Anti-Semitism in Western Europe out of control

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Anti-Semitism Report Chides Governments Jewish Times.com

A young French Jew is kidnapped, tortured and left to die by a band of
Muslims. An arson badly damages Geneva’s largest synagogue. A 13-year-old girl
on a London bus is robbed and kicked unconscious after her attackers ask if she
is "Jewish or English."

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Anti-Semitism in Western Europe apparently is out of control.

[…]

The 2007 Hate Crimes Survey by the U.S.-based organization Human Rights First
goes beyond the data included in many of the studies to suggest that most
European governments are woefully inept at measuring and thus prosecuting hate
crimes.

Human Rights First says the survey is the first by a U.S. non-governmental
organization to examine racist, xenophobic, homophobic and anti-religious crimes
in Europe. While the report includes analysis of Russia, Ukraine and even North
America, the focus is on Western Europe.

It is also the only one of the recent reports to raise the specter of a
Europe teetering on the verge of a Hitler-era epidemic of racist hatred.

"Today the parallels with the 1930s include the seeming indifference of many
governments and broad sectors of public opinion to the rising violence and fear
that once again threatens European Jews, and with them members of other
minorities,"
says a separate, companion report that focuses exclusively on
anti-Semitism.

"As it did in the 1930s, the reactivation of ancient prejudices and the
transformation of new hatreds into deadly violence have been largely overlooked
outside the Jewish community,"
the report concludes.

In most European countries, "anti-Semitic violence and other hate crimes
still are largely unacknowledged in public policy and action," according to the
survey by Human Rights First, formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for Human
Rights.

Paul LeGendre, who directs the anti-discrimination program for Human Rights
First, told reporters from the group’s New York office, "One of our findings is
that governments are not doing enough to report on hate crimes. We have a
sizable data deficit."

The companion survey says that the data that has been collected "reveals both
a general trend toward a rise in anti-Semitic incidents and a trend toward
violent crimes against Jewish people
in a growing proportion of such incidents."

The analysis came after a May 24 fire that badly damaged the largest
synagogue in Geneva. The fire was labeled as arson several days later, sending
shock waves through Swiss Jewry
.

Many Jews are also protesting anti-Semitism they say is disguised as
criticism of Israel throughout Western Europe. The latest examples come from
Britain: the proposed boycott of Israeli academics, which the largest British
teachers union voted last month to disseminate to its membership for a final
decision, and the country’s largest trade union, with more than a million
members, deciding to consider a boycott motion on Israel at its upcoming
conference.

Reports issued since Israel’s war in Lebanon last summer and widely covered
in the international media showed a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents,
rhetoric and attitudes in the 27-member European Union.

[…]

But others argue that anti-Israel and anti-Jewish behavior have become
indistinguishable.

[…]

In an Anti-Defamation League survey on European attitudes toward Jews
released in May, 51 percent of respondents in five countries said Jews are more
loyal to Israel than to their home country, and 52 percent said Israel’s actions
have lowered their views of Jews.

European leaders are now discussing, with Israel’s participation, how to
improve the country’s image. A European Jewish Congress report issued last
November revealed a dramatic rise in anti-Israel discourse during the Lebanon
War both among leftist politicians and media in Europe, as well as on the
extreme right. The discourse, the report said, often morphed into anti-Jewish
sentiment.

[…]

"The message was clear: You Jews are responsible for this massacre," Moss
said.

Other reports recounting violent anti-Semitic incidents in 2006 by specific
Jewish communities revealed an upsurge in attacks and the desecration of Jewish
sites not seen in decades.

Among the developments:

* In Britain, the Community Security Trust reported the highest number of
anti-Semitic incidents since it began monitoring in 1984, with a 60 percent
increase in the second half of the year
– after the Lebanon War. There were 594
anti-Semitic incidents in Britain in ‘06, up 31 percent from 2005, according to
the group that monitors anti-Semitism in Britain on behalf of the country’s main
Jewish organization, the Board of Jewish Deputies.

Explaining at least one cause of the jump, CST spokesman Mark Gardner
complained of the media’s ongoing portrayal of Israel in a negative light.

"If people think Israel is a mad, bloodthirsty, apartheid state, they will
think those who support Israel should be socially isolated, boycotted and
perhaps even deserve a good kicking now and then,"
Gardner told JTA.

* In France, the country’s main secular Jewish umbrella organization, CRIF,
recorded a 24 percent rise in anti-Jewish incidents in general
, to 371 from 350,
and a 45 percent increase in violent incidents, to 99 from 72.

Perhaps no attack was more representative of the trend toward anti-Semitic
violence in Europe than the January 2006 torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, a
Jewish student in Paris,
by a gang dominated by African Muslims
. The gang leader
was quoted in the French press as having singled out Halimi because he thought
Jews have money.

* In Germany, the government recorded 1,024 anti-Semitic acts, a 21 percent
increase from the previous year.

The German media has been full of reports about how Jews for the first time
in decades will not wear yarmulkes in public for fear of their safety.
In Berlin
alone, violent neo-Nazi attacks doubled last year, although Jews were not the
lone targets.

A 16-year-old in the former East German state of Saxony Anhalt who raised his
voiced against racism in October was forced by classmates to wear a sign that
read, "I’m the nastiest swine in town; with the Jews I always hang around."

* In Denmark, the Jewish community announced that there were as many
anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of 2006 as in all of 2005,
with most
aimed at Jews on their way to or from synagogue or a Jewish school.[…]

"It’s also 9-11 and Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. There is a larger
anti-Semitic mythology at play here,”
he said.

“When you preach hatred about Zionists and Israel, that hatred has an impact
on those who are visually Jewish, or cemeteries or synagogues," Gardner said,
referring to the increasing number of leftist and Muslim extremists.

In evaluating the number of incidents, consider that there is no consistent
system of monitoring anti-Semitic events across Europe. Each community brings a
different approach, and the culture affects how and why people report events.

"There is a dire need for serious monitoring, Europe-wide, for all forms of
hate crimes,” said Gidon Van Emden, policy officer for CEJI-A Jewish
Contribution to an Inclusive Europe, a Brussels-based coexistence group founded
in 1991. “In some countries it’s good, in some it’s bad and in some there is
nothing in place."

[…]

Van Emden’s criticism of monitoring was backed by the 2006 Annual Report of
the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which concluded that
Finland and the United Kingdom were the only European Union members with
"comprehensive" criminal justice data on racist crimes.

As the Human Rights First analysis of anti-Semitism makes clear, among the
seven countries in Europe that do monitoring, much of the information is gleaned
from non-governmental and Jewish organizations, taking governments off the hook.

Who’s committing the crimes?

[…]

According to the Roth report, "The proportion of Muslims among the attackers"
in anti-Semitic assaults documented in 2006 "i
s far higher than their share in
the population at large." Some 20 million Muslims live in Europe, and their
numbers are growing much faster than the non-Muslim population.

[…]

Gardner said Muslim anger is often whipped up by "Islamic groups with the
international agenda like the Muslim Brotherhood who say that Muslims are all
facing an existentialist threat led by America and Israel."

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