Alarming growth of anti-Semitism and attacks on Jews in Europe – 17/02/2019

Europe is far from the worst moments of its history, but it keeps getting rid of the hatred that once blew the continent and caused the murder of more than six million Jews. The rise of xenophobia leads to an increase in anti-Semitismnot only as discrimination but also as violence.

The latest data processed by the European authorities show this trend. In France, crimes against Jews they increased in one year by 74% and in Germany the violent attacks made it 60%.

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These data, from two of the bloc's leading countries, confirm efforts for the latest annual reports of the European Agency for Fundamental Rights (AEDF), an agency of the European Union. This agency has warned for years against the rise of xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism.

Last January's Eurobarometer revealed that the perception is different between the Jewish population and the others. While 89% of Jews said that anti-Semitism had experienced "significant" growth in recent years in Europe, only 36% of the rest of the population agreed with this statement.

An investigation into CNN It showed that in Europe, up to 20% of the population felt that Jews had too much influence in finance and politics, that 34% of Europeans knew nothing or very little about it. on the Holocaust and 32% thought Jews were exploiting the Holocaust "to improve their position".

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According to the latest AEDF reports, European Jews are facing a situation of increased aggression, rhetoric fueling hate speech and a political situation that sometimes uses them to justify their anti-liberal measures, like Hungary's nationalist Viktor Orban with his ongoing campaign against philanthropist and financier George Soros, an American Jew of Hungarian origin.

This rise of anti-Semitism has returned in the French media in recent days after the appearance of swastikas on the portraits of Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor, French minister and first woman to chair the European Parliament.

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The French government confirmed this week that the Interior Ministry had recorded in 2018 up to 541 antisemitic acts, almost twice as much as in 2017. In Germany, the maximum number of people living in the country was 20,000. Offenses against Jews has been reached in 10 years. with 1,646 registered in 2018. And the physical attacks took place in a year, from 37 to 62.

AEDF published at the end of 2018 its largest study on anti-Semitism in Europe. More than 16,000 Jews from 12 countries responded to a survey according to which, according to its director Michael O. Flaherty, "decades after the Holocaust, surprising levels of anti-Semitism remain a scourge in Europe" . The report showed, for example, that one third of Jews do not go to synagogues or other Jewish centers for fear of their safety and that about 30% had planned to go to the synagogues or other Jewish centers. ;emigrate.

The European political situation, with the rise of the far right, amplifies the phenomenon. They broadcast speeches about racial hatred and conspiracy theories that Jews are often – apart from Muslims – guilty of misfortune.

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In the UK, Jews are facing more crimes and attacks since the start of the Brexit process. To the point that many British Jews, descendants of German Jews who fled Germany because of the rise of Nazism, are now asking for German pbadports, to which they are entitled under the German Constitution because their ascendants have been stripped of their nationality "for political, racist or religious reasons".

Many British Jews, like other minorities, believe that after the Brexit, discrimination has increased and now end up with anti-Semitic attitudes that have not occurred. suffered so far on British lands. Michael Newman, director of the Jewish Refugee Association in the UK, explained a few weeks ago to Clarin that his data confirm that "there is an increase in the number of incidents of anti-Semitism".

But Germany is also not vaccinated against anti-Semitism, especially since it has been introduced into the electoral landscape of the AFD, the far-right group which targets more than 10% of the vote. One of his leaders, Alexander Gauland, went so far as to say that the Holocaust was "A little bird poop in over 1000 years of successful German history".

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The reports of the European Agency for Fundamental Rights bring together, without publishing the identity of the interviews, the testimonies of Jews facing offenses and discrimination in their daily lives. A 50-year-old Polish Jew said, "I never admit that I'm Jewish, out of fear, only two people know it."

A 35-year-old Spanish Jew said that there were no more anti-Semitic incidents in public "because many Jews decided not to use the kipa to avoid discrimination. do not discriminate because we are hiding. "

A 54-year-old Dutch policewoman by profession said: "I am facing antisemitic comments from my colleagues."

A 69-year-old German woman said that she did not identify as Jewish "because I fear ignorance, negative reactions and threats."

And a 34-year-old Dutch woman: "I think that the Jews of my generation feel a greater sense of insecurity and that we are not accepted in the Netherlands as Jews."

PB