semitic stereotypes. From the
four stereotypical statements presented, 39% of respondents agreed to at least
two, 21% with at least three and 6% with all four. Fifty per cent of
respondents agreed with the statement that "Jews are more loyal to Israel than
to this country", a rate somewhat below the EU-average of 51%, and 38% agreed
with the statement "Jews still talk too much about the Holocaust" (EU-average:
42%).
4. Good practices for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression
Following the multi-religious meetings organised since 11 September 2001, the
CEOOR proposed an action plan, the implementation of which is still in the
preparatory phase. However, it has already been decided to create a website
containing a list of associations which subscribe to diversity and mutual
respect and a set of pedagogical tools to improve and foster interculturalism.
There will also be a section on how to make a complaint about racism to the
CEOOR. Finally, there will be an index of key words and concepts, which will
be elaborated and explained in a language understandable by the general
public.
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion makers
Within the Belgian legal framework there are two laws dealing with the fight
against anti-Semitism, notably the general anti-racism law of 1981 and the law
of the denial of the Holocaust of March 1995.
Immediately after the assault on the Brussels Chief Rabbi was made public in
January 2002 and the debate in the Parliament, moderate forces within the
Jewish community in Brussels organised a meeting with Muslim leaders.
On 5 April 2002 a Round Table Conference was held on the initiative of the
Belgian Government with representatives from the social partners, the Jewish
and the Muslim communities, the Ligue des droits de l'Homme (League of Human
Rights) and the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism.
After the attacks on a few synagogues in Antwerp and Brussels different
communities requested the Round Table Conference. A common declaration was
signed and commitments were made by the different actors to undertake concrete
measures in the near future.
On 19 April 2002 the Belgian Interior Minister, Antoine Duquesne, made a joint
declaration with his colleagues from France, Spain, Germany and Great Britain
on "Racism, Xenophobia and Anti-Semitism".
Given the background of international tension, in particular in the Middle
East, they characterised the racist and xenophobic violence as an offence
against freedom, democracy and human rights and pronounced European-wide
preventive measures and a coordination of the responsible agencies and
offices. At the Interministerial Conference for the Equal Opportunities
Policy, which took place on 17 May 2002, a concrete action plan was introduced
and approved by the Government.
Denmark
The Jewish population (ca. 7000) in Denmark (total population: 5.3 million) is
well integrated socially and anti-Semitism is hardly visible, though the
activities of right-wing extremist groups and the election campaign, which
focused on immigration policy in 2001, have reinforced xenophobic attitudes.
With the al-Aqsa Intifada violent anti-Israeli demonstrations and heated
debates broke out from October 2000, "which included anti-Semitic
manifestations". These initiatives come from extreme leftist groups and
militant Islamist activists.
As in most of the other EU Member States, the climax of the public debate lay
prior to the monitored period in March-April 2002, while the monitored period
itself was calmer for the Jewish community in Denmark. It appears that there
have been very few (if any) physical attacks and few reported incidents of
direct verbal abuse.
1.Physical acts of violence
PET has no reports of anti-Semitic attacks in the monitoring period, neither
of a physical or verbal nature, nor of incidents of graffiti, vandalism, etc.
in the monitoring period. However in August the Copenhagen synagogue was
vandalized and anti-Semitic graffiti sprayed on its walls.
The Jewish Community in Denmark, which systematically registers all
anti-Semitic incidents in Denmark, reported the following incidents: two Arabs
harassed the President of the Jewish Community.
During the period in question the Jewish Community received at least 8 reports
from members who had been spat upon or otherwise harassed on the street by
Moslems.
A mother, who wished to remain anonymous, reported that Palestinians who knew
her son from school had beaten him on the street. The boy required medical
attention at the local hospital.
On 21 April 2002, a Danish Jewish shop owner in the "N rrebro" district of
Copenhagen was attacked by a gang of Palestinian youths near his shop. The
gang beat him and stabbed him with a knife. On 13 June 2002, a member of the
Jewish Community's Board reported the eighth incident of malicious damage to
his automobile.
2. Verbal aggression/hate speech
Direct threats/abuse
Rabbi Yitzchok Lowenthal, director of Chabad Denmark, reports that between 15
May and 15 June 2002 he was shouted at 5-6 times by young men with Arab
background. Similarly, a few friends of the Rabbi were verbally assaulted on
the street. A student at the Jewish school (Carolineskolen) was afraid to go
home after being repeatedly threatened by young men of Arab background at the
bus stop. A Jewish man on a bus reported that a gang of young people of
presumable Arab descent yelled at him and told him what they would do to "the
Jews".
On 21 May 2002, the mother of a student at Byens Skole in the Valby district
of Copenhagen went to the police because Muslim students from the neighbouring
Vigerslev All Skole had threatened her son. A teacher at the boy's school had
to smuggle him out the back door on 17 May when a gang of Arabs showed up to
beat him.
Indirect threats
In April the Islamic political organisation, Hizb-ut-tahrir, distributed
flyers on the street containing material from their homepage, "And kill them,
wherever you find them, and expel them from where they expel you". The
incident has been continuously debated in public (see section 5).
On 21 May 2002, graffiti was seen and photographed on traffic signs around F
lledparken: "No Juden".
On 11 June 2002, graffiti was seen and photographed at Bl g rdsplads: "No
Jews".
A Lutheran bishop delivered a sermon in Copenhagen Cathedral comparing
Sharon's policies toward the Palestinians to those of the biblical King Herod,
who ordered the slaughter of all male children in Bethlehem under the age of
two - prior to the incident at the Church of Nativity (2 April) - in the same
Bethlehem under siege by the Israelis today.
Insults
A person with connections to the Progressive Jewish Forum describes how
various insinuating comments have been passed at work. For example, when
entering her office, a colleague said, "you've occupied there (her chair) very
well, haven't you - ha, ha", and "you have nothing against there being pig's
blood in the wine, have you?" When she enquired whether the wine was Italian,
the colleague answered: "It is in any case not from Israel. If it was I would
definitely not drink it!"
Media
No examples of anti-Semitic newspaper articles in the daily press are known.
However in August the widely circulated newspaper Jytland Posten carried a
radical Islamist's offer of a reward of $35,000 for the murder of prominent
Jews.
The head of the Danish Jewish community subsequently reported receiving
threatening telephone calls. There has also been a debate about the situation
in Israel in the daily press, where some critics of Israel's policies feel as
if they are being accused of being anti-Semitic, whereas certain members of
the Jewish community feel that the newspaper reports are one-sided.
Internet
Hizb-ut-tahrir's homepage contains anti-Semitic material, such as "Jews are a
slanderous people" and openly calls on Muslims "kill all Jews (. . .) wherever
you find them."
3. Research studies
Between 16 May and 4 June and between 9 and 29 September, the Anti-Defamation
League (ADL) based in New York commissioned two surveys "European Attitudes
towards Jews, Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict" that were conducted
in ten European countries, including Denmark.
Compared with most of the other EU member states, the agreement expressed in
Denmark to four anti-Semitic stereotypes was clearly below the EU-average (see
Table: Report on Belgium). Also with the statement "Jews are more loyal to
Israel than to this country" the Danes (45%) remained below the European
average (51%)
Good practices for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression
See below.
Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
On the same day as Hizb-ut-tahrir began distributing its flyers the Prime
Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, invited several leading figures from the
Jewish Community in Denmark to discuss the incident. Immediately afterwards
the Prime Minister publicly condemned the flyers and everything they stood
for.
The author of the flyer has been reported to the police in connection with 266
b, the so-called racism paragraph, and the Public Prosecutor is presently
investigating whether Hizb-ut-tahrir should be prohibited in accordance with
78 of the Danish constitution, an act which prohibits violent organisations or
organisations which incite violence.
A majority in the Danish Parliament supports both of these actions.
Several commentators have, however, stated that the quote has been taken out
of context and is in fact not an actual call for Muslims to kill Jews in
Denmark. Several leading figures with Muslim background have publicly
condemned Hizb-ut-tahrir, their methods and their viewpoints.
The Member of Parliament, Naser Khader, together with the Chairman of the
Integration Council in Copenhagen, Hanna Ziadeh and historian Mahmoud Issa,
who are all Danish-Palestinians, wrote a long open letter in the daily
broadsheet newspaper Politiken (24.5.02) appealing to all Danish-Palestinians
living in Denmark not to let their "justified criticism of the Israeli
government turn into hatred for all Jews". They emphasized, "our battle is
political and not about religion and ethnicity". The article was printed in
both Danish and Arab.
The daily newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad published (10 May 2002) an interview
with Tariq Ramadan, whom the paper describes as Europe's best-known Islamic
thinker, in which he explains that "hate for the Jews is not Islamic". In the
article he says, "nothing in Islam legitimizes the anti-Semitism that certain
Muslim organisations are expounding".
Germany
Since 1989 the Jewish community has more than doubled and now numbers about
100,000 in a total population of 82 million. Since the early 1990s waves of
racist violence were frequently directed against migrant minorities among
which the Turks form the majority group (2 million; total Muslim population:
3,2 million).
The number of anti-Semitic incidents since the early 1990s also clearly
exceeds those of earlier decades. This is mainly due to an active far-right
scene. After a fall in the number of incidents between 1996 and 1999, there
has been an increase since 2000, when it tripled in the last three months of
the year.
This dramatic increase is "due in large part to the al-Aqsa Intifada which
inspired radical Islamists to anti-Jewish acts and served as a catalyst for
extreme right-wing anti-Semites". In 2001 anti-Semitic incidents, numbering
1,629 cases, reached an historical high, although the great majority were
propaganda offences.
Like other EU countries, Germany suffered anti-Semitic incidents in early
2002. During the first three months 127 cases were registered: 77 of which
were incitement of hatred; 26 were propaganda and five were violent offences;
in addition, there were four cases of damage to property, three cases of
desecration of graves, and twelve other offences.
But the main problem in Germany is not an increase in physical attacks on Jews
or their organisations, but a more subtle form of anti-Semitism, which is
mainly expressed in anti-Jewish attitudes and statements.
>From the beginning, the debate about anti-Semitism was closely linked to the
question of how far criticism of Israeli policy in the Middle East conflict
can go.
Leading representatives of the Jewish community continuously expressed their
view that criticising Israel has never been a taboo subject, but allusions to
or comparisons with the behaviour of the Nazi regime would be unacceptable and
unjustified.
Nevertheless, the basic question, regarding what kind of criticism is
justifiable without running the risk of being called anti-Semitic, remains
unanswered.
Since the escalation of the Middle East conflict and the increase of
anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Germany, the Jewish
communities have been expressing growing concern. Anti-Semitism became one of
the main topics in the German media from mid May till the end of June - mainly
because of two interconnected incidents: the Karsli and the M llemann cases
(see below)
1.Physical acts of violence
No incident of physical violence was reported between 15 May and 15June in
Germany. In the previous month (April) four cases were registered:
14 April: in Berlin two Jewish women wearing a Star of David necklace were
attacked. 15 April: graffiti was found on the synagogue in Herford reading:
"Six million is not enough."
20 April: in Dachau the monument near the site of the concentration camp was
desecrated and gravestones in the nearby Jewish cemetery were damaged.
28 April: in Berlin a bottle with flammable liquids was thrown at the
synagogue on the Kreuzberger Fraenkelufer without causing any damage.
Physical threat
There was one case of a bomb scare that was possibly committed for
anti-Semitic reasons. On 28 May, an unidentified man called the Hessischen
Rundfunk (Hessian Broadcasting Corporation) in Frankfurt and asked whether the
live programme "Achtung Friedman!" (showmaster Michel Friedman, vice-chairman
of the Central Council of the Jews in Germany, was currently in the news
because of a heated argument with Jurgen M llemann, see below) was to be
broadcast that evening.
After a corporation employee confirmed this, the man said that a bomb would
blow up the main tower, the building where the talk show takes place. Police
evacuated the building, the search was called off without any results, and the
talk show took place with a 45-minute delay.
2. Verbal aggression/hate speech
Indirect threats
Since early April the Jewish communities and the Central Council of the Jews
in Germany have received a huge amount of anti-Semitic letters, e-mails and
phone calls with an increasingly aggressive tone. Representatives of the
organisations, e.g. the chairman of the Jewish Community in Berlin, Alexander
Brenner, noted that the writers of these agitation letters no longer even shy
away from signing the letters with their complete name and address.
In Brenner's opinion many writers disguise their anti-Jewish aggression as
criticism of Israel. The weekly Jewish newspaper Allgemeine Judische
Wochenzeitung released a sample of these letters. On 3 June 2002, the offices
of the Munich Jewish Community received, for the third time, a letter with
threats of murder involving the heads of the umbrella organisation of the
Jewish communities in Germany and against the President of the Jewish
Community in Munich. The letter contained a specific threat to plant an
explosive charge near a kosher butcher shop in Munich.
On 21 May the German branch of the anti-globalisation organisation "attac"
invited to an anti-Bush demonstration in Berlin. The leaflet for the
demonstration used the well-known picture of "Uncle Sam" but with a St
rmer-style portrait with a "typical Jewish nose". This implied the supposed
Jewish world conspiracy because on the forefinger of "Uncle Sam" hangs the
world on a thread. Portraying "Uncle Sam" as Jewish refers to the supposed
Jewish influence on the United States policy and connects anti-Jewish and
anti-American feelings.
Politics
The former member of the Green Party (B ndnis90/Die Gr nen) Jamal Karsli, a
German with an immigrant background (Syria) who applied for admission in the
liberal-democratic party FDP on 30 April, launched a public debate about
criticizing Israel's policy and anti-Semitism with an interview given to the
weekly right-wing newspaper Junge Freiheit on 3 May.
Karsli said that the "very big Zionistic lobby" was controlling the major part
of worldwide media and, therefore, would be capable of "getting down on every
person no matter how important".
Michel Friedman, vice-chairman of the Central Council of the Jews in Germany,
indirectly accused Karsli of being an "anti-Semite, and Paul Spiegel, chairman
of the Central Council, demanded that the FDP should refuse Karsli's admission
to the party.
The deputy-chairman of the FDP and party leader in North Rhine-Westphalia, J
rgen M llemann, rejected this demand, although other leading FDP politicians,
including chairman Westerwelle, supported it.
Nearly all public opinion leaders distanced themselves from Karsli's
statements, except M llemann. On 22 May, Karsli withdrew his application for
admission to the FDP due to "public hounding".
Millemann launched another debate closely linked to the "Karsli case" in early
April, when he commented on the Palestinian suicidal attacks on Israelis with
the words: "I would also defend myself, (...) and I would also do it in the
land of the aggressor".
Expressing understanding or even sympathy with the Palestinian people was
interpreted by German media and politicians as legitimising suicidal attacks
and brought him the reproach of anti-Semitism from, amongst others, Michel
Friedman.
In the course of the debate about Karsli's statements, Millemann accused
Friedman of himself being partly responsible for anti-Semitism in Germany. He
said that he feared that hardly anyone else would make anti-Semitism more
popular than Prime Minister Sharon in Israel and Michel Friedman "with his
intolerant and spiteful way" in Germany.
A few days later Millemann called Friedman "obviously megalomaniac" and
renewed his accusation that Friedman would provoke "anti-Israeli and
anti-Semitic resentments" with his "unbearable, aggressive, arrogant way of
treating" people who criticise Sharon. Millemann said that he had received
more than 11,000 approving letters.
The discussion about Millemann's statements in particular and the attitude of
the FDP in general dominated the media for weeks. Politicians of all
democratic parties in Germany blamed Millemann for using this debate to get
more votes for the Liberal Party in the federal election in September, and
Westerwelle, leader of the FDP, even admitted that he is seeking to win votes
from people who had voted for right-wing parties in the previous federal
election. After Karsli had left the parliamentary group of the FDP in North
Rhine-Westfalia, Millemann declared publicly: "If I have hurt the feelings of
Jewish people, I want to apologise to them".
However, he renewed his attacks on Friedman and excluded him deliberately from
his apology. A few days before the Federal election (22 September) Millemann
spread a flyer repeating the accusation against Sharon and Friedman. The
chairman of the FDP forced him to resign as a vice chairman a few days later,
arguing that his playing with anti-Semitism has caused a considerable loss of
votes for the FDP. Finally on 20 October Millemann resigned also as party
leader in North Rhine-Westfalia.
Reaction and public debate about Millemann and Karsli
The "Karsli case" and the argument between Millemann and Friedman have evoked
anti-Semitic and hate reactions in Germany.
On the Internet website of the FDP parliamentary group (http://www.fdp-fraktion.de)
the discussion forum "Speaker's corner" has been used to for all kinds of
anti-Semitic statements, such as: Germany has to free itself from "the chains
of bondage of Israel"; "The Jews themselves propagate the so-called
'anti-Semitism' in order to punish everyone who contradicts them". Statements
which praised Millemann for his comments about Israel and Friedman can be
found on several discussion for a of the Liberal Party.
Countless racial and anti-Semitic statements were also sent to Millemann's own
website before it had to be shut down because of a hacker attack. The online
discussion forum of the weekly magazine Der Spiegel (www.forum.spiegel.de)
was also used for anti-Semitic hate speech.
Public discourse
The broad discussion about a novel by Martin Walser, which had not yet been
published, led to a further escalation in the anti-Semitism debate. The author
Walser, who was accused of serving anti-Semitic tendencies by the former
chairman of the Central Council of the Jews, Ignatz Bubis, four years ago,
because he described Auschwitz as a "moral cudgel" in Germany, was attacked by
parts of the media.
The editor of the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), Frank Schirrmacher,
said that his latest novel Tod eines Kritikers ("Death of a Critic") would
serve anti-Semitic resentments. He thus refused the planned pre-release serial
publication in his newspaper.
Walser himself rejected any accusations of being anti-Semitic. He claimed that
the novel is about "power in the world of culture", not about Jewry. This
statement was doubted in parts of the media, but even assuming that Walser had
not intended to play with anti-Semitic resentments, he should have been able
to anticipate how his novel might be (mis)read and interpreted by others.
The argument between Walser and Schirrmacher was linked to the heated debate
about anti-Semitism in M llemann's statements and was dealt with in numerous
articles in German newspapers.
Internet
On 31 March the radical Muslim organisation "Hizb-ut-tahrir" (Liberation
Party) published a leaflet on its German homepage containing the following
statements: "The Jews are a people of slander. They are a treacherous people
who violate oaths and covenants ( ). Allah has forbidden us from allying
ourselves with them. ( ) Indeed, that you should destroy the monstrous Jewish
entity. ( ) Kill all Jews ( ) wherever you find them."
The organisation has been observed for a longer time by the German Office for
the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz) but did not receive
public attention before they organised a public lecture on "The Iraq - a new
war and its consequences" at the Berlin Technical University in October 2002
where also representatives of the German extreme right-wing party NPD
(National Democratic Party) participated.
3. Research studies
On 31 May, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) released a study in Berlin
about how the German print media reported four major incidents in the Middle
East during the second Intifada between September 2000 and August 2001. The
study, conducted by the Linguistic and Social Research Institute in Duisburg
(Institut fur Sprach- und Sozialforschung), came to the conclusion that the
reporting of the Middle East conflict in the newspapers and magazines examined
was biased and showed anti-Semitic elements which would often be liable to
(re)produce existing anti-Semitic and racial prejudice.
The reporting also used terms to describe the behaviour of the Israeli troops,
which make the reader associate their actions with genocide and suggest
similarities to fascism (e.g. "massacre").
Generally speaking, the media was criticised for its anti-Semitic allusions
and stereotypes. According to the study, there are deeply latent anti-Semitic
and anti-Zionist prejudices in the German public, usually hidden behind
"concealed" and "vague allusions".
The study was criticised by the weekly newspaper Die Zeit because it refused
to provide proof as to whether and how the way of reporting affects reception
in Germany. Another study on reporting of the Middle East conflict showed
that, in comparison to some other countries (USA, South Africa, the UK), TV
reporting in Germany encompassed a broader spectrum of neutral presentations
of events.
In the monitoring period three surveys were conducted which posed questions
concerning anti-Semitism. According to the study "Political Attitudes in
Germany", conducted by the Sigmund-Freud-Institut in Frankfurt in April 2002,
anti-Semitic tendencies have increased since 1999.
The statement "I can understand well that some people feel unpleasant about
Jews" was confirmed by 36% (1999: 20%). The second statement offered by the
study, that the Jews are responsible for the problems in the world, showed in
contrast a reduction in anti-Semitic attitudes.
A further study from April 2002, "Extreme Right Attitudes in Germany",
included three statements on anti-Semitism: "Even today Jews have too much
influence"; "The Jews simply have something particular and peculiar about them
and are not so suited to us"; "More than others, the Jews use dirty tricks to
achieve what they want".
The study showed that in comparison to 1994 and 2000 there was a strong
increase in the number of negative answers; surprisingly, however, these came
from those questioned from West Germany. This indicates an effect determined
by current events: many West Germans reacted to Israeli policy and the heated
debate about the bounds of legitimate criticism of this policy, whereas these
issues found obviously less resonance amongst East Germans.
A poll conducted by NfO Infratest in June had different results: generally
speaking, the given answers lead to the conclusion that anti-Semitic
resentments have been slightly decreasing in Germany over the past 11 years.
In June 2002, 68% of those polled rejected the statement "The Jews are partly
responsible for being hated and persecuted", while 29% confirmed the statement
(in 1991 confirmation was 32%).
The question "How many Germans have an anti-Jewish attitude?" was answered as
follows: 2% believed "most of the Germans", 13% "a high number of Germans",
57% "a small number of Germans", and 26% said "hardly anyone".
Nevertheless, 29% confirmed the statement that "Jews have too much influence
on the world". This number is lower than in the 1991 poll, when it was agreed
by 36%. Between 16 May and 4 June respectively between 9 and 29 September
surveys commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in New York,
"European Attitudes towards Jews, Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli
Conflict", were conducted in ten European countries, including Germany (see
Table: Report on Belgium) Here the agreement with anti-Semitic stereotypes was
on similar levels as in France and Belgium%). From the four stereotypical
statements presented, 19% of respondents agreed to at least three. With 55%
the Germans agreed on an average with the statement "Jews are more loyal to
Israel than to this country" (average 51%).
4. Good practices for reducing prejudice, violence, and aggression
In the period from 15 May to 15 June, 2002 there were many appeals for
solidarity with the Jewish communities and calls for promoting an
inter-religious dialogue.
Appeals were made by the chairman of the Central Council of the Jews, Paul
Spiegel, but also from representatives of the Christian churches, for example
by the chairman of the German Conference of Bishops (Deutsche
Bischofskonferenz), Karl Lehmann, the Bavarian bishop Dr. Johannes Friedrich
or the chairman of the Council of the Protestant Church, Manfred Kock.
Beside calls for solidarity with the Jews, there have also been efforts to
improve the inter-religious dialogue. The German Coordinating Council of
Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation (Deutscher Koordinierungsrat der
Gesellschaften f r Christlich-J dische Zusammenarbeit; member of the
International Council of Christians and Jews) organised a meeting in June in
which the importance of an inter-religious dialogue was discussed.
An inter-religious discussion group was recently also established in the city
of Bremen. A few weeks prior, the Muslims had invited the Jewish community in
order to foster a dialogue and to promote a peaceful way of living together.
This started a process of setting up a discussion group which is presently not
only made up of Muslims and Jews, but also of non-Muslim Palestinians,
Protestants, Catholics, peace campaigners, politicians and trade unionists.
They are attempting to maintain positive inter-cultural relations in Bremen as
an example for other towns.
In Germany there are some non-governmental programmes and initiatives, which
aim to combat anti-Semitism, although no further initiatives were started in
the relevant period. The Turkish Association Berlin-Brandenburg, the Turkish
Community Association of Germany as well as the Central Council of Muslims all
sharply criticised the FDP's vice-chairman M llemann at the beginning of June.
"To employ an anti-Semitic climate for political purposes must be taboo",
declared the chairmen.
The Turkish Association Berlin-Brandenburg called upon its members to protest
together with the Jewish community in front of the FDP headquarters in Berlin
against "playing with anti-Semitism".
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
Almost all public leaders distanced themselves from Jurgen Millemann's
statements in relation to the current debate about anti-Semitism and
pronounced (Chancellor Gerhard Schr der) their fear of negative consequences
for Germany's reputation abroad which might arise from the ongoing debate.
Millemann's statements received positive reactions from some right-wing
parties such as "Die Republikaner", the NPD (National Democratic Party
Germany) and the DVU. But the vice-chairman also had to face criticism from
within his own party as well.
With regard to the parties, the Liberal Democrats as well as the Social
Democrats/the Greens have submitted separate but identical applications to the
German Bundestag (lower house of the German parliament) demanding that
anti-Semitic tendencies be eradicated and that anti-Semitism may not be
exploited for election campaigns.
The Bundespresident (Head of State of the Federal Republic of Germany),
Johannes Rau, had already entered into the discussion in May by meeting
representatives of the Central Council of Jews in order to express his
solidarity with the Jewish communities.
In an interview with the Jewish newspaper Allgemeine Judische Wochenzeitung he
remarked on his fear of a decreasing level of inhibition for making
anti-Semitic statements, although he pointed out that criticism of Israel is
not tantamount to anti-Semitism. Even a trade union reacted directly in
relation to the anti-Semitism debate. The "IG Bauern-Agrar-Umwelt" split from
their member Jurgen Millemann by "mutual agreement" as a result of the
politician's statements.
On 19 April the German Interior Minister Otto Schily, together with his
colleagues from France, Belgium, Spain and Great Britain, presented a joint
declaration on "Racism, Xenophobia and Anti-Semitism" which appealed for
preventive measures and a European-wide coordination of all responsible
agencies and offices.
>From 29 September 2002 the Jewish Museum in Berlin opened a short three-week
exhibition that showed letters written during the M llemann campaign to the
Jewish journalist Henryk M. Broder and to the "Allgemeine J dische
Wochenzeitung" under the title "Ich bin kein Antisemit" (I am not an
anti-Semite).
In early July a panel Forum on Anti-Semitism as concerted action to stem
escalating violence in conjunction with the 11th annual Parliamentary Assembly
of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was held in
Berlin. This session was followed up on the initiative of German Bundestag
Member Gert Weisskirchen and United States Helsinki Commission Co-Chairman
Christopher H. Smith by a meeting of members of the Commission and a German
Bundestag delegation in Washington DC in December.
The Forum heard experts on Anti-Semitism in Europe and the United States and a
"letter of intent" was signed by Gert Weisskirchen and Christopher H. Smith.
Ireland
The Jewish community in the Republic of Ireland (total population: 3.8 million
mostly Roman Catholics - 91.6 per cent and Protestants, the only significant
religious minority - 3 per cent) is a small, but long established community,
which comprises approximately 1000-1600 people who mostly live in Dublin
(0.04%).
There has been no reporting of anti-Semitic incidents in recent years. The
Garda reported the existence of several far-right individuals or small groups,
none of whom however have come to the fore publicly. Most of the incidents
referred to in this report come from information supplied by Jewish
organisations in Ireland.
Many incidents reported are considered to be one-off and unusual occurrences,
with no evidence of a systematic targeting of the Jewish community in Ireland.
The police provide discreet presence at the synagogue in Dublin on certain
occasions.
According to the Intercultural Office, there appear to be good relations
between the local police and representatives of the Jewish community and
meetings have been held between Garda Racial & Intercultural Office and Jewish
communal leaders in the period in question.
However, one representative of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland
contends that there is increased apprehension in the Irish Jewish community.
This anxiety relates primarily to recent events in Europe, such as the
increased electoral support of the far right, as opposed to any marked change
in attitudes amongst the Irish population.
1.Physical acts of violence
There have been no reports of physical violence against Jews or their
properties during the period of 15 May-15 June.
2.Verbal aggression/hate speech
Direct threats
The Israeli embassy has received a number of hate telephone calls in the last
month but has not logged the exact number. The embassy received a piece of
hate mail on 10 June, written on a brown paper bag. The Garda Racial and
Intercultural Office reports that there have been a few threatening and
abusive phone calls to Jewish residents in the Terenure district of Dublin,
where the synagogue is located. These were dealt with by local Garda.
Graffiti
On 19 April 2002, Dublin graffiti equating Jews with Nazis and the Star of
David with a swastika was found near the main synagogue in Dublin.
Leaflets
Amnesty International ran an advertising campaign on Israel and the Occupied
Territories. A copy of the advertisement was returned to the office with the
words "Hitler Was Right" written over it.
Media and public discourse
A survey of national newspapers for the month 15 May - 15 June shows no verbal
attacks on Jews in public discourse or by Irish politicians. A representative
of the Jewish Representative Council maintained that there had been some
concern about the tone of some correspondence in the Irish Times and in debate
on Israel's policies on the Joe Duffy programme of RTE radio, but that
ultimately it was not deemed to be anti-Semitic but essentially hostile to
Israeli policy.
Internet
The website National Socialist Are Us contains a section called "The New Folk"
where White supremacist and "Aryan" ideology is expressed. The website also
contains links to other white supremacist sites including Stormfront. In its
report on racial incidents May-October 2001, the NCCRI referred to this
website and concerns about it and two others run by the Irish Fascist Party
and Irish National Front.
3. Research studies
There were no reports or studies focusing solely on anti-Semitism in the
period monitored.
4. Good practices for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression
There are no examples of good practices to report.
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
Nothing to report
Greece
In Greece, population 10 million, the 5000 Jews represent a small minority
(3000, mainly in Athens, and 1000 in Thessaloniki). Despite denials on the
part of most Greek opinion leaders and leaders of the Greek Jewish community,
anti-Semitism does seem to exist in Greece, perhaps not so much in social
behaviour, but rather as a latent structure.
The Orthodox Church continues to include in the liturgy ritual of Good Friday
anti-Jewish references and also the religious prejudices against "the Christ
killers" remain virulent. Anti-Semitic rhetoric in Greece usually takes the
form of opposition to a conspiratorial conception of "Zionism", interpreted as
a "Jewish plot for world domination".
Latent prejudices and bigotry became evident during the last two years over
the issue of having religion included on Greek identity cards. When the Greek
government according to EU standards removed this reference it was vilified
for "bowing to Jewish pressure".
Although all mainstream political parties denounce anti-Semitism, they
sometimes also exhibit a curiously strong anti-Semitism seemingly confused
with an anti-Israeli and anti-American stance. This form of anti-Semitism was
reinforced by Israel's alliance with Turkey, an alliance that led Greece to
reinforce its links with the Arab world.
Despite their close affiliation to the United States, successive post-war
governments and even the Junta followed a foreign policy unfavourable to
Israel, which as an ally of Turkey was seen as a potential enemy.
The state of Israel was only recognised de-jure by the conservative New
Democracy government of Prime Minister K. Mitsotakis in 1990, partly as a
result of the Greek involvement in the Gulf War and partly as a result of the
ongoing peace process in the Middle East.
Populist elements within all political parties still continue to engage in the
anti-Semitic rhetoric that stresses the conspiratorial element. Nearly all
these prejudices and popular demonising fortified the barriers in the social
relationships between Jewish and non-Jewish Greeks.
1. Physical acts of violence
Several Jewish sites were vandalised and defaced with Nazi slogans and
graffiti in the last few years, for example the Jewish cemetery in Athens (on
25-26 May 2000) and the Holocaust Memorial and the synagogue in Thessaloniki.
In part the only active neo-Nazi group Chrissi Agvi is responsible for these
attacks.
The al-Aqsa Intifada set off a series of small pro-Palestinian demonstrations,
which, however, all went ahead without any outbreaks of violence. During the
period covered by the report no physical attacks on Jews or Jewish
organisations or incidents concerning them have been reported.
However, we would like to note that only a month before the following
incidents were recorded by ANTIGONE, the Central Board of Jewish Communities
in Greece and by other NGOs. On 15 and 16 April 2002 the Holocaust Memorial in
Thessaloniki was vandalised by person(s) unknown who sprayed red paint on the
wreaths, which had been laid two days previously in memory of the victims of
the Holocaust, and on the surrounding area.
The word "Palestinians" was written in paint nearby. The incident occurred a
day after a large pro-Palestinian demonstration had been held in Thessaloniki.
The Central Jewish Board of Greece wrote to the Minister of Public Order
asking for measures to be taken to guard these sites more effectively in the
future and to publicly condemn the incidents.
The Government (on 17 April), political parties and the Orthodox Church
strongly condemned the incident. On 15 April 2002, the Jewish cemetery of
Ioannina in Northern Greece was vandalised by person(s) unknown with Nazi and
anti-Semitic graffiti slogans. The cemetery had already been desecrated on 16
January 2002.
The Greek Government, political parties and the Orthodox Church condemned the
incident in strong terms.
On 18 April the Holocaust Memorial of Drama in northern Greece and the Jewish
cemetery of Zavlani in Patras (southern Greece) were vandalised with Nazi and
anti-Semitic graffiti slogans. The Greek Government, political parties and the
Orthodox Church condemned the incident.
2. Verbal aggression/hate speech
Politics
The rumour, first published by some newspapers of the Arab press, that 4000
Jews had been warned by the Israeli Secret Service Mossad and did not go to
their offices on 11 September, the day of the terrorist attack in New York,
was tabled as a question in Parliament by MP and leader of the ultra
nationalist party "LAOS" G. Karatzaferis soon after the attack.
Print and broadcast media - even the Bulletin of the Technical Chamber of
Greece (8 October, 2001) - reported this rumour as well.
According to a poll conducted five weeks after the event, 42% of Greeks
subscribed to this rumour, as opposed to 30% who rejected it. The Central
Jewish Board and the Israeli Embassy protested to politicians and the press.
In a statement the Union of Athens Press Journalists mentioned the small
television station "Tele Asty" (which is owned by Karatzaferis and spread the
anti-Semitic rumours) as a special case of racist behaviour towards the Jews.
It should also be noted that most newspapers reported this rumour ironically
and not in an anti-Semitic way.
Insults
The Chairman of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in his written reply
to the National Focal Point's request for information has included a number of
cartoons published in national dailies that may be considered as insulting to
Jews.
Graffiti
This has been reported in the previous section under "Vandalism and
Disparagement". There have been no other reported graffiti or other
anti-Semitic inscriptions by human rights NGOs.
Media
On 2 April the two largest dailies Ta Nea and Elefterotypia (center-left) as
well as the right-wing daily Apogevmatini printed as unquestionable reality a
heinous libel that Israelis were trafficking the organs of dead Palestinian
fighters and performing medical experiments on Arab prisoners.
The Chairman of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in his written reply
to the National Focal Point's request for information has stressed that "there
is a conscious attempt to create an anti-Semitic climate by various articles
that are critical of the policies pursued by Israel and personally its Prime
Minister"; he specifically pointed out two articles that put forward the view
that Jews have excessively used the pain resulting from the cruelty of the
Holocaust published during the period in question:
- "Auschwitz and Palestine", published in the daily national newspaper
Kathimerini on 2 June 2002.
- "The excessive use of the Holocaust", published in the daily national
newspaper Kathimerini on 4 June 2002. He also pointed out that cartoons with
anti-Semitic content have appeared in newspapers during the period in question
and in previous months.
A small number of commentators, who frequently appear on small TV stations
like the ultra right wing Tele-Asty and Extra Channel expressing anti-Semitic
views, are not considered "opinion leaders" and their influence is very small.
The popular composer Mikis Theodorakis wrote an editorial for the Greek daily
TO VIMA in which he claimed that the Jews are "imitating the Nazi savagery"
and that they are "enchanted by the Nazi methods".
Internet
1997 the Hellenic Nationalist Page published an anti-Semitic diatribe on its
Internet site, entitled "New Zionist Attack against Hellenism" which is still
on their homepage. Taking issue with phrases in the ad referring to the
Maccabean victory over the Greeks, the article accused the Jews of racism and
claimed, falsely, that Rupert Murdoch, owner of the New York Post, was a Jew.
The article also reiterated other charges the group had made in the past, such
as Jewish collaboration with "the Ottomans in the subjugation of Byzantium,"
and the Jews' promotion of the notion that "they are the only (or at least the
most victimised) victim in history."
Further, it questioned the "imaginary 6 million figure" of people who perished
in the Holocaust, in contrast to the documented figure of 800,000 Greeks lost
in World War II.
Similar articles have appeared on this website in recent years. The latest
addition (news 2001) presents an article on "The exclusive victims of
genocide" which contains similar anti-Semitic stereotypes and refers to
another article from 1996 (with a link to be opened) on "Zionists and Mongols
- Butchers of Hellenism."
3. Research Studies
Opinion polls carried out after 11 September terrorist attacks showed that a
significant proportion of the Greek public readily accepted conspiratorial
rumours implicating the Israeli secret services in the attack.
There is no reliable scientific data available, but it may be that media
reports may have in their critical approach towards Israel's military
operations inadvertently led to a rise in anti-Semitic sentiments among the
Greek population.
4. Good practices for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression
Only small examples had been visible: On 6 June the topic in Modern Greek
presented in the formal examinations for entry into Greek Universities
(Panhellenic Examinations) was an excerpt from the "Diary of Anne Frank".
Students were asked to comment and compare WWII and modern incidents of racism
and anti-Semitism. On 28 January 2002 the President of the Republic was
visited by the teachers and pupils of the primary school of the Jewish
Community of Athens.
On 29 January Leon Benmayor, honorary Chairman of the Jewish Community of
Thessaloniki and Holocaust survivor, was honoured with the Golden Cross of the
Greek Legion of Honour by the President of the Republic for his contribution
to science.
There was also an excellent treatment of Zionism as the quest for national
identity and a state by the IosPress group of journalists who write for the
national daily Eleftherotypia (published on 28 April 2002).
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
The Government, political parties and the Orthodox Church have always
condemned any anti-Semitic incidents through their official spokespersons and
the Government has taken special security measures for safeguarding Jewish
establishments. The government on 17 April condemned acts of vandalism at the
Holocaust memorial in Thessaloniki and the Jewish cemetery of Ioannina.
There have been no particular reactions by politicians or other opinion
leaders during the period in question. This brought the Greek Helsinki
Monitor/Minority Rights Group to the conviction "that the government has yet
to take a strong and consistent stand against anti-Semitism.
Even extreme anti-Semitic views openly expressed by Orthodox clergy members,
politicians, factions, cultural icons, and journalists pass without comment.
Attacks on Jewish monuments and property receive little if any attention in
the media and faint condemnation by the political and spiritual leadership."
The large majority of politicians and opinion leaders from both the right and
the left have been strongly critical of the military offensive against the
Palestinian Authority and the following events, but have equally condemned
terrorist acts stressing the need for a peaceful settlement and the futility
of military solutions.
On 31 March the speaker of the Greek Parliament and leading PASOK member
Apostolos Kaklamanis condemned Israel for committing genocide against the
Palestinian people.
The Central Jewish Council expressed its deep regrets "for the unacceptable
and unfair comparison" of the Holocaust with Israeli action in the West Bank.
During an OSCE parliamentary discussion on current European anti-Semitism on 8
July 2002, the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged the Greek Prime Minister and
other Greek leaders to publicly condemn the use of anti-Semitic stereotypes
and Nazi imagery that has characterised much of the public and media criticism
of Israel.
Spain
In Spain (total population 40 million) Jews were recognised as full citizens
in 1978. Today the Jewish population numbers about 40,000, 20,000 of whom are
registered in the Jewish communities. The majority live in the larger cities
of Spain on the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa or the islands.
Many of the prejudices cultivated during the Franco years persist; during that
time Israel was never recognised. Israel and Spain did not establish
diplomatic ties until 1986, when Spain recognised the State of Israel. Many
young Spaniards consider support of the PLO a crucial qualification for being
identified as "progressive" or leftist.
Since the beginning of the second Intifada more and more anti-Semitic attacks
are taking place, mainly after pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
In October 2000 the Holocaust Memorial in Barcelona was desecrated and the
glass door of Spanish-Moroccan synagogue in the North African enclave of Ceuta
destroyed and anti-Semitic pamphlets distributed across the market place.
On 8 October, the most important Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, graffiti was
smeared across a house belonging to the local Jewish association in Oviedo
that read "Jew murderers".
An incident had taken place the day before during the football match between
Spain and Israel outside the stadium in Madrid. Neo-Nazis shouted anti-Semitic
slogans and distributed anti-Semitic literature. Also, windows of the main
synagogue in Madrid were shattered on 13 October.
The Imam of Valencia asserted on 21 September 2001 in a mosque filled with
worshipers: "All the evidence shows that the Jews are guilty", referring to
the claim by radical Islamists, right-wing extremists and Holocaust deniers
that Jews were behind the attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September.
In September 2001 the synagogue of Melilla was attacked and a Jewish cemetery
desecrated; in Ceuta several Jewish buildings were daubed with paint.
1.Physical acts of violence
On 5 January 2002, anti-Semitic graffiti was found on the door of a synagogue
in Madrid; around midnight of 8 March 2002, the door of the Ceuta synagogue
was set on fire. The synagogue of Madrid is now under permanent police
surveillance and Jewish schools are also provided with police surveillance at
the beginning and end of activities.
2.Verbal Aggression/hate speech
Direct Threats
In July outside the synagogue in Madrid, a group of twenty skinheads
demonstrated, shouting anti-Israel and anti-Semitic slogans.
Public Discourse
The Movimiento Social Republicano (MSR), which on other occasions joins
xenophobic protests against Muslims (for example against the opening of a
Moroccan consulate in Almeria), participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations
organised by radical Islamists and NGOs, where the participants also displayed
anti-American attitudes. The mass media often confuses Israel and the Jewish
community.
On 7 April 2002, a pro-Palestinian demonstration attracted official
representatives from all Catalan political parties, except the conservative
PP, and a total of 7000 people in Barcelona. One demonstrator, who appeared
clearly in a photograph taken, was carrying a caricature of Ariel Sharon's
head on a pig's body (traditional anti-Semitic stereotype), which is
surrounded by swastikas.
Internet
A series of international right-wing extremist and revisionist/denial
homepages offer links in Spanish. Particular attention is to be given to the
website of the "Nuevo Order" group that is networked per links with the entire
far-right scene and whose label shows a similarity with the American militant
far-right group "Stormfront". "Nuevo Order" combines anti-Semitism with
anti-Americanism and mixes old with modern anti-Semitic stereotypes.
The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" can be downloaded here as well as at the
linked site belonging to the "Fuerza Aria". The "Fuerza Aria", a group that
spreads extreme rightist and National Socialist thought, conducts campaigns
via the Internet "Against the Jewish Power" and propagates a pro-Palestinian
and pro-Iraqi stance.
3. Research Studies
The survey commissioned by the ADL conducted between 9 and 29 September 2002
concerning "European Attitudes towards Jews, Israel and the
Palestinian-Israeli Conflict" (see Table: Report on Belgium) established that
Spanish respondents harbour the most anti-Semitic view. 72% agreed to the
statement "Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country" (EU average:
51%) and 63 % to the statement "Jews have too much power in the business
world".
4. Good practices for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression
On 9 June 2002 the Evangelical Church and the Institute for Judeo-Christian
Studies in Madrid together with the Jewish communities of Madrid and Barcelona
organised a demonstration of support for Israel also as a sign against
anti-Semitic attitudes.
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
Newspapers have become more deliberate in their use of graphics, avoiding any
assimilation between Nazi and Jew symbols. The Spanish Interior Minister
Mariano Rajoy Brey, together with his colleagues from Germany, France, Belgium
and the United Kingdom, presented a joint declaration against "Racism,
Xenophobia and anti-Semitism" in April 2002.
France
Jews in France (total population: 60 million) - the biggest such community in
Western Europe (600,000-700,000, half of them living in the Paris area) - are
generally well respected, socially assimilated and well represented in
politics.
Anti-Semitic prejudices in France were already virulent during the Six Day War
and the anti-Zionist campaign of the 1970s and 1980s.
With the successes achieved by the extreme right-wing Front National and an
increasing denial of the Holocaust in the 1990s such stereotypes once again
received strong acceptance.
At the same time, in the mid-1990s began the critical engagement with National
Socialism, collaboration and the responsibility of the Vichy Regime.
As the second Intifada began, the number of anti-Semitic criminal offences
rose drastically; out of 216 racist acts recorded in 2000 146 were motivated
by anti-Semitism. The peak was reached during the Jewish High Holidays in
October 2000; one third of the anti-Semitic attacks committed worldwide took
place in France (between 1 September 2000 and 31 January 2002 405 anti-Semitic
incidents were documented).
The perpetrators were only seldom from the extreme right milieu, coming
instead mainly from non-organised Maghrebian and North African youths.
After interrogating 42 suspects, the police concluded that these are
"predominantly delinquents without ideology, motivated by a diffuse hostility
to Israel, exacerbated by the media representation of the Middle East conflict
( ) a conflict which, they see, reproduces the picture of exclusion and
failure of which they feel victims in France".
Beginning in January 2002, but mainly from the end of March till the middle of
April 2002 , there was a wave of anti-Semitic attacks. In the first half of
April attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions in Paris and surrounding
areas were daily occurrences.
This was a repeat of the situation of October 2000.
In reaction to the anti-Semitic mood the number of the French Jews who
immigrated to Israel in 2002 doubled to 2,566, the highest number since 1972.
In addition, there was an almost polemical debate on the nature as well as the
denunciation of anti-Semitism linked to the situation in the Middle East and
to Islam, a debate, which led to divisions between prominent participants and
anti-racist groups.
Anti-Semitism and security questions specific to the Jewish community were
almost absent from public debate during this period.
In fact, the main ideological themes in the public debate at a time of both
Presidential (12 April and 5 May 2002) and national (9 and 16 June 2002)
elections were law and order and the unexpectedly strong support for the Front
National and its leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who played on anti-Semitic
resentments.
Viewed from a later perspective, there is an obvious connection with
anti-Semitism. During that same period there was a renewed outbreak of
anti-Muslim acts and speech attributed to the far right.
1. Physical acts of violence
Indications are that there was a significant decrease in May and June 2002 in
observed acts in relation to the period from 29 March to 17 April 2002, a
period in which police sources recorded 395 events, ranging from graffiti to
assaults. Sixty-three percent of these events involved anti-Semitic graffiti,
while 16 cases of assault and 14 of arson or attempted arson against
synagogues were reported to the police.
These acts principally took place in large urban areas (Ile-de-France,
Provence-Alpes-C te d'Azur and Alsace).
Many of the violent incidents occurred around the pro-Palestinian
demonstrations at the end of March in Lyon, Strasbourg, Marseille and
Toulouse.
While the hypothesis of a detente needs to be confirmed by time, it is true
that hostility displayed towards Jews was still observed, in particular by new
Jewish victim support groups.
The people in charge of the help lines estimated an average of 8 to 12 reports
of this kind every day.
On 10 May eight Arabs who studied with him in the same school attacked a
16-year-old Jewish youth in Bordeaux.
The attack was accompanied by curses and threats.
On 12 May 2002 in Saint-Maur des Foss s (a Paris suburb), three young Jews who
were playing football stated that they were insulted and attacked by about
fifteen young people "of North African origin".
They lodged a complaint against them for assault and racist remarks.
2. Verbal aggression/hate speech
Indirect threats
On 18 May 2002 at a demonstration organised in the XIXth district of Paris by
the Parti des Musulmans de France against the "Naqba", hostile slogans towards
Jews were shouted without any attempt from the organisers to intervene.
On 26 May 2002 during a demonstration organised in Paris against George W.
Bush's trip to France by groups such as the French Communist Party, the Green
party "Les Verts", the Revolutionary Communist League ("Ligue Communiste R
volutionnaire", LCR) and others such as the MRAP ("Mouvement contre le racisme
et pour l'amiti entre les peuples" - Movement against racism and for
friendship between peoples) and the Human Rights League, about thirty
teenagers chanted anti-Jewish and pro-Bin Laden slogans.
The organisers expelled them.
Ethnic minority activists were then forced to intervene to prevent some youths
from attacking a young couple on a scooter in the belief that they were
Jewish.
The anti-Semitic atmosphere also found expression in verbal attacks at schools
and universities.
Graffiti
On 21 May 2002 the police questioned an 18-year-old female student who was
suspected of drawing anti-Semitic slogans and symbols on a kosher butcher's
shop front in Pr Saint-Gervais (Seine-Saint-Denis, Paris suburb).
In June 2002 advertising posters in various metro stations as well as election
posters were defaced by graffiti showing the Star of David and the swastika
connected by an "=" sign.
It should be noted that many Front National and RPF (Rassemblement pour la
France) election posters were also defaced by graffiti with such terms as
"racist" or "Fascist".
Media
In the edition of the daily Le Figaro from 7 June 2002, Oriana Fallaci, who is
the Italian author of a polemical book entitled "La rage et l'orgueil" (Rage
and Pride), wrote a similarly polemical article entitled "Sur l'antis mitisme"
("On anti-Semitism").
On 10 June 2002 the MRAP (Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amiti entre
les peuples) lodged a complaint against Oriana Fallaci's book, calling it "a
despicable work where slander, vulgarity and confusion intermingle with
contempt.
This book is an 'asserted call' to racist hatred and violence against all
Muslims."
The request for it to be banned proved unsuccessful.
Internet
On 7 June 2002, the publication on the website Indymedia-France of a text in
which the "Israeli concentration camps" were compared to the Nazi camps in
Germany during the Second World War provoked the resignation of two editorial
team members.
One of the founding members of this anti-globalisation site, which was created
after the Seattle summit, demanded the expulsion of the author of the article,
"to prevent Indymedia-France from falling under revisionist influence".
The incriminated article also pondered whether Israel might be equated with
Nazi Germany.
On the other hand, another website contributor stated that, "in parallel,
there is a debate on the website to determine whether the [Israeli] government
is a Nazi government or not."
3. Research studies
Between 28 January and 1 February 2002, the Sofres Institute surveyed 400
people aged between 15 and 24 living in France.
A massive majority rejected anti-Semitic acts:
87% of the respondents considered that "anti-Semitic acts against synagogues
in France" are "scandalous; the state must punish the culprits very severely";
11% of them considered that "if the Jews did not support Israel as much, these
attacks would not take place";
88% of the respondents considered that "the Jews should be allowed to follow
their usual customs without risking to get into a fight";
in contrast, 11% considered that "if the Jews did not seek to make themselves
conspicuous in wearing the kipah, this kind of fight would not take place";
99% of respondents judged that defacing synagogues is "very serious" or
"rather serious" (against 1% of them who consider this is "not very serious or
not serious at all");
97% of respondents judged that writing anti-Semitic graffiti is "very serious"
or "rather serious" (against 3%);
91% of respondents judged that joking about gas chambers is "very serious" or
"rather serious" (against 9%);
but 11% allocate "a share of responsibility for these acts to the Jewish
community, because of its support to Israel".
To the question "do the Jews have too much influence ?" in France, 77%
answered that they "rather disagree" or "do not agree at all"; specifically in
the media, 79% responded that they "rather disagree" or "do not agree at all";
and in politics, 80% answered that they "rather disagree" or "do not agree at
all".
These figures are much weaker than those collected by Sofres during a previous
survey, which covered the whole population, conducted in May 2000 for the
Nouveau Mensuel magazine.
Then 45% of the respondents had agreed with the statement that Jews have "too
much influence".
To the question "regarding people who say that the Holocaust and the gas
chambers did not exist, what is your position?", 51% estimated that "these
people should not be condemned because everyone is free to think whatever they
want"; against which 48% said "these people must be condemned because they
deny a serious historical fact".
The figures suggest that the Holocaust is to some extent trivialised, in so
far as "freedom of thought" (and expression) is often placed above the other
issues at stake.
Several observers believe that far-right anti-Semitic violence has shifted
towards anti-Semitism of the suburbs. In this respect, the survey provided new
information on the state of mind of the youth of North African origin "towards
the Jews and anti-Semitism".
As a matter of fact, they were asked the same questions as above.
Thus, 86% of them judged that "defacing synagogues" is "very serious" or
"rather serious";
95% of them thought that the Jews have the "right to follow their usual habits
without risking to get into a fight";
and only 5% of them thought that "if the Jews did not seek to make themselves
conspicuous in wearing the kipah, this kind of fight would not take place".
In the end, 54% of them underlined the seriousness of "insulting the Jews,
even if it is a joke". Compared with the overall group of people between 15
and 24, such answers tend to show that the youth of North African origin is
more tolerant than the average, an attitude that can undoubtedly be explained
by the fact that anti-Semitic acts or attitudes remind them more or less
directly of how they themselves have suffered from racial or cultural
discrimination as Muslims or children of North African parents.
On the other hand, according to this survey the tendency is reversed
concerning traditional anti-Semitic prejudices.
The question relating to the Jews' alleged influence shows that "respectively
35%, 38% and 24% of the youth of North African origin (against only 22%, 21%
and 18% of the whole group of young people) completely or rather think that
the Jews have too much influence in the economic and political fields and in
the media".
Strangely enough, the poll did not say anything about their answers to the
questions concerning the Holocaust.
According to an exclusive survey carried out on 3 and 4 April 2002 by the CSA
poll institute and the weekly Marianne of a 1000 people aged over 18, 10% of
the French dislike the Jews (while 23% of them dislike North Africans and 24%
of them dislike young French people of North African origin), which is the
case with 52% of far-right voters (whether for Le Pen or M gret).
The surveys commissioned by the ADL conducted between 16 May and 4 June 2002
and between 9 and 29 September concerning "European Attitudes towards Jews,
Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict" (see Table: Report on Belgium)
established that 17% of respondents agreed to at least three of the four
anti-Semitic statements presented.
Forty-two percent agreed to the statements that "Jews are more loyal to Israel
than to this country" and "Jews have too much power in the business world",
whereby amongst youths the agreement was far higher with 61% and 64%,
respectively. With regard to the current conflict in the Middle East, 29%
expressed that they sympathised with the Palestinians and only 10% sympathised
with Israel. 37% had no preference for one side or the other.
4. Good practices for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression
The publishing of documents such as the Sofres public opinion poll entitled
"Youth and the Jewish Image", as well as the public meetings organised to
accompany them, maintain a feeling of hope with regard to both the growing
tolerance towards the Jews and to their "normalisation" in French society.
The situation also seems to be encouraging concerning the attitude of children
of North African parents towards the Jews, in a time when the global
geopolitical situation remains very shaky.
The educational information campaigns within Muslim groups, such as on the
theme "to burn a synagogue is like burning a mosque", have encouraged people
to talk again and have improved solidarity between the different communities
in this field.
Thus, the gesture of a local Muslim group in Aubervilliers (northern suburb of
Paris) is particularly symbolic: it lent its school bus to a Jewish school of
the same area as its buses were destroyed during an attack.
Beyond inter-religious dialogue, the spontaneous or organised mobilisation of
civil society against the far right has reaffirmed the Republic's common
values. Such reactions have at least reminded us that the fight against
racism, xenophobia and discrimination remains a common struggle.
The fact that anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish acts in France are presently being
committed mainly by youngsters from North African immigration, apparently
acting in an isolated manner, brought many observers to the conclusion that a
far right anti-Semitism has been superseded by a form of anti-Semitism rooted
in urban decay and social deprivation.
The French term for this combination of urban decay and social deprivation is
"banlieue", literally "suburb", which functions in roughly the same way as
"inner city" in English.
Beyond the local character of this observation, some, like the philosopher
Pierre-Andr Taguieff - during his highly publicised book launch in spring 2002
-, spoke of a "new planetary judeophobia" ("nouvelle jud ophobie plan taire")
that explains "all world problems by the existence of Israel".
This "new judeophobia", which he sees as initially brought about by radical
Islamic activists, by the heirs of "third-worldism" and by far-left
anti-globalisation activists, accuse the Jews of being themselves racist.
Thus, according to Taguieff, there seems to be an "anti-Jewish anti-racism".
In this way, it can appear that "the fight against racism and the fight
against anti-Semitism have been dissociated from one another", as Shmuel
Trigano wrote in the weekly newspaper Actualit Juive (25 April 2002), adding
that "suburb anti-Semitism has indeed broken the "united front" strategy,
revealing that the victims of racism (Arab Muslims) could be anti-Semites".
This point of view, which is shared by some Jewish personalities and groups,
can extend to an exclusively Jewish conception of the fight against
anti-Semitism and a tendency to link it to support for Israel and its current
government.
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
The current political climate, which has been dominated by the growth of the
far right and the renewed Republican mobilisation since 21 April 2002,
eclipsed anti-Semitism and tensions between Jews and Muslims in France and
removed them from the political agenda.
It resulted in the abandonment of the large demonstration against racism and
anti-Semitism, for peace in the Middle East and for the union of all
communities, planned for Sunday, 12 May 2002, to run parallel to the "Peace
Now" demonstration in Israel.
Many trade unions, politicians of both left and right organisations and
numerous personalities had organised this demonstration.
Representatives from Jewish organisations criticised the French Government for
being inactive. President Chirac, who was re-elected on 5 May 2002, reacted
officially to the accusations that he had denied the gravity of the threats
against Jews coming mainly from abroad, in particular from Israel and the
United States, on several occasions.
He stated that he "has protested against the 'anti-French campaign', which
took place in Israel and which aimed at presenting France as an anti-Semitic
country".
"France is not an anti-Semitic country", he repeated the day before the 55th
Cannes Film Festival, in response to the American Jewish Congress, which had
sought to dissuade Jewish celebrities from participating in the film festival.
During his discussions with President George W. Bush, who was in France on 26
and 27 May 2002, President Chirac "protested strongly" against the idea
conveyed in the United States that France is seized by a kind of anti-Semitic
fever.
On 19 April the French Interior Minister Daniel Viallant, together with his
colleagues from Belgium, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom, issued a joint
declaration on "Racism, Xenophobia and Anti-Semitism" that appealed for an
undertaking of preventive measures and a European-wide coordination of the
responsible agencies and offices.
On 29 May 2002, Nicolas Sarkozy, the new Interior Minister, went to the
synagogue of Clichy-sous-Bois, which was attacked with a petrol bomb on 10
August 2000, and launched the slogan "zero tolerance for anti-Semitism".
On 2 June 2002, he welcomed representatives from the Jewish community at the
Ministry of the Interior.
The Minister promised to improve the coordination of the suitable preventive
or educational safety measures and to follow up regularly the files indexing
complaints, particularly those submitted by "SOS V rit et S curit".
The participants agreed that similar meetings would take place periodically in
Ile de France and in the provinces.
Moreover, the Minister is said to have committed himself to work in
partnership with the Ministries of Justice and of Education.
On 21 July 2002 French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin declared at a
meeting held on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the roundup of French
Jews for deportation: "to harm the Jewish community is to harm France, harm
the values of our republic."
A new government's hard line on crime and North African juvenile gangs in the
second half of 2002 led to a remarkable decrease of anti-Semitic incidents.
Besides the conspicuous presence of police protecting Jewish institutions the
initiatives of the new Minister of Interior Nicolas Sarkozy promoting an
active dialogue with different sections of the Muslim community changed the
situation in a positive way.
Italy
The 35,000 Jews, of whom 25,000 are members of the various Jewish communities,
are completely integrated into the Italian population (total population: 56.3
million).
Since the Second World War, anti-Semitic prejudice in Italy has seldom taken
on aggressive forms; violent attacks have been rare. However, with the
increase in the number of far-right groups since the beginning of the 1990s,
the picture has altered.
Although anti-Semitic traditions are hardly virulent in Italian society, the
networking of the international far-right scene, which uses anti-Semitism to
create such networks, has also led to a strong anti-Semitic orientation in the
Italian far-right spectrum.
In 1995 anti-Semitic incidents rose from 30 to 50 a year; since the middle of
2000 (30-40% rise) to March-April 2002 a sharp increase of 100% has been
recorded. In the first instance this is due to the conflict in the Middle
East.
However, besides this factor, a high level of xenophobic attitudes and views
is noticeable in the population, which are supported in turn by racist remarks
in public discourse (politics and print media).
Above all the socially marginalized working migrants, numbering ca. 700,000
(510,000 migrants mainly from Morocco, Tunisia and Albania), are affected.
During the 1990s, not only Jewish culture itself but also the history of
Israel, its literature and cinema enjoyed a period of success in Italy, a
surprising development for those who had experienced the troubled years of the
1970s and 1980s in which anti-Israeli resentment was virulent, particularly on
the left.
The crisis that started at the turn into 2001 has accelerated an unforeseen
and unpredictable process that in other countries, especially in France, is
already evident; in Italy, this process has left a number of options open for
the future and these are not immediately clear. In Italy, the second Intifada
has set in motion unexpected mechanisms, whereby traditional anti-Jewish
prejudices are mixed with politically based stereotypes.
It is important to bear in mind that the so-called "spiritual (or
psychological) anti-Semitism" has had a greater impact on the overall
phenomenon in Italian cultural history during the course of the 20th century
(see Julius Evola).
In contrast to France and Belgium, anti-Semitic attacks in Italy have up to
now been limited to verbal abuse, graffiti and the like.
But since the start of the second Intifada incidents now include death threats
against Jews and carry both anti-Semitic as well as anti-Israeli stereotypes,
often in a synonymous context.
The perpetrators are local Italians and till now, in contrast to Belgium,
France and the Netherlands, hardly any person from the milieu of Muslim
migrants.
In contrast to other countries, in Italy there is rather a revival of
anti-Judaist topoi coupled with traditional anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist
stereotypes rooted in the left. It became particularly visible during the
events, which took place at the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem.
The worsening of the Israeli-Arab conflict and, in particular, the question of
Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity once again led to ambiguous positions
being taken in some contexts and witnessed the use of potentially dangerous
language.
1. Physical acts of violence
There were a few attacks at the beginning of the year, for example in January,
a Jewish lawyer was attacked came in his office by two thugs who hit him with
a club on his head and shoulders. It appears that right-wing extremists were
responsible for this attack.
A number of the incidents occurred in April, but in the following months there
was a reduction. The incidents recorded coincided with the heightening in
international tension, thus creating entirely predictable peaks.
Italian commentators assess that the rise in the scope of anti-Semitism is the
result of Israel's governmental policy towards the Arabs since the outbreak of
the Intifada.
There are however some exceptions. These can be linked to the specific Italian
situation and there is often the feeling that the lack of public attention or
dwindling of public interest in such incidents is the result of the national
political situation, its internal crisis and the strong political divisions
between government and opposition parties, a factor exerting a severe impact
on different spheres of public life.
Demonstrations, marches and other political actions were recorded at the end
of March, but without doubt the climax was reached in the period beginning
with the Israeli occupation of Bethlehem, the stalemate at the Church of
Nativity (2 April) and the attack against Jenin refugee camp (10 April). By
the end of April tension as well as media attention had again decreased,
leaving behind a few consequences and some rather feeble polemics.
4 April: destruction of the research work and the archives on the Holocaust
and the resistance created by the students of Liceo Galileo Ferraris High
School in Varese, where billboards were destroyed and the school walls were
painted in red with graffiti such as "burn the Jews".
Varese belongs to one of the strongholds of far-right groups in Italy,
especially right-wing skinheads.
2 June: some newspapers reported that two right-wing extremists were arrested
for planning an attack in the Venice ghetto. In addition, powerful weapons and
a map with the borders of the Venice ghetto clearly marked were seized.
2.Verbal aggression/hate speech
Politics
On 2 April some Jews from Rome staged a protest in front of the headquarters
of the political party Rifondazione Comunista.
Although peaceful, the protest still caused some trouble with passers-by: some
passing cars reacted to the traffic jam in Corso Italia by shouting
anti-Semitic slogans at the protesters. During an event organised by the
Social Forum of Bologna in support of the Palestinians, the recurrent words
against Israel were "genocide"; "deportation"; "fanatic and racist Zionists"
and these were accompanied by the proposal for a vast boycott of Israeli
products, which "could be associated to genocide".
The period in question has been marked by a long and bitter dispute between
the trade unions and the government over a proposed revision of a decree
stipulating the cancellation of Article 18 of the Workers' Statute. This
crisis resulted in a general strike (16 April), overlapping exactly with the
week in which the Middle East crisis reached its climax.
During the strike and the accompanying street demonstrations and on the
Liberation Day celebrations (25 April), the empathy generated by
pro-Palestinian sentiments overtook the trade union issues or historical
affiliations which had rallied thousands to protest in the squares,
transforming, in some cases but not all, the above events into forms of
explicit anti-Israeli propaganda.
4 April: Rifondazione Comunista opened its national congress. Some observers
were struck by the opening of the conference: a video showing images of a
Palestinian child being protected in vain by his father from shooting (stills
from the video have also been placed on a whole series of international
far-right websites inferring that the child has been shot by Israeli soldiers)
was screened together with a scene from the film Roma citt aperta (Rome, an
Open City).
The scene from the film shows a Nazi soldier shooting the actress Anna Magnani
with a machine gun.
The secretary-general of the party, preoccupied by the reactions to the
party's marked pro-Palestinian policy, closed the congress three days later,
saying that the party supported all minorities and proclaimed: "We are Jews".
During the congress, a number of objects explicitly referred to Palestine: the
Palestinian flag, a book by the representative of the Palestinian National
Authority (PNA) in Italy, Diario segreto (Secret Diary; with a foreword by a
former President of Italy), as well as other texts by Palestinian leaders and
the kefiah, the traditional Arab head gear. During the general strike on 16
April, in Turin many demonstrators were wearing the kefiah.
The kefiah is also present in the Italian and European far-right political
movements. Some participants in pro-Palestinian demonstrations openly
displayed their radical attitude: they dressed as suicide bombers with all the
trappings.
6 April: an imposing crowd of anti-globalisation protesters marched through
Rome and young people dressed as kamikaze shouted slogans against Israel.
The leadership of the political parties Democratici di Sinistra (Democrats of
the Left) and Margherita dissociated themselves from the protest, which had
been promoted by all the trade unions and opposition political parties; for
the first time political parties on the left split over issues relating to the
Middle East.
A number of banners directed against Israel and the Israeli Prime Minister
Sharon included the following slogans: "State of Israel, State of murderers";
"Sharon executioner" (with the Nazi "S"), "Bush, Sharon, Peres" (with the "S"
styled as a swastika); "Zionists and fascists are the terrorists"; "Against
the racist terrorism of USA, Europe and Israel, on the side of the Palestinian
masses"; "Holocaust, no thank you. Free Palestine"; "Palestinian Holocaust,
Europe, where are you?"
Public discourse
25 April: the Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea (CDEC) was
informed that during a demonstration in Milan marking the anniversary of the
liberation of Italy from the Nazis, many pro-Palestinian banners were
displayed, reading for example "Murderers, Nazist Sharon, Intifada until
victory"; others assimilated the Star of David to the swastika or surrounded
the star with barbed wire and broken by a closed fist.
Graffiti
31 March: anti-Semitic graffiti and a swastika were found on a synagogue in
Modena.
7 April: anti-Semitic graffiti was found in several places in the old Venice
ghetto.
6 May: large graffiti in bold characters saying "Jews murderers" was seen in
an underground pass in the city of Prato (central Italy). On the same day, the
CDEC of Milan received an anonymous phone call from someone who said, "We will
burn you all".
22 May: anti-Semitic slogans were written on the walls of the town of
Marrucini in Abruzzo.
In addition, in Milan messages such as "Jews out of the neighbourhood"
re-appeared on public walls (Via Venini).
Media
There seems to be a return of abusive language towards Jews ; an example of
which is the use of the attribute "perfidious" when referring to the Israeli
government - a term that used to be in the Catholic Good Friday prayers and
was condemned by Pope John XXIII. There is an outpouring of anti-Israel
statements on state radio and television and also in some Catholic circles,
lamenting the deaths of Palestinians while glossing over Israel deaths.
It is absolutely essential to make a clear distinction between the language
used by the Pope and that, which appears in the media and in the declarations
of some Catholics. Even in some of the politically moderate press there are
scattered references to the murder of Christ, showing that, after decades of
absence, such stereotypes are also being revived in secular circles.
3 April: the front page of the national daily newspaper La Stampa carried a
cartoon by Giorgio Forattini as a comment on the occupation of Bethlehem. At
the sight of an Israeli tank a baby Jesus in a cr che asks: "Are they going to
kill me for a second time?"
A heated debate followed in the papers. Many resentful letters were sent to
the editor and numerous Catholic readers filed protests. The president of the
Union of Jewish Communities, Amos Luzzatto, strongly criticised the return of
the accusation of deicide, cancelled by the Second Vatican Council.
The director of La Stampa distanced himself from the author of the cartoon.
The same day someone wrote "Israelis Murderers" on the walls of a synagogue in
Siena.
5 April: one of the main authorities of the state - the President of the
Senate - denounced what he described as "the imbalance of Italian public
opinion in favour of only the cause of the Palestinians, thus risking feeding
an anti-Semitic campaign, of which we have had dangerous and serious
examples". The same day someone wrote "Free Palestine" on the fa ade of the
synagogue in Cuneo.
2 May: the daily La Nazione of Florence reported that some anti-Semitic
messages were written on a Catholic Church in the town of Gavinana outside
Florence, praising the Holocaust and the twenty years of fascist domination in
Italy.
The head of the Rome Jewish Community, Leone Paserman, stated, "The Italian
mass media have started a disinformation campaign that nourishes anti-Israel
and anti-Jewish hatred".
On 12 April the famous Italian journalist and writer, Oriana Fallaci published
her condemnation of the media, the church, and the left and their
anti-Semitism in the weekly Panorama: "I find it shameful (...) that the
government-controlled television stations contribute to the revival of
anti-Semitism by crying over Palestinian deaths only, minimising the
importance of Israeli deaths, speaking in a brisk and dismissive tone about
them".
Fallacis condemnation and fiery indictment was followed by a mostly
controversial debate specially because she is known as a controversial
left-leaning journalist.
Direct threats
Renowned Jewish journalists have received threatening letters full of insults
as well. Some of them received up to fifty such e-mails during the period
monitored. Attacks against Jewish students by fellow pupils in schools, at
playgrounds and during sports competitions, such as calling them names,
including the use of the words "Jew", "dirty Jew" or "Rabbi" as insults, still
persist, as does the hanging of anti-Semitic slogans and banners in stadiums.
Indirect threats
Although they did not increase in the last few months, these remain on a very
high level, especially in connection with the football club Lazio Rome.
Public discourse
Particularly interesting is the emergence, in the month of April, of slogans
and comments that referred to the current persecution of the Palestine people
by describing the Israeli-Arab conflict in terms of the inversion of the
victim/persecutor roles, with clear reference here to the extermination of the
Jews.
Resorting to terms taken from Nazi vocabulary, such as deportation,
extermination, genocide etc., is a constant practice and at times such terms
are emphasised in newspapers with very large titles or else they are used
scornfully in commentaries.
The Internet
The website that can boast a larger number of participants in their discussion
list is that of the extreme right-wing militant group Forza Nuova (New Force).
Some of these sites - right-wing or pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian ("Lo
Straniero Senza Nome", "Holy War", "Radio Islam", "Associazione Italia-Iraq",
"Oltre la Verit Ufficiale") - make use of the entire spectrum of anti-Semitic
stereotypes and have placed the complete text of "The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion", an anti-Semitic forgery from Tsarist Russia, on the net.
The website of Fronte sociale nazionale (National Social Front) carries a
pro-Palestinian Intifada appeal which adopts a traditional anti-Semitic,
anti-Zionist and anti-American language with hostile references to "Talmudic
Judaism", the "global plutocratic cupola" and the bleeding Star of David.
Many other sites deal with the subject of the so-called ritual murder and the
accusation of blood shedding; in others the denial of the Holocaust is the
central point.
The website Che fare (What should be done), part of the far left-wing groups,
includes elements of anti-Zionism, pro-Arab fundamentalism, anti-Americanism
and recurrent stereotypes against Jews used both in the past and at the
present: the Jewish lobby, the relationship with the Masonry, the
international plot, world economic power held by Jews, Jews circumcised with a
dollar etc. are all examples of the most repeated slogans.
It is difficult to know how many people visit these websites as the figures
cited seem to be enlarged, for they increase remarkably over short periods to
be credible.
Between 20 and 29 July, Alfred Olsen, member of a fundamentalist Catholic
brotherhood, Holocaust denier and responsible for the anti-Semitic website
"Holy War/Tradizione Cattolica", submitted contributions to the online forum
of the daily La Stampa on nine occasions which combined anti-Judaist,
traditional anti-Semitic world conspiracy theories and anti-Zionist
stereotypes.
3. Research Studies
Among the various surveys carried out during the past few months, it seems
interesting to refer to the ones carried out by Ispo/ACNielsen CRA, between 13
April and 13 May, part of which was published in "Il Corriere della Sera".
The survey was inspired by the observation that the rigid positions regarding
"who is right" and "who is wrong" in the Israeli-Arab conflict does not
include any references to the circumstances giving rise to the conflict.
For instance, less than half of the Italian population knows about the
foundation of the State of Israel. Only 4% have knowledge about the historical
events that preceded and to some extent explain the evolution of the conflict.
The level of knowledge does not change meaningfully when the political
position changes, although a greater number of both political far-right and
far-left supporters are less informed than those who are centre-right and
centre-left supporters.
Exactly one month after the above survey, "Il Corriere della sera" published
the results of a poll carried out at the beginning of April. This second
survey showed that the number of people who stated that they had no idea about
the situation had decreased, while the opinion of the majority of the
population blaming "both parties" for the conflict remained stable and
consolidated, although some people on the political centre-left (11% against
6% overall) tended to mostly blame the Israelis for the conflict.
In addition, during the same period "sympathy" for the Jewish state seemed to
have grown and once again this was linked to the political orientation of the
surveyed.
Between 12 and 14 April, a further survey was carried out by Ispo/ACNielsen
CRA based on a sample of 5000 telephone interviews. The data has yet to be
fully processed.
This survey asked respondents whether Italian Jews have common characteristics
distinguishing them from the rest of the population: 54% of the interviewed
still believe that Italian Jews have distinct characteristics and 68% cited as
proof a peculiar relationship with money and a mentality and lifestyle
different from those of other Italians.
In addition, there is growing number of people who think that Italian Jews are
not real Italians and that they should stop playing the role of being a victim
of a persecution that dates back fifty years. In particular they mentioned:
the need to speak less about the Holocaust; the passage from being the victims
of the past to becoming the persecutors of today in the Israeli-Arab conflict;
and that the Day of Memory (27 January) should not only be devoted to
remembering the victims of the Shoah, but also all the other victims of
persecution in the 20th century.
The survey commissioned by the ADL between 9 and 29 September 2002 concerning
"European Attitudes towards Jews, Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict"
(see Table: Report on Belgium) established that Italian respondents assumed
second place behind the Spanish in their agreement to anti-Semitic statements.
Next to Spain (72%) Italy also shows the second highest agreement with the
statement that "Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country" (58%)
whereby 42 % agreed to the statement "Jews have too much power in the business
world" which places Italy with France in third place after Spain and Belgium.
4. Good practices for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression
In the months prior to May 2002, good practices to combat anti-Semitism
included those numerous initiatives aimed at stimulating an often fragile and
poor historical memory organised all over the country on 27 January to mark
Memory Day, established by a legislative decree two years ago.
Trade unions organised public debates and initiatives in many regions and
provinces, showing an interest for a debate that had not received much
attention in the previous years within the trade union movement. Beginning in
the autumn of 2002, a training programme started in the region of Lombardy
that will continue through into 2003 and involve the high schools of the city
of Lecco and union delegates from companies operating in the area.
Issues to be dealt with are anti-Semitism and the Shoah and the dignity of
man. The provisional title is Considerate se questo un uomo (Consider if this
is a man), taken from the famous phrase by Primo Levi.
Rather innovative in Italy, trips will be organised to some of the symbolic
places in Europe, from Prague to Auschwitz and to Mostar, including the former
Nazi concentration camp Risiera di San Sabba in Trieste.
The video Promesse (Promises), on tales of Israeli and Palestinian children in
war and their fears and hopes beyond the usual stereotypes, had a remarkable
impact on public opinion; the video is useful for a balanced understanding of
the dramatic situation in the Middle East.
Significantly, the video was distributed together with a major weekly
magazine, L'Espresso, allowing more copies to be circulated than would have
otherwise been the case.
Another initiative aimed at reconciliation after the division that occurred
within the left-wing parties following the rally of 6 April (see chronology)
was a concert on 19 April at the Colosseum organised by the Mayor of Rome,
during which Israeli and Palestinian singers performed in turn on stage.
The proposal by the Radical Party to include the State of Israel into the
European Union does not seem to have met with the interest of the other
political parties. This proposal was also submitted to all Regional Councils,
but there, too, not much consensus was reached, nor did it gain much exposure
in the media.
There are quite a number of websites dealing with the issue of anti-Semitism
in both Europe and in Italy from a historical perspective, with particular
focus on the racial laws in Italy and its consequences.
There are also websites created for the specific purpose of countering the
wave of misunderstanding and of responding to media attacks against Israel, at
times with a certain partisan spirit but on the whole impartial in judgment.
An example of such a website is
http://www.informazionecorretta.com/ which provides a wide range of
sources.
Another interesting site that can be highlighted is the site of the
confederated trade union UIL which, starting from 23 May 2002, presents a
position paper by the educational department of the national secretariat of
the union under the title: "Schools and the prevention of anti-Semitism".
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
An appeal by the Israeli writer Abraham Yehoshua to establish a clear boundary
between Israel and Palestine, thereby encouraging a unilateral withdrawal of
Israel, was signed by prominent Italian writers from across the political
spectrum.
Political leaders have condemned the anti-Semitic tone of the demonstrations
billed as promoting peace or Palestinian rights.
The imam of the Italian Islamic Community Abdul Hadi Palazzi maintains contact
to the Italian Jewish Community and preaches messages of moderation and even
friendship toward Israel.
15 April: some politicians from both the governing and opposition parties
called for an "Israeli Day" in Rome; the director of a pro-government daily
newspaper - Il Foglio (The Sheet) - acted as promoter of the event.
About 3000 people marched through the centre of the city carrying Israeli
flags. The participants included militants from a wide range of political
parties, acting individually and irrespective of their political affiliations.
25 April: during the manifestation of the day of liberation in Milan,
participated by about 200,000 people, the leader (general secretary) of the
main Italian trade union, Sergio Cofferati insisted "to fight any revisionism
of history".
In September 2002 Gianfranco Fini, Deputy Prime Minister and leader of
Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance), the former neo-fascist party, excused
himself during his visit to Israel in an interview with the Israelian
newspaper "Haaretz" for the anti-Jewish laws in Italy. He said that he would
accept historical responsibility for Fascist crimes and would ask the
forgiveness of The Jewish People.
Luxembourg
According to a 1979 law, the government may not collect or maintain statistics
on religious affiliation. But this is not the only reason why it is difficult
for the leaders of the Jewish communities to carry out an accurate census: a
great many of the Jews only pass through Luxembourg.
Within the Jewish population (1200, 650 of whom are members of the Jewish
community) there are nearly no orthodox families and a great many
non-practising Jews. Luxembourg is the smallest Jewish community in Europe, in
accordance with the overall population (440,000) of the country.
The Jewish population is extremely well integrated into the social, community
and cultural life of the country. In terms of attitudes towards minority
groups Luxembourg meets the European average on the EUMC Eurobarometer,
whereby a high rate of agreement for improving the rights of minorities exists
side by side with a strong rejection of working migrants.
Since 1997 the negative attitudes have increased. But the excellent economic
situation, in which the Grand Duchy finds itself, with an unemployment rate
below 3%, certainly fosters benevolence among the population.
1. Physical acts of violence
In Luxembourg physical aggression in general and especially against Jews is
rather rare. It might be explained by an absence of deeper social conflicts
and extreme right parties. According to ASTI, the representative of the Jewish
community and the secretary general of the Israelite Consistory, no act of
violence or aggression against Jews or their institutions are know of for the
period from 15 May to 15 June 2002; indeed for the whole year up to now no
aggressive act has been committed.
2. Verbal aggression/hate speeches
Neither the police nor the Jewish community reported any real verbal
anti-Semitic aggression during the reference period. In mid-May, an anonymous
letter was sent to a representative of the Jewish community with the following
content: "Down with Sharon!"
The Jewish community has not deemed this letter to be anti-Semitic, but an
expression of rejection of the Sharon policy. At the same time, on a bridge
support on the motorway towards France, the inscription "Sharon, assassin"
(murderer) appeared.
In this case, the Jewish community also stressed that it was a political
statement. In their opinion the two acts are to be considered as isolated
political incidents, albeit in direct relation to the escalation of violence
in the Middle East, but not anti-Semitic.
3. Research studies
No studies have been undertaken regarding anti-Semitism in Luxembourg. The
last opinion poll carried out by "Ilres" (National Polling Institute) on
behalf of the European Community took place in 1997. It focussed on racism in
the broadest sense of the term, thus including xenophobia and anti-Semitism,
and revealed that only 2% of Luxembourg people considered themselves to be
racist/could be considered as having racist leanings.
The Eurobarometer 2000 shows that Luxembourg is one of the countries where
many people support policies for improving social coexistence between
different ethnic groups. 33% have passively tolerant and 28% actively tolerant
attitudes toward minority groups. But negative attitudes have increased over
the past years.
4. Good practices for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression
On 16 June 2002 within the context of the European Day of Jewish Culture, the
Jewish community invited the population of Luxembourg to discover the Jewish
heritage and find out about the traditions of Judaism. The Jewish community
registered a higher number of visitors than in previous years.
On 10 May the "Service National de la Jeunesse" (National Youth Service)
organised a "Journ e du Souvenir" (Remembrance Day) on the theme "It is
necessary to know history in order to prepare for the future". I
n the presence of the Luxembourg Minister of Culture, Luxembourg internees of
concentration camps during the Second World War told young people of their
experiences.
The Minister stressed the fact that the Luxembourg government will be
increasing the number of initiatives of this sort.
Also in 2002, classes from various educational establishments in Luxembourg
will visit concentration camps in the company of their former Luxembourg
prisoners. This initiative has made a considerable contribution to increasing
the awareness of young people to the problems of anti-Semitism. In fact, each
time long reports were published in the press and presented on Luxembourg
television.
On 15 May a panel dealing more directly with the situation in the Middle East
was organised at the capital's high school on the subject "Without justice and
responsibility there will be no peace". Representatives of religious
communities, secular bodies and freemasons explained their points of view.
This initiative was a part of the Luxembourg project "Towards a culture of
peace" initiated in that school. The only event on the theme "Towards an
equitable peace in the Middle East", organised by the "Friddensbeweegung"
(Peace Movement), brought together 250 persons belonging to humanitarian
groups and various left-wing parties in Luxembourg at the beginning of April.
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
As neither acts of violence nor overt or latent anti-Semitic tendencies have
been observed in Luxembourg, the reactions of politicians and opinion leaders
is limited to condemning such acts occurring in other European countries.
Ministers in the Luxembourg government and members of parliament from all
parties, but also many diplomats traditionally attend the religious services
held in synagogues for the Luxembourg National Day celebrations.
At the same time, the Chief Rabbi and representatives of the Jewish community
attend the "Te Deum" for National Day in the N tre Dame Cathedral, and other
ecumenical services and official events.
The Netherlands
There are three main religious directions within Dutch Jewry (total: 30,000,
the majority living in Amsterdam): the traditional Jewish community
(Nederlands Israelitisch Kerkgenootschap), the liberal religious Jews
(Liberaal Religieuze Joden) and the Sephardic community (Portugees
Israelitisch Kerkgenootschap).
The majority are well integrated in the social and cultural life of Dutch
society (total population: 16 million). In recent years the establishment of
Islamic institutions serving the 700,000-800,000 Muslims resident in the
Netherlands (Moroccans, Turks and people from former Dutch colonies) has
increased and the founding of over 30 Islamic schools demonstrates the
increased influence of Islam.
At the same time, racist attacks against the Muslim population have risen, in
particular after 11 September 2001. Public statements by Imams against
homosexuality, women, the Western world etc. have meet with displeasure in
large sections of the population.
Many of the radical Muslim religious leaders publicly express their disdain of
the USA or even praise the Palestinian suicide bombers. A recent intelligence
service report suggesting that young Muslims were being recruited at mosques
for anti-Western missions in Afghanistan and elsewhere also stirred up public
feeling.
The Dutch Jewish community remains one of the targets of both extreme
right-wing and Islamic fundamentalist movements. Although no comprehensive
system for recording anti-Semitic incidents is in place, anti-Semitic activity
appears to have been increasing slowly but steadily in recent years.
Incidents such as acts of vandalism, abusive graffiti, desecration of Jewish
cemeteries and memorial sites, but also insults and threats continue to
happen. Football vandalism and Internet propaganda are among the main focal
points of anti-Semitic activities in the Netherlands.
There was also a clear link between the incidents and the restitution of
Jewish assets as well as with the events in the Israel-Palestine conflict. In
the aftermath of the 11 September attacks on the United States 90 incidents
directed against Muslims were also registered.
In the run up to parliamentary elections in May 2002 it was mainly the party
of Pim Fortuyn (LPF) which attempted to recruit votes with xenophobic slogans,
whereby in particular new immigration was addressed. Shortly before the
election Pim Fortuyn was murdered; nonetheless his party list became the
second strongest group in parliament and joined the government coalition led
by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.
The Dutch government has banned kosher slaughter, becoming the sixth European
country to do so. The local Agriculture Ministry informed Jewish community
leaders that they would no longer be permitted to slaughter cows in a kosher
manner [shechitah] because of "cruelty" to animals.
At the same time though, the Netherlands has implemented the most restrained
regulations of all the European countries, which have passed the prohibition.
The ban is only applicable for older, heavier bulls - not cows or other
animals. In July 2002 an arrangement was reached in meetings with members of
the Dutch Jewish Committee that took into consideration the "needs of the
Jewish community in Holland".
The University of Leiden together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and
the Anne Frank Foundation annually investigates the extent of extreme-right
and racist violence against minorities. The report for the year 2000 shows an
increase of registered incidents from 313 (1998) to 406 (2000), directed
increasingly against asylum seekers and Jewish persons. Many incidents were
not reported however.
For the first four months of 2002 a renewed increase in the number of attacks
is evident. Another study shows that the perpetrators of anti-Semitic attacks
to a large extent - but not exclusively - come from sections of the younger
second generation Moroccan population, whose level of social integration is
poor and who are influenced by Arab radio and television stations which
broadcast programmes in the Netherlands and agitate against Jews, homosexuals
and Western influences.
Although in contrast to other countries no synagogue has been set on fire in
the Netherlands, since autumn 2000 and above all in the course of 2001 the
number of anti-Semitic incidents increased; cemeteries, monuments, synagogues
and buildings housing Jewish organisations were the target of vandals on 50
occasions.
In 2001 there were 31 incidents; in the first four months of 2002 the number
of attacks, ranging from physical assault to attacks per e-mail, rose to over
100. The unregistered number of cases is possibly far greater though, for the
numbers published only include those incidents cited by the victims themselves
and passed on by NGOs.
1. Physical acts of violence
In March numerous reports of death threats towards Jews sent by letter, fax
and mobile phone were reported. For the months January to April 2002 six cases
of physical violence and nine cases of threats of violence were registered. In
particular more and more Jews who wear the kipah were disparaged on the
streets. An American Jew was followed by a group of persons and badly beaten
up.
4 April 2002: one of the back windows of the synagogue in the Lekstraat in
Amsterdam was badly damaged during the night.
24 April 2002: a Jewish market vendor in the centre of Amsterdam was
threatened with a pistol and the words "I'll shoot you dead".
2. Verbal aggressions/hate speech
In 2000 the number of incidents of verbal intimidation of Jews sharply
increased; CIDI registered 32 incidents of verbal abuse. In comparison with
this figure in the first four months of 2002, 40 cases of anti-Semitic abuse
were registered by CIDI. Most of the anti-Semitic discrimination and incidents
involved the use of swastikas, the distribution of neo-Nazi propaganda and
delivering the Hitler salute.
Direct threats
The number of anti-Semitic incidents in schools and at the workplace is
growing. The slogan "Hamas, Hamas, Joden aan het gas" (Hamas, Hamas, all Jews
to the gas) and the accusation "Kankerjoden" (cancerous growth Jews) are
frequently used against the Jewish population by native Dutch, often by
children and by members of the Muslim population.
Indirect threats
During the pro-Palestinian demonstration in Amsterdam on 13 April 2002, 75
swastikas were carried amongst the 15,000-20,000 participants, almost 90% of
whom were not native Dutch; Israeli and American flags were also burned. 200
mostly non-native Dutch Moroccan young people were responsible for the
excesses during the demonstration.
At other pro-Palestinian demonstrations mainly Moroccan participants called
out anti-Semitic slogans, including the aforementioned "Hamas, Hamas, all Jews
to the gas", a slogan that is heard repeatedly in football stadiums, in
particular by supporters of Feyenoord Rotterdam; anti-Semitic symbols were
also visible. It was also noticed that such chants have long become the norm
in football stadiums.
On 31 July 2002 Feyenoord Rotterdam Football Club held an open day during
which football fans bawled anti-Semitic slogans; as there was no police
presence no action was taken.
Graffiti
In March and April the Memorials for the Murdered Jews in Wageningen and
Meppel were smeared with paint and graffiti reading "Israel fascist state".
Media
On 26 April 2002 an article by Hayo Meyer appeared in the daily Volkskrant
under the title "Israel misbruikt antisemitisme taboe" (Israel abuses the
anti-Semitism taboo). In the article the author used the classical
anti-Semitic stereotype that the Jews themselves are to blame for
anti-Semitism. Ronny Naftaniel, director of the CIDI, was given the
opportunity on 2 May to reply to the accusation and criticise Meyer.
Gretta Duisenberg, wife of European Central Bank President Wim Duisenberg, has
hung a Palestinian flag from her balcony and was accused by some people to
have made anti-Semitic statements. This initiated a broad public debate.
Internet
According to the CIDI, the Internet plays an important role in spreading
anti-Semitism. Of the 550 complaints about the Internet registered by the
Discrimination Internet Registration Centre in 2001, 203 concerned
anti-Semitic incidents. In 2001 197 anti-Semitic homepages were located on the
Internet; in the first four months of 2002 the number had already reached 87.
3. Research studies
The Eurobarometer survey commissioned by the EUMC for the year 2000 showed
that the proportion of Dutch who are to be characterised as "tolerant" towards
minorities lies far above the European average.
The survey commissioned by the ADL conducted between 9 and 29 September 2002
concerning "European Attitudes towards Jews, Israel and the
Palestinian-Israeli Conflict" (see Table: Report on Belgium) established that
compared to the other nine countries included in the surveys one finds the
lowest percentage of anti-Semitic attitudes among the Dutch. 48% agreed with
the statement that "Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country"
whereby 20 % agreed to the statement "Jews have too much power in the business
world".
4. Good practices for reducing prejudices, violence and aggression
A network comprising of many organisations is active against racism, organises
demonstrations and annual activities within the programme of the national
Anti-Racism Day held in March. Two successful educational programmes were
conducted in Dutch schools: "School without racism" and "A world of
differences".
The CIDI youth group and the youth organisation of the Moroccan association
Tans (Towards A New State) organised a joint meeting at the beginning of July
2002 to get to know one another better and to plan more joint projects and
events in the future.
CIDI demanded of the responsible offices and in particular from the government
the establishment of an initiative (Overlegorgaan Religie en Levenbeschouwing)
which shall be devoted to religious and general life issues in daily
co-existence between the various religions, above all with a focus on
transgressing boundaries in relation to persons of different faith.
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
On 31 May 2002 the member of parliament Boris Dittrich from the D 66 party
submitted an inquiry to the Justice and Interior Ministers as to what measures
the state intends to undertake concerning the anti-Semitic attacks in 2001 and
2002, presented on 30 May 2002, which showed a drastic increase in
anti-Semitic incidents.
Austria
Within the population of Austria (8 million) Jews form a small minority of
about 8,000 persons, mainly living in Vienna. The Austrian problem of
anti-Semitism seems to focus more on diffused and traditional stereotypes than
on acts of physical aggression. Extreme rightist and neo-Nazi groups have
intensified their activities since 2000, encouraged by the FP electoral
success in March 1999.
Anti-Semitism is a main ideological component of most extreme right-wing
groups and their publications in Austria.
In the course of the last few years, themes directly concerned with the
National Socialist past have been debated again and again in the public
sphere:
demonstrations were held against the Wehrmacht exhibition, there was
controversy regarding a Holocaust memorial that was officially opened in 2000
and the question of restitution.
Anti-Semitism was an important issue in public debate during the period of
observation. The crucial point in many discussions was indeed whether it was
anti-Semitic to criticise or offend individual Jews or Israeli politics.
The quality papers provided a rather clear answer: criticising or defaming
Jews for being Jewish or playing with long-standing anti-Semitic stereotypes
was indeed an act of anti-Semitism, whereas criticism of the work or behaviour
of people of Jewish descent was not.
We agree with this definition supposing that this criticism refers to Israeli
governmental politics or any other behaviour which will not be connected with
the Jewish descent of the criticised. Some debates showed how fuzzy the
concepts of anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli criticism are.
Especially in this grey-zone, ideas like a worldwide Jewish conspiracy
"dictating political correctness" were rather openly expressed.
The Austrian problem of anti-Semitism seems to focus more on these diffused
and traditional stereotypes than on acts of physical aggression.
1. Physical acts of violence
The media analysis of the daily papers did not reveal any physical acts of
violence towards Jews, their communities, organisations or their property.
According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, a memorial plaque near the
synagogue in St. P lten, Lower Austria was damaged. The investigations of the
complaint are yet to be completed, but the incident is an alleged infringement
of Article 126 StGB (Criminal Code) (serious damage to property).
The Federal Ministry of the Interior emphasised that its report possibly does
not cover all incidents occurring during the monitoring period.
The NGO ZARA, based in Vienna and providing counselling and aid to victims and
witnesses of racism, told the NFP that only one smearing of a swastika in
Vienna was reported to them within the period of observation.
2. Verbal aggression/hate speech
Insults
The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Innsbruck received one threatening letter. It
was addressed to the president and individual members of the community. The
letter said that Jews were not welcome in the Tyrol and that they should go to
the USA or Israel, where they actually belonged. The letter also stated that
the President of the Kultusgemeinde should apologise on TV for what the
Israelis are doing to the Palestinians, and indicated there would be
consequences if she refused to do so.
The Forum gegen Antisemitismus (Forum against Anti-Semitism) reported that the
Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien received 18 threatening letters and there
were about six cases that their clients had qualified as anti-Semitic during
the period of observation. The Ministry of the Interior reported two incidents
of verbal aggression. A professor at the University of Salzburg received an
anti-Semitic flyer from the USA. A billboard with anti-Jewish slogans was put
up in Ried, Upper Austria. Investigations into this incident have yet to be
completed.
Media
The media analysis of the dailies disclosed three letters to the editor
containing anti-Semitic language. One letter accused the Israelis of being
themselves responsible for the emerging anti-Semitism; the other two letters
were related to the discussion about the memorial Siegfriedskopf.
The memorial was put up in commemoration of the people affiliated to the
University of Vienna killed during WWI, but German fraternities, who mobilised
against Jews and organisations accepting Jews as members, dominated the
inauguration ceremony.
The analysis of the right-wing papers shows how anti-Israeli statements from
right-wing politicians and journalists are linked to anti-Semitism and draw on
the repertoire of anti-Semitic stereotypes. In an interview Jurg Haider spoke
about the necessary fight against terrorism following 9/11, including the
fight against "the state terrorist acts of Israel against the Palestinians".
"It is the old problem of the ambivalent standards the US applies, as
everything done by Israel is accepted, including the extinction of civilians,
of innocent people, whose houses are demolished by caterpillars, although
there are still people in them. Whereas the USA is totally allergic to any
kind of terrorist activity executed by the Arab side."
Haider accuses the media of contributing to an unparalleled "Volksverdummung"
(making the people stupid) as they conceal "the real backgrounds of the
power-political conflict in the world and especially in the Middle East".
The following newspaper article, entitled "Israel is different", gives an
insight into the repertoire of anti-Semitic stereotypes invoked by right-wing
extremism:
"Israel has always been presented as a moral and political model state during
the last decades. This picture was severely damaged by the latest incidents:
more than 700,000 Palestinians have been expelled after the state of Israel
has been founded .... Reparations paid for the victims of the Holocaust by
Germany, Austria and Switzerland are hardly ever used for their dedicated
purposes .... In 2002, Israeli soldiers have allegedly committed war crimes in
Jenin and other cities."
Public discourse/politics
The German discussion on anti-Semitism also filtered through into the regular
party conference (Parteitag) of the Freedom Party (FP ). Governor Jorg Haider
stated, alluding in the direction of Millemann (deputy-chairman of the German
FDP and party leader in North Rhine-Westphalia), that "if you are of an
opinion, you must not get down on your knees about it a few days later", and
that the weakness in response to left-wing or Jewish critics is the reason why
the FDP will never be as successful as the FP .
In an interview with the daily Kurier, Haider stated that it was unbearable
that "the politically correct class" was dictating what to think and what not
to think.
The conflict between the author Karl-Markus Gau and Luc Bondy, director of the
Wiener Festwochen (Viennese cultural festival), is based on a statement by Gau
in his book Mit mir, ohne mich hinting at Bondy's vanity.
Following the German debate about Martin Walser's novel "Tod eines Kritikers",
Bondy said in an interview: "I am quite sure that Gau is not an anti-Semite -
apparently unconsciously he reverted to the rhetoric arsenal of
anti-Semitism." Gau responded by saying that the images he used for Bondy's
vanity were definitely not taken from a pool of anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Furthermore, he pointed out that it was rather dangerous to use the term
"anti-Semitism" in a private conflict, for this leads to a term having a
devastating tradition and exerting an ominous force in Austria losing its
meaning.
3. Research Studies
We did not encounter any research studies reporting anti-Semitic violence or
opinion polls on changed attitudes towards Jews.
A research study also dealing with the place of anti-Semitism amongst racism
and xenophobia under the title "Fremdenfeindlichkeit in sterreich" (Xenophobia
in Austria) was conducted in the second half of the 1990s and presented at a
press conference last year.
Forty-six percent of the respondents showed a low or a very low tendency
towards anti-Semitism, 35% were neutral and 19% were strongly or very strongly
inclined to anti-Semitism.
The most recent survey "Attitudes towards Jews and the Holocaust in Austria"
from 2001 shows that agreement with anti-Semitic statements had increased
compared to 1995 and that in a European comparison Austria belongs to those
countries in which anti-Semitism is still widespread amongst the population.
For example, 40% of Austrians in 2001, as against 29% in 1995, "strongly
agree/or somewhat strongly agree" with the statement "Now, as in the past,
Jews exert too much influence on world events."
The survey commissioned by the ADL conducted between 9 and 29 September 2002
concerning "European Attitudes towards Jews, Israel and the
Palestinian-Israeli Conflict" (see Table: Report on Belgium) established that
anti-Semitic attitudes are still quite widespread among the Austrian
respondents.
54% agreed with the statement "Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this
country" whereby 40% agreed to the statement "Jews have too much power in the
business world".
4. Good practices for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression
In the book "5 Fragen an 3 Generationen: Antisemitismus und wir heute" (5
Questions put to 3 Generations: Anti-Semitism and we today) the three authors
belonging to three different generations ask themselves five questions about
anti-Semitism:
What are Jews to you? Has your attitude towards Jews changed during your
lifetime?
How do you explain Hitler and the extinction of the Jews to young people
today?
Are you for or against Jews emigrating from the East to Germany and Austria
today just as in 1900?
What do you think about Israel?
The three authors answer these questions in a very personal way and try to
explain the phenomenon of anti-Semitism and show the different perspectives of
the three generations concerning the persecution of the Jews in the Nazi
period and Israel. The book was presented and discussed in the Austrian
newspaper where it was characterised as signifying "cultural change".
The Mistelbacher Stadtmuseum (Municipal Museum in Mistelbach, Lower Austria)
opened its exhibition Verdr ngt und vergessen - Die Juden von Mistelbach
(Repressed and Forgotten - The Jews of Mistelbach) on 9 June 2002. The
exhibition shows the development of Jewish settlement since 1867, the life of
the former Jewish community and their extinction.
The Judisches Museum Hohenems (Jewish Museum Hohenems) opened its exhibition
Rosenthals. Collage einer Familiengeschichte (The Rosenthals. Collage of a
Family History), which tells stories about a Jewish family who formerly lived
in the Hohenems region and are now scattered all over the world. The stories
and pieces were collected and displayed by the members of the Rosenthal family
themselves.
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
The members of the Austrian Government neither commented on any of the good
practices mentioned above, nor on the negative trends mentioned in this
report.
The following reactions and discussions by and among politicians and other
opinion leaders show how fuzzy the borders between anti-Semitism and
anti-Israeli attitudes are. Imprudent statements directed against the state of
Israel and its leading politicians are apt to stimulate anti-Semitism,
especially among those who are susceptible to anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Last year, the municipality of Salzburg put up a memorial plaque for Theodor
Herzl which read: "In Salzburg I spent some of the happiest hours of my life.
Dr. Theodor HERZL 1860-1904." ("In Salzburg brachte ich einige der sch nsten
Stunden meines Lebens zu") Federal President Klestil informed Heinz Schaden,
the mayor of Salzburg, that he would prefer to see the complete quotation from
Herzl's diary:
"So I would have loved to stay in this beautiful city, but, being a Jew, I
would have never been awarded with the position of a judge." In his letter,
President Klestil wrote that "especially in Austria we must treat the memory
of Theodor Herzl with special sensitivity."
This was the starting point of a discussion at the beginning of June,
involving the Israelitische Kultusgemeinden Salzburg and Wien and ending with
an agreement on 10 June 2002 to complete the text.
On 24 May, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs,
visited the former concentration camp in Auschwitz during her visit to Poland.
In her speech she stressed that it was "not easy for Austria to confess that
many of our compatriots have been perpetrators, accomplices or people who knew
about things happening (Mitwisser)." She stated that "we must learn from
Auschwitz that we cannot watch inactively where anti-Semitism, hatred and
intolerance occur."
On 12 June, Ariel Muzicant and Josef Phringer, chairman of the
Landeshauptleutekonferenz (Governors Conference of the Federal Provinces),
signed a restitution treaty.
The treaty says that the Federal Provinces will pay 8.1 million Euro to the
Kultusgemeinde for property that once belonged to Jewish communities and was
expropriated or destroyed during the Nazi regime. The treaty cannot come into
force, though, before the two class-action lawsuits in the USA are dropped.
The negotiations prior to the signing of the treaty were closely watched, as
governor J rg Haider and Ariel Muzicant were previously involved in court
proceedings, and Haider finally apologized for his libellous statement about
Muzicant in February 2001. The discussion on whether Haider's statement about
Muzicant was anti-Semitic or not, dominated public discourse for a couple of
weeks.
An expert from the Kultusgemeinde Salzburg told us that the Internet fora of
the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation) and dailies were full of
anti-Semitic statements in connection with reports on the signing of this
reparation treaty.
Portugal
In Portugal (total population: 10 million) there is no tradition of
anti-Semitism in recent times. Apart from a period of some tension between
Salazar's regime and the Portuguese Jewish community - that never resulted in
persecution -, in the recent past the small Jewish community (700 people) has
been assimilated and accepted by Portuguese society.
After the dawn of democracy, Jews were totally accepted as another religious
minority and its religion is protected under the act acknowledging religious
plurality.
1. Physical acts of violence
In July the Lisbon synagogue was vandalised and sacred objects scattered on
the floor.
2. Verbal aggression/hate speech
Direct threats
There are no reports of complaints neither by the Jewish community, the press,
NGOs nor other media.
Insults
The Israel Embassy has received slanderous calls and Internet messages with
offensive content.
Telephone
There are no reports of physical or material threats against the Jewish
community and its property.
Graffiti
The Israeli Embassy reported that their flag in the "Nations Park", located
where the World Expo took place in 1998 and now a major social meeting place
in Lisbon, was vandalised. Several Nazi swastikas and other insults appeared
on the flag platform.
Leaflets
No material of this kind was reported to have appeared in circulation. The
Jewish community, as expressed through its representative, considered an
e-mail sent by a professor of the Tres-os-Montes University the main
anti-Semitic event in the monitored period. In this e-mail, addressing the
conflict in the Middle East, a phrase stated "If there are any good Jews
(which I doubt) ( )".
Another professor of the same university alerted the Portuguese Jewish
community about this e-mail, who in turn then revealed it to the press, where
it was published in the newspaper P blico.
Public discourse
On a visit to Israel, the Nobel Prize winner Jos Saramago declared to
Portuguese radio station Antenna 1, that "It must be said that in Palestine,
there is a crime which we can stop. We may compare it with what happened at
Auschwitz". While visiting Ramallah and Arafat with members of the
International Parliament of Writers, Saramago stated that the Israeli blockade
of Ramallah is "in the spirit of Auschwitz," and "this place is being turned
into a concentration camp."
Internet
Several Portuguese Nazi sites appeared in 2002 on the Internet. Some of them
have anti-Semitic declarations and articles. However, these are translations
of anti-Semitic articles written in other countries, mainly from the US. No
explicit threats to the Portuguese Jewish community were found in any of these
sites (at least in the period monitored).
One particular site has more explicit anti-Semitic allusions: Movimento da
Reconstru o Nacional Socialista Atl ntico (Atlantic Movement for the National
Socialist Reconstruction). At this site one can find several links to further
national and foreign National Socialist sites. The majority of the
anti-Semitic sites are Brazilian; and though we can also find Portuguese
fascist and nationalist sites, they do not display anti-Semitic references.
3. Research studies
There is no recent report on anti-Semitic aggression or attitudes.
4. Good practices for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression
There are no reported examples of good practices.
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
The President recently participated in the 100-year celebrations for the
Lisbon Synagogue. On that occasion the President stated that Portugal should
pay more attention to Jewish culture and to its several famous names, claiming
that they are an integral part of Portuguese history. The main newspapers
broadcasted the celebrations and printed the President's address.
Finland
The Finnish Jewish community is rather small (1500 members) of the overall
Finnish population of 5.2 million. In Finland, the Jews are well integrated
into society and are represented in nearly all sectors of it. Most of them
live in the metropolitan area of Helsinki, with small numbers of members
living also in the cities of Turku and Tampere.
Due to Finland's continuing pro-Arab attitude since the 1967 Six Day War,
there were minor threats against the Jewish community during the Middle East
crisis.
In the monitoring period there have also been many pro-Palestine
demonstrations and movements directed against the government of Israel and its
actions in the Palestinian areas.
These activities cannot be evaluated as anti-Semitic; nevertheless there is
always a possibility that they can create extreme expressions of opinion, so
that people may no longer distinguish the Israeli government from the Jewish
people, thus increasing the danger of anti-Semitic thoughts and acts.
1. Physical acts of violence
On 6 May a window of the Jewish synagogue in the centre of Helsinki located on
the building's 2nd floor was smashed and raw eggs thrown against the walls at
the Jewish Community Building. The attack was carried out by a group of about
10 skinheads.
This is the first time that an incident of this kind has occurred in Helsinki.
Earlier in the spring there were two bomb threats. One bomb threat was not
reported at all in the media and the other one was reported on different
scales depending on the paper.
2.Verbal aggression/hate speech
Direct threats
The Jewish community in Helsinki has received threatening letters throughout
the spring, especially in the earlier part, but also in May.
Telephone
Earlier this spring, at the same time as the Israeli army invaded the city of
Jenin, the Finnish Jewish community began to receive threatening phone calls
on a daily basis. Also in the monitoring period covered by this report there
have been threatening phone calls to the Jewish Community Centre because of
the recent incidents in the Middle East.
On 4 April an anonymous telephone bomb threat to a Jewish school in Helsinki
caused the evacuation of the Helsinki synagogue and the Jewish old people's
home. No device was found.
Graffiti and anti-Semitic inscriptions
There has not been much anti-Semitic graffiti in Helsinki. While most of the
graffiti expresses pro-Palestine sentiments, some of it is also very
anti-Israeli.
Publicly distributed leaflets
Pro-Palestine movements have distributed their leaflets on many occasions.
Some of these leaflets contain (extreme) anti-Israeli material, and others
have asked people to boycott Israeli products to help attain peace in Israel.
Media
According to a representative of the Jewish community in Helsinki , Jews are
blamed for what happens in Israel and the news and articles in the Finnish
media have tended to be biased about issues dealing with the situation in
Israel. He believes that the anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish tone of these
writings could have been intentional or unintentional. He also sees that the
recent development of anti-Semitism in Europe may lead to an increase in
anti-Semitic acts in Finland.
Some of the writers of letters to newspapers have expressed their concern over
the way the Finnish media handles the situation in Middle East. Some writers
see that the media can really damage the general picture of Jews and weaken
their position in society by presenting news from a narrow point of view,
without taking all relevant matters into consideration.
Public discourse
The Archbishop, when referring to the situation in Middle East, said that the
borders of a state cannot be drawn with the help of the Old Testament's
guidelines. He has agreed that the Jewish people are God's chosen people, but
still this fact should not affect how Christians react to the policy the
Israeli government practices. Some people reacted very strongly to the
Archbishop's opinions.
They could not understand how the Archbishop of the Finnish Lutheran Church
could criticise the actions of the Israeli government. Others believed that he
showed a great deal of courage by expressing his opinions on the situation in
Middle East.
Internet
In some of the Internet's news groups and chat rooms there has been discussion
about the situation in Israel. The opinions have been both pro-Palestine and
pro-Israel. On some occasions the discussion has been impolite from both
sides. Hence, there are some anti-Semitic opinions in Internet chat rooms.
It is common in these Internet discussions that people cite the Bible in
making their arguments. Some argue that the Bible says that Jews are the
chosen people of God and now they are persecuted as the Bible has predicted;
others argue that the Jews killed Jesus and they will always be blamed for
this.
3. Research studies
During the period no research studies were done in the field.
4. Good practice for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression
FLHR interviewed the representative of the Friends of Israel Association, who
said that they have done a lot of work to reduce prejudice and violence
towards Jews.
The main method for doing this has been the dissemination of information. They
have organised events informing the public about Israel and the Jewish
culture. Some speakers have come from Israel to give lectures about the
situation in Israel. There was also one pro-Israel demonstration on 11 May
2002.
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
There has not been much discussion about the increase of anti-Semitism; more
generally politicians have expressed their concern about a rise in support for
extreme right-wing parties in Europe. Politicians and parties have declared
that this kind of development is unacceptable in Finland and that a lot of
work must be done to prevent this development from also taking place here.
Sweden
Within its general population of 8.9 million Sweden has an estimated Jewish
population of around 18,500, most of whom live in the three large city areas
of Stockholm (5500 members belonging to the Jewish community), Gothenburg (G
theburg, 1800 members) and Malm (1200). Around 50% of the Jewish population in
these cities are members of Jewish communities.
There has been a slow but steady upsurge in anti-Jewish activities since the
beginning of the Intifada in September 2000. Perhaps the most dramatic example
from the beginning of this period was in October 2000 when a big anti-Israeli
demonstration was held in Malm and demonstrators forced their way into a shop
owned by Jews and threatened them.
There have been some examples of references to old Christian anti-Jewish
sentiments in the media, where references have been made to concepts like "an
eye for an eye", child slaughter and Christ-killers; furthermore, Israeli
politics has been compared with Nazi politics on a few occasions.
In the early spring of 2002 the daily Aftonbladet published an article
criticising Israeli politics with the headline "The crucified Arafat", a
reference to one of the most well known anti-Semitic myths.
References have also been made to "Jewish media power". A television programme
in November 2001, Mediemagasinet, pointed out that three out of the six
Swedish reporters reporting from the Middle East were Jewish.
The programme put in question the objectivity of these Jewish reporters.
Internet homepages of both the extreme right and the radical left have used
anti-Semitism when discussing the Middle East conflict.
One left-wing homepage, Indymedia, featured an anti-Semitic cartoon; the Grim
Reaper sporting a hat with a swastika and the Star of David. The Indymedia
chat has featured statements referring to well-known conspiracy themes such as
a "New World Order" and a "Zionist Occupation Government - ZOG".
The anniversary of the November-pogrom 1938 on 9 November 2001 was exploited
by some groups for anti-Israeli propaganda. Nazi groups like the National
Socialist Front have applauded Islamic anti-Semitism and terror, including the
acts of al Qaida.
1. Physical acts of violence
On 18 April 2002, a small public meeting with approximately 100 participants
protesting against both anti-Semitism and phobic attitudes to Islam took place
in central Stockholm. The organisers expressed that the rally was non-partisan
and did not take sides in the Middle East conflict.
The rally was organised by a branch of the Liberal Party youth organisation
and several of the participants were Jews.
As the rally was about to end, a much larger anti-Israeli march organised by
the Palestinian support organisation was passing nearby.
Suddenly, 100-150 young demonstrators broke out and charged into the little
crowd that was left around the small demonstration - most of them Jews.
The attacking group was threatening and some violence was seen.
Individual attackers could be heard shouting, "Kill the Jews!" and "We'll blow
you up!" Some attackers also went around aggressively asking people if they
were Jewish.
It should be pointed out that there were also many young Swedish extreme
left-wing people amongst the most aggressive participants.
There were no incidents reported for Stockholm and G teburg over the period of
May and June. Malm has witnessed a consistently high level of anti-Semitic
agitation since the beginning of the current Intifada in the autumn of 2000.
The city has a higher percentage of Muslims than the other two large Swedish
cities. Among the population of around 250,000 inhabitants there are 45,000
individuals of Muslim background in Malm . Including the surrounding areas,
the number reaches around 100,000.
Though the anti-Semitic sentiments are not shared by a majority of the Muslim
population, indications show that such sentiments are more common there than
among the rest of the population. Several incidents were directed towards the
Jewish cemeteries in Malmo.
19 May: vandalism inflicted at the Jewish cemetery in Rosengard in the suburb
of Malmo.
3 June: burglary and vandalism in the funeral chapel at the Jewish cemetery at
Fereningsgatan close to the city centre of Malmo.
4 and 6 June: burglary and vandalism at the Jewish cemetery in Rosengard.
Smashed windows and anti-Semitic graffiti.
2. Verbal aggression/hate speech
On 21 May a group of young Arabs were reported yanking at the entrance doors
of the Jewish Community Centre shouting "Fucking Jew!" (literally "Judej vel":
"Jew Devil!"), and making obscene gestures at a woman inside.
Graffiti and inscriptions
On 3 June graffiti on the wall of the Jewish cemetery at Fereningsgatan read:
"Fuck the pigs!", "Smash Israel" and "Never forget Jenin!"
Publicly distributed leaflets
On 29 May in the northeastern town of G vle a man was sentenced to two years
prison for running a record company called Sniper Records and releasing racist
and anti-Semitic CDs, some of them in German. The man admitted passing the
profit on to the National Socialist Front.
The local daily Syd stran reported (6 June 2002) that the library of the town
Karlskrona had found a great amount of anti-Semitic propaganda slipped into
shelves, books and papers over the last year. The library has now decided to
forbid people with openly racist views to visit the premises.
On 14 June several Swedish papers reported that four leading Nazis, two of
them living in Karlskrona, have been sentenced to six months prison for
re-publishing a 1930s anti-Semitic book titled "The Jewish Question".
Media
Samtidsmagazinet Salt, an up-market magazine labelling itself "radical
conservative", released its latest issue at the beginning of June. Previous
issues of Salt had clear anti-Semitic content. In the June issue one article
paid tribute to Holocaust denial, while a well-known anti-Semitic conspiracy
theoretician penned another article.
In March the presidents of the Jewish communities in Stockholm, G teborg and
Malm , acting together with presidents of the Swedish-Israel Society, the
Swedish branch of the Israel Information Office and the Swedish Committee
Against Anti-Semitism, published an article in the main daily, Dagens Nyheter,
in which they protested against "the one-sided reporting in the Swedish media
about the conflict in the Middle East."
In an alarming passage, the article continues: "As a consequence of the
massive anti-Israeli campaign, we have observed a dramatic increase in
anti-Jewish activity and expressions of anti-Semitism in Swedish society".
During Easter 2002 the newspaper Aftonbladet attacked Israeli policy with a
headline "Crucified Arafat" referring to the old anti-Jewish accusation that
it were the Jews who crucified Jesus.
Internet
In May and June, the website "Focus Israel" (Br nnpunkt Israel) - run by one
of the officials in the Malm Jewish community - repeatedly received hate mail
with anti-Semitic content. Karlskrona, a small town in the southeast of
Sweden, is the stronghold of the largest and most active Nazi group in Sweden,
the NSF, Nationalsocialistisk Front (National Socialist Front).
The group is known for its high anti-Semitic profile, also reflected on its
homepages, which are directly linked to the sites of the right extremist and
revisionist Gary Lauck from Lincoln/Nebraska.
Another Swedish internet site carries anti-Israel, anti-Semitic and
anti-American material, mainly caricatures similar to those from a Swedish
caricaturist who in the past has drawn anti-Semitic caricatures for the
revisionist Ahmed Rami and his "Radio Islam" which was a radio station and
today is one of the most radical right wing anti-Semitic homepages on the net
with close links to radical Islam groups.
3. Research Studies
There is no recent report or opinion poll on anti-Semitic aggression or
attitudes.
4. Good Practice for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression
Individual teachers in some schools have made a point of introducing the issue
of anti-Semitism in class discussions.
Reports to the Expo Foundation from several teachers indicate a growth of
anti-Semitic sentiments, including various conspiracy theories among
(predominantly) immigrant youth with a Muslim background.
Such sentiments seem to be closely related to the media reporting and the
development of the situation in the Middle East. There has been no formal
study made about such claims. An example of good practice is how survivors of
the Holocaust have related their experiences in the schools.
A teaching method called "Abrahams barn" ("Abraham's children"), pointing out
similarities between Christianity, Islam and Judaism, has - according to
teachers - been reported to be fairly successful in schools with a high
percentage of immigrants.
Along with this, teachers in some schools have reported that a generally
increased vigilance against racist and anti-Semitic expressions has been a
successful method in curbing such sentiments.
The Swedish Committee against anti-Semitism has been writing articles and
arranging a series of seminars in different cities and towns. The seminars
were called "Stereotyping immigrants, Jews and Muslims in media and debate"
and got a very good response in the evaluations.
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
EXPO found no example of politicians speaking up against anti-Semitism. The
leftist party V nsterpartiet announced a campaign against racism, mentioning
xenophobia, homophobia and other forms of racism, but not anti-Semitism.
United Kingdom
The Jewish population in the United Kingdom numbers 280,000, two-thirds of
whom live in London; other large communities are located in Manchester, Leeds
and Glasgow.
The Muslim population is 500,000, most of whom have an Asian background.
Between 1990 and 2001 an average of 282 anti-Semitic incidents per year were
counted. During the period 1998 to 2001, the average yearly total rose to 305
incidents.
In comparison to the preceding year, in 2000 the UK (total population 58.4
million) witnessed 405 anti-Semitic incidents, a rise of 50.
One third of these occurred in the months of October and November, "reflecting
the upsurge in tensions between Palestinians and Israelis".
The rise in 2000 was also accompanied by an even greater increase in racist
incidents. The number of incidents decreased in 2001 to 305, but the Community
Security Trust states that "October 2000 proved to be a watershed with regard
to incidents.
There appears to have been a genuine change, both qualitative and quantitative
after this point": there were 22 synagogue desecrations in the 22 months
before October 2000, but 78 in the same time period since, and assaults on
Jews since October 2000 "have often been sustained beating leading to
hospitalisation, compared with the `roughing up` by neo-Nazis that more
typically occurred before."
The data of the CST show that an increasing number of incidents are "caused by
Muslims or Palestinian sympathisers, whether or not they are Muslims". This
indicates a change of direction from which anti-Semitism comes, which is
closely connected to the tensions in the Middle East conflict.
1. Physical acts of violence
The climax of the violence was reached in the weeks between the beginning of
April and the start of May 2002. There were 51 incidents nationwide in April,
"most of them assaults on individuals", compared with 12 in March and seven in
February. Some of the assaults resulted in the hospitalisation of the victims
with serious injuries.
Reportedly, the victims were mainly orthodox and Hassidic Jews. In London,
Manchester and Glasgow the windows of synagogues or the Hebrew Congregation
were smashed; in London a further synagogue was desecrated.
On 6 May, following a rally in support of Israel, a boy wearing a shirt with
the Star of David was attacked by three youths.
On 11 July the synagogue in Swansea (Wales) was desecrated by vandals with
graffiti (swastika, and the phrase "T4 Jewish c*** from Hitler") and Torah
rolls were damaged and burned. The attempt to burn down the building failed.
The CST counted 20 incidents of extreme violence (attacks potentially causing
loss of life) and assaults during the first five months of 2002. Then
perpetrators were described as follows: five white, five Arab, three Asian,
seven unknown.
2. Verbal aggression/hate speech
In Edinburgh an Episcopalian clergyman was forced to defend a mural showing a
crucified Jesus flanked by Roman soldiers - and modern-day Israeli troops. It
was not anti-Semitic, he insisted, but designed to make his congregation think
about current conflicts.
The Anti-Defamation League criticised that Christian clerics are using
anti-Jewish rhetoric in proclaiming the old, destructive 'replacement
theology' - the notion that Judaism has been replaced as religion".
Media
Many British Jews are of the opinion that the press reporting on Israeli
policy is spiced with a tone of animosity, "as to smell of anti-Semitism" as
The Economist put it.
In their opinion this is above all the case with the two quality papers, the
Guardian and the Independent. After the attack on the Finsbury Park synagogue
Jeremy Newmark, official spokesman for Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks, said
that "anti-Semitic incidents have been rising over the past year, but have
shown a marked upturn in the past six weeks as the conflict in the Middle East
has reached a furious pitch." He says that "the anti-Israeli bias of much
media coverage here has made British Jews more vulnerable" without though
naming any examples.
3. Research studies
Between 16 May and 4 June and between 9 and 29 September surveys commissioned
by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) New York were conducted on "European
Attitudes towards Jews, Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict" in ten
European countries.
Compared to most of the other EU countries agreement with anti-Semitic
statements in the United Kingdom was clearly lower: from the four
stereotypical statements presented, only 9% of the respondents agreed to at
least three (see Table: Report on Belgium).
Only with the statement "Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country"
did one third of the respondents agree; at the same time though this number is
well below the European average of 51%. A third of the British respondents
feel that anti-Jewish sentiments will increase in the coming years.
To the question "Thinking specifically of the current conflict (...) - are
your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?", 30% of
the British respondents sympathised with the Palestinian side, the second
highest rate after the Danes, while only 16% sympathised with Israel.
Here the social contact with Muslims appears to have played an important role:
32% of the British in contact with Muslims "fairly often" sympathised with the
Palestinians. In all states surveyed the individual use of media exerted a
certain influence: of those British respondents who followed the news coverage
"a great deal" or "a good amount", 41% sympathised with the Palestinian side,
while the proportion for Israel was 11%.
A survey already conducted in April, "The plague on both houses. British
attitudes to Israel and Palestine", had reached similar conclusions: 14% said
that they were more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinians, while 28%
sympathised more with the latter.
Both Prime Minister Sharon and Palestinian leader Arafat were mainly
disapproved of (50% and 54% respectively); and 38% and 33% respectively were
for sanctions against both sides (cutting off aid and blocking military
exports). The Economist spoke of a "steady shift of sympathy away from Israel,
especially on the left".
4. Good Practice for reducing prejudice, violence and aggression
After the desecration of the synagogue at Finsbury Park, on 2 May the Muslim
Jewish Forum of North London, a group committed to improving relations between
the two faiths, condemned the attack as "a terrible violation of a sacred
place of worship". Some days after the attack on the Finsbury Park synagogue,
a petition to "Stop Anti-Semitism in the UK" was placed on the Internet and to
be personally presented to the Prime Minister Tony Blair.
5. Reactions by politicians and other opinion leaders
In a demonstration of mainstream political solidarity against racism, two
senior Labour and Conservative politicians united on 2 May 2002, to condemn
the desecration of the synagogue of Finsbury Park. The Local Government
Secretary, Stephen Byers, and the opposition home affairs spokesman, Oliver
Letwin, supported the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, as volunteers began
scraping away spattered paint, repairing broken seats and replacing vandalised
equipment.
After surveying the damage, Mr Byers said he wanted to demonstrate the
government's support for the Jewish community. "The people of this country
will defend their right to practice their religion." "In the year 2002 this
kind of destruction is not what I had expected to see.
Any right-thinking member of the community will condemn this as barbaric. We
have to ensure that those people who are intolerant, who are prejudiced, don't
have the opportunity of committing this again." Mr Letwin regarded it as
particularly important "that every mainstream political party in Britain shows
the solidarity we feel about this attack. It was deliberately intended to
inflame relationships in the local community."
The Chief Rabbi warned of the upsurge in anti-Semitic attacks, emphasising
though at the same time that the "support from political parties and local
communities has been tremendous. Britain must reject racist politics and I'm
confident it will. There will certainly be greater vigilance in the
community."
On 4 March 2002, the MP Jim Murphy had submitted a parliamentary question to
the Home Secretary, calling for him to make a statement on anti-Semitism in
the UK and asking what action he has taken to combat it.
In reply the government emphasised that it is "fully committed to tackling
racism and anti-Semitism wherever it occurs. We have continued to strengthen
our anti-discrimination laws and our criminal law to ensure that it continues
to offer some of the most comprehensive protection against racism and
anti-Semitism in Europe.
In that regard we have introduced the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000; we
are looking at ways to implement the European Union directives on race and
discrimination in employment; strengthen the law on incitement to racial
hatred by raising the maximum penalty to seven years' imprisonment and
extending the scope to hatred directed against racial groups outside the
United Kingdom and introduced religiously aggravated offences to add to the
racially aggravated offences we introduced in 1998.
We have asked the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to work together to
pool knowledge and experience in the investigation and prosecution of race
hate material. We have also made significant changes to our laws countering
the threat of terrorism, including the Terrorism Act 2000 and, in response to
the events of September 11, the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.
The Government and the police continue to have a good working relationship
with the Jewish community in Britain."
On 19 April, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary presented, together with his
colleagues from France, Belgium, Spain and Germany, a joint declaration on
"Racism, Xenophobia and Anti-Semitism" which aims at establishing preventive
measures and a European-wide coordination of the responsible offices and
agencies.
In response to a question posed by the MP Dismore as to the number of
anti-Semitic offences in the last weeks and months, on 14 May 2002 the
government declared that the number of anti-Semitic crimes is not collected
separately by the Home Office.
"The Government condemns all acts of anti-Semitism in this country. The
Government and the police are aware of the concerns of the Jewish community
and we have received reports from both the police and community organisations
such as the Community Security Trust. We will continue to monitor the
situation carefully in co-operation with community organisations."
Annex: Reporting institutions and data sources
The list of the National Focal Points (NFPs) presented below does not
primarily deal with monitoring and recording anti-Semitic incidents. Therefore
some NFPs experienced difficulties in collecting data, but they have tried to
overcome these difficulties in various ways, as one can see from the list of
sources.
Belgium: Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CEOOR)
Denmark: The Danish Board for Ethnic Equality
Germany: European Forum for Migration Studies
Greece: ANTIGONE - Information & Documentation Centre
Spain: Movement for Peace, Disarmament and Liberty
France: Agency for the Development of Intercultural Relations
Ireland: Equality Authority (EA) /National Consultative Committee on Racism
and Interculturalism (NCCRI)
Italy: Co-operation for the Development of Emerging Countries (COSPE)
Luxemburg: Association for the Support of Immigrant Workers
Austria: Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights; Department of Linguistics
of the University of Vienna; Institute of Conflict Research;
Portugal: Research Center on Human and Social Sciences
Finland: Finnish League for Human Rights
Sweden: EXPO Foundation
The following list gives an overview of the collation methods, databases and
data-collecting institutions in the EU Member States used by the NFPs:
Belgium
The Belgian report contained the following sources:
-Forum of the Jewish Organisations of Antwerp
-Newspapers
-Internet
Denmark
Various sources have been consulted in the data collection. The aim was to
speak to both official and unofficial sources in order to achieve a full
representation. The unofficial sources were identified by firstly speaking to
an information worker at "The Jewish Community" (Det Mosaiske Trossamfund), by
pursuing the "links" on The Jewish Community's homepage, and then by checking
other "links" on the "Jewish" sites visited. The Jewish Community in Denmark
systematically registers all anti-Semitic incidents in Denmark.
The following institutions and organisations have been consulted:
- The Danish Civil Security Service (PET) - as they collect data on "racially
motivated"
crimes in Denmark.
For incidents of graffiti, vandalism, etc.:
-The Jewish Community (Det Mosaiske Trossamfund), which is the official
representative of the Jewish community in Denmark;
-"Maichsike-hadas" - an Orthodox Jewish Community in Copenhagen;
-Chabad - a broad organisation promoting Jewish awareness;
-JIF Hakaoh - a Jewish sports club (via Carolineskolen);
-Carolineskolen - the main Jewish school located in Copenhagen;
-Progressive Jewish Forum - a small organisation working for a "reform Jewish
congregation";
-The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies;
-The Israeli Embassy in Copenhagen.
Other sources:
-daily newspapers;
-Internet was used to identify homepages with anti-Semitic content.
Germany
The German NFP based its report on the following sources:
-Data from the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation;
-An intensive analysis of the media;
-Internet, the Websites of organisations;
-Analysis of scientific studies: media analyses, opinion polls.
Ireland
Information was mostly supplied by Jewish organisations in Ireland.
Organisations contacted:
-Jewish Representative Council of Ireland;
-the Chief Rabbi's Office;
-the Israeli Embassy;
-the Ireland-Israel Friendship League;
-the Garda (Irish police);
-Garda Racial and Intercultural Office.
Survey of national newspapers
Internet (right-wing websites)
Greece
Data was collected from three main sources:
-Representative organisations of the Jewish Community in Greece (Regional
Boards and Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece). A written request
was sent by fax and e-mail to these organisations. Members of the NFP's staff
had interviews with members of the Board of the other main Jewish Communities
in Corfu, Larissa and Thessalonica;
-The media were both monitored and studied. The monitoring of the media, which
is a routine activity of the INFOCENTER, provides us with information to be
further investigated. At the same time, the content of the media reports is
also studied since it constitutes an important attitude-forming instrument.
Detailed content analyses have not been carried out in the context of the
present report, as it was not within its scope, but the essential primary
material has been collected, categorised and can be analysed further, if
required;
-The Internet was used basically as a source of data -mostly reports from
national and international organisations- and also as a source of material
pertinent to our inquiry, i.e. anti-Semitic web pages, discussion groups, etc.
Spain
The following information sources were used for the report:
-Mass media;
-Internet (oriented on neo-Nazi and racist groups);
-Violence reports;
-Personal interviews;
-Consultation with several organisations, especially Jewish ones.
France
The sources used to monitor incidents were:
-All daily print press as well as press agencies;
-Jewish Communities' media (Actualit juive, antis mitisme.info, etc.);
-Jewish groups (CRIF, UEJF), in particular the new structures or initiatives
recently set up to counter anti-Semitic acts or for the purpose of victim
support (Observatoire du monde juif, help lines such as SOS V rit - S curit or
SOS antis mitisme);
-anti-racist non-profit organisations (LICRA, SOS Racisme, MRAP, FASTI)
Italy
The basic sources were made available by the Centre of Contemporary Jewish
Documentation (Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea, CDEC) in Milan,
which systematically collects data on anti-Semitism in Italy.
-Surveys
-Newspapers
-Internet
-Report on anti-Semitism in Italy, edited by A. Goldstaub, June 2002. The
report had been presented at the national Congress of UCEI (Unione delle
Comunit Ebraiche Italiane, 20-23 June 2002)
Luxembourg
Inquiries were made at:
-Representatives of the Jewish community;
-Secretary General of the Israelite Consistory;
-Grand Ducal Police;
-NGO working against racism and anti-Semitism;
-Amnesty International Luxembourg;
Analysis of newspapers
The Netherlands
The report is based on the compilation by the Center for Research on
Anti-Semitism, Technical University Berlin. Sources used are from:
-European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), online: Second
report on the Netherlands, adopted on 15 December 2000 and made public on
13.11.2001.
-Anti-Semitism Worldwide 2000/1, online,
Netherlands;
-Centrum Informatie en Documentatie Israel (CIDI), The Hague, online overzicht
antisemitische incidenten Nederland 2001 en voorloping overzicht 2002 by
Hadassa Hirschfeld;
-Other NGOs: Anti Discrininatiebureaus in Nederland (ADB's), Landelijke
Vereniging van ADB's (LV), Meldpunt Discrimnatie Internet (MDI), Landelijke
Expertise Centrum Discriminatiezaken (LECD), Antifascistische Onderzoeksgroep
Kafka, Centraal Meldpunt Voetbalvandalisme, Monitorrapport over Racisme en
Extreem Rechts from the Anne Frank Stichting and the University of Leiden; the
Dutch Auschwitz Committee, the National Bureau for the Fight Against Racism
and the 4th and 5th May Committee;
-Newspapers;
-Internet.
Austria
The analysis is based on a balanced mix of sources:
-NGOs related to the Jewish communities (Forum gegen Antisemitismus
[sub-organisation of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien], ESRA,
Israelitische Kultusgemeinden Salzburg, Innsbruck, and Graz);
-Other NGOs (ZARA, Dokumentationsarchiv des sterreichischen Widerstands [D W],
kologische Linke [OEKOLI], sterreichische Hochsch lerInnenschaft);
-relevant journalists;
-Federal Ministry of the Interior.
The media analysis included monitoring of the following dailies:
Der Standard, Die Presse, Wiener Zeitung, Salzburger Nachrichten, Kurier,
Kleine Zeitung, Ober sterreichische Nachrichten and Kronen Zeitung. The NFP
looked for the keywords "anti-Semitism", "anti-Semitic", "Jew(s)" and "Jewish"
in the online archives of these papers.
In addition, the following right-wing papers were scrutinized: Zur Zeit
published weekly by FP -members, Aula edited monthly by the
National-freiheitliche Akademikerverb nde sterreichs, an umbrella organisation
of the national-"liberal" fraternities, and Der Eckart published monthly by
the sterreichische Landsmannschaften.
Internet
The keywords "anti-Semitism - Austria" "Jews - Austria" were used for the
general search on the Internet.
Portugal
The NFP gave reference to official institutions, Jewish organisations and
anti-discrimination NGOs and the media in a general way.
Finland
Data was collected from three main sources:
- Interviews with a representative of the Finnish Jewish community, a
representative of
the Friends of Israel Association and the Ombudsman's office;
-Newspapers;
-Internet.
Intrinsic problem: Although there are some institutions that monitor the
situation, they do it usually from a very narrow point of view, specialising
their efforts on some particular issue.
Sweden
Sources and methods:
The only Swedish institution compiling a formal index of anti-Semitic
incidents is the Swedish Security Police (S po); however, such statistics are
only published annually the year following the incident.
To compile this report the NFP has made use of its contacts with all three
Jewish communities and is continuously receiving reports on registered
anti-Semitic incidents. The NFP is also in continuous contact with a number of
individuals researching the topic, either in a private or in an academic
capacity.
The gathering of information has been done basically through telephone calls
that were prepared by sending out the questions well in advance of the calls.
Other information, especially about activities on the Internet and articles in
papers, stems from the normal daily collection of information by the NFP.
United Kingdom
This report is based on the compilation by the Center for Research on
Anti-Semitism, Berlin.
Sources used:
-Data from the Community Security Trust (CST), the monitoring body, which has
been accorded third-party reporting status by the police. This allows it to
report anti-Semitic incidents to the police and act as a go-between between
the police and those victims who are unable or unwilling to report to the
police directly. Michael Whine, Anti-Semitism on the streets, in: Is there a
new anti-Semitism in Britain?, online
www.jpr.org.uk/Reports;
-Lawyers Committee for Humans Rights, Fire and Broken Glass. The Rise of
Anti-Semitism in Europe, Strasbourg, May 2002;
-Amnesty International Press Release, AI Index: EUR 3.1.2002 (Public) News
Service No: 84, 10.5.2002;
-Anti-Defamation League, Global Anti-Semitism: Selected Incidents Around the
World in 2002;
-Anti-Semitism Worldwide 2000/1, online, United Kingdom;
-Survey: Anti-Defamation League, European Attitudes Towards Jews, Israel and
the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, 27. 6. 2002;
-Newspapers;
-Internet
[Les parties de ce message comportant autre chose que du texte seul on été
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