Religious Freedom Report Says Anti-Semitism Remains Global Problem – Breaking News – Forward.com

2015/10/17 Leave a comment

Highlights from the U.S. State Department’s annual International Religious Freedom Report for 2014:

The 17th annual report, which was released Wednesday, noted that anti-Semitic incidents rose significantly in Western Europe during the 2014 Gaza War between Israel and Hamas as well as in eastern Ukrainian regions when Russian rebels forcefully annexed part of the territory. The number of incidents overall in France doubled last year, to 851, over 2013.

The report, which analyzed levels of religious freedoms in regions across the globe, also found in Israel “an increase in interethnic tension and violence involving different religious communities.”

In addition to the 2014 Gaza conflict, the report cited the attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem that left five dead along with the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teenagers before the war as incidents that heightened tensions between Muslims and Jews in Israel during the year.

However, the report emphasized that “because religion, ethnicity, and nationality are closely linked in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, it was difficult to categorize many societal actions against specific groups as being solely based on religious identity.”

The report was the first presided over by Rabbi David Saperstein, who in January became the first non-Christian to hold the post of U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.

“If you look at the Pew reports that I believe are a year behind our reports, over the last several years there’s been a steady increase in the percentage of people who live in countries that … have serious restrictions on religious freedom,” Saperstein said at a news conference Wednesday. “At the same time … we’ve seen enormous expansion of interfaith efforts on almost every continent to try and address the challenges.”

Source: Religious Freedom Report Says Anti-Semitism Remains Global Problem – Breaking News – Forward.com

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with ,

UK: Anti-Muslim hate crime to be treated as seriously as antisemitism

2015/10/15 Leave a comment

Good and needed as part of engagement strategy:
Prime Minister David Cameron will tell police forces in England and Wales to record anti-Muslim hate crimes separately and treat them as seriously as anti-Semitic attacks. The move comes amid rising incidents of Islamophobia.

New funding to boost security at religious buildings, including mosques, will also be announced.

The policy move on Tuesday is designed to reassure Muslim communities that the government’s counter-extremism strategy will be balanced, amid fears that the measures alienate them.

Cameron will make the announcement at the first meeting of his new Community Engagement Forum, which will meet to discuss the government’s counter-extremism strategy, due to be published next month.

Islamophobic crime in London jumped by 70 percent in the year up to July, according to official statistics from the Metropolitan Police, one of the few forces to record anti-Muslim hate crime.

Anti-Muslim hate crimes in other parts of the UK are currently monitored by Tell MAMA, an unofficial recorder of Islamophobia in the UK that relies on victims logging incidents online or over the phone.

Speaking ahead of the announcement, Cameron said he wanted to show Muslim communities support.

“I want to build a national coalition to challenge and speak out against extremists and the poison they peddle.

“I want British Muslims to know we will back them to stand against those who spread hate and to counter the narrative which says Muslims do not feel British.”

“And I want police to take more action against those who persecute others simply because of their religion,” he added.

Source: Anti-Muslim hate crime to be treated as seriously as anti-Semitism – Cameron — RT UK

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

EU States Fail to Record Anti-Semitism as Incidents Increase

2015/10/02 Leave a comment

A reminder of the importance of collecting reliable, and to the extent possible, consistent data.

The StatsCan Police-reported hate crime in Canada, 2012 is such an example, particularly useful given the inter-group comparisons by ethnicity and religion, and is more objective than statistics collected by individual groups.

A report published Wednesday by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) in Vienna finds that anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise throughout Europe, but the virtual absence of proper data collection and “gross under-reporting” make it difficult to trace the trend accurately.

“Despite the serious negative consequences of anti-Semitism for Jewish populations in particular, as the FRA’s relevant survey showed … evidence collected by FRA consistently shows that few EU Member States operate official data collection mechanisms that record antisemitic incidents in any great detail,” the report says. It points out that “this lack of systematic data collection contributes to gross underreporting of the nature and characteristics of anti-Semitic incidents that occur in the EU. It also limits the ability of policy makers and other relevant stakeholders at national and international levels to take measures and implement courses of action to combat antisemitism effectively and decisively, and to assess the effectiveness of existing policies. Incidents that are not reported are also not investigated and prosecuted, allowing offenders to think that they can carry out such attacks with relative impunity.”

But even where data do exist, according to the report, “they are generally not comparable, not least because they are collected using different methodologies and sources across EU Member States. Furthermore, while official data collection systems are generally based on police records and/or criminal justice data, authorities do not always categorize incidents motivated by anti-Semitism under that heading.”

Source: The Jewish Press » » Report: EU States Fail to Record Anti-Semitism as Incidents Increase

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Increase in UK anti-Semitism this year ‘due to better reporting’

2015/07/31 Leave a comment

A reminder that a number of different factors influence statistics, including better reporting, making it harder to isolate underlying trends (CST is better than most in identifying these factors):

A 53 percent increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain during the first six months of 2015 can be ascribed to greater communal awareness of the problem coupled with better reporting, the Community Security Trust reported on Thursday.

There have been 473 reported incidents this year, compared to 309 for the same period last year, and 223 in the first half of 2013.

Despite the rising trend, the figures do not come close to the 629 incidents reported in 2009 – the year in which most of the fighting in Operation Cast Lead (against Hamas in Gaza) took place.

The CST monitors anti-Semitism and provides security for Britain’s Jewish community.

Increase in UK anti-Semitism this year ‘due to better reporting’ – Diaspora – Jerusalem Post.

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with ,

Jewish Students Feel Wide Anti-Semitism, Online Study Says

2015/07/30 Leave a comment

US Antisemitism campuses - BrandeisInteresting studies and charts:

According to the Brandeis University study released Tuesday, a few schools, among them Canadian universities and schools in the California state system, have “particularly high levels of hostility toward Jews or Israel.”

The online survey of over 3,000 North American college students who have applied for a Birthright Israel trip — but have not yet taken the 10-day journey — found that one-third of respondents reported having been verbally harassed during the past year because they were Jewish. Nearly three-quarters said they had been exposed to at least one of six anti-Semitic statements, including the claims that Jews have too much power and that Israelis behave “like Nazis” toward the Palestinians.

More than one-quarter of respondents described hostility toward Israel by their campus peers as a “fairly” or “very big” problem, while nearly 15 percent reported the same level of hostility toward Jews.

Jewish Students Feel Wide Anti-Semitism, Online Study Says – Breaking News – Forward.com.

Antisemitism and the College Campus – Brandeis University

2014 Anti-Semitism Report – Jewish Virtual Library

Brandeis - Israel

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with ,

Auschwitz verdict will make it harder for Holocaust deniers, Canadian witness says

2015/07/22 Leave a comment

Another enduring reminder:

“The fact that he was found guilty was, to me, a very satisfactory outcome,” said Bill Glied, the Canadian survivor of Auschwitz who testified in Germany at the trial of Mr. Groening.

“Holocaust deniers will no longer be able to deny it after all, as a Nazi SS officer has said that what has happened is true – which is proof enough that the Holocaust actually existed.”

Mr. Glied was 13 when he arrived in at the camp in May, 1944, with his family. He was the only one who survived.

At least 1.1 million prisoners died at Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland, around 90 per cent of them Jewish.

“So, as far as the jail sentence, I couldn’t care less and I still don’t care. The important part is that he was found guilty,” said Mr. Glied, who works with March of the Living, a group dedicated to remembering those who perished, while also paying tribute to those who survived and making sure the events of more than 70 years ago are not forgotten.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s head Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, also praised the verdict.

“This verdict was critical, because this is the first case brought where the prosecution charged a person who wasn’t involved in the physical side of mass murder,” he said in an interview last week with The Associated Press.

Auschwitz verdict will make it harder for Holocaust deniers, Canadian witness says – The Globe and Mail.

Filed under Antisemitism, Holocaust Tagged with

European far-Right parties ‘seeking anti-Islam coalition with Jewish groups’

2015/07/16 Leave a comment

Not surprising but encouraging that most European Jewish groups have rejected the overture:

Right-wing European political parties are seeking to sow religious discord in Europe by approaching Jewish organisations in a bid to form an anti-Islamic alliance.

Speaking to Newsweek on condition of anonymity, a senior figure in one of Europe’s largest Jewish organisations has revealed that their group has been approached in the past year by MEPs, including members of the Austrian Freedom Party, seeking to create a coalition to combat the rise of Islam in Europe. They emphasized that all approaches had been flatly refused.

Last week, Marine Le Pen and other far-Right politicians met with Vadim Rabinovich, the chairman of the European Jewish Parliament (EJP), prompting criticism from European Jewish leaders.

Now the source says that far-Right’s rapprochement with Jewish groups is far from new as politicians from various parties have attempted to court their group, offering to “be friends with Jews” if Jewish groups “help us in our fight against Muslims”.

… The meeting drew criticism from prominent Jewish leaders and led to one member of the EJP, French rabbi Levi Matusof, resigning after the meeting which he called “opportunistic and inappropriate”.

The European Jewish Association, which claims to be the biggest federation of Jewish organisations in Europe, said that the EJP risked “magnifying the problem” of anti-Semitism by “giving a platform to those seeking to spread messages of hate”.

Dr Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said he was shocked that the EJP met with “fig leaf racists and anti-Semites” and added: “It goes without saying that these people [the EJP] are as unrepresentative of the vast majority of European Jews as this collective of Le Pen’s MEPs is of the vast majority of European citizens.”

In a statement on the EJP’s website, Rabinovich said he was “very surprised” by the negative reaction from other Jewish groups.

“The meeting with the [Europe of Nations and Freedom] opens the new dialogue, which, in our firm conviction is what Europe needs today – a dialogue of everybody with everyone, in order to preserve peace and tolerance and combat anti-Semitism in Europe,” said Rabinovich.

He added that a joint statement with Le Pen had condemned anti-Semitism as “the cancer of Europe”.

European far-Right parties ‘seeking anti-Islam coalition with Jewish groups’.

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with , , , ,

Pew Research: Anti-Minority Sentiment Not Increasing in Europe

2015/07/14 Leave a comment

European Perceptions of Roma European Perception of Jews European Perceptions of MuslimsInteresting recent public opinion research on attitudes in Europe, with above charts showing highlights. Summary conclusion:

The economic downturn in Europe that followed the euro crisis raised concerns that economic stress would turn Europeans against each other, as many severe economic downturns have done throughout history, sparking xenophobia and anti-Semitism. And Europe has seen a number of hostile actions against Muslims, Jews, Roma and other minorities in recent years. But the activities of a few are not necessarily reflected in the views of the general public.

The 2015 Pew Research Center survey was conducted after the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the simultaneous attack on a Jewish grocery store, perpetrated by radical Islamists in Paris. But, in the wake of these events, there is no evidence that the atrocity sparked new public antipathy toward Muslims in any of the six European Union nations surveyed. In fact, favorability of Muslims actually improved in some nations. At the same time, French sympathy for Jews increased.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/06/02/chapter-3-anti-minority-sentiment-not-rising/

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Anti-Semitism in Malmö reveals flaws in Swedish immigration system

2015/05/25 Leave a comment

Another story on antisemitism in Malmö, exacerbated by the marginalization of Muslim immigrants and refugees:

Sweden has a generous immigration policy – last year the country of 9 million took in 85,000 refugees. According to an OECD study, that is more than twice as many immigrants per capita as any other member country. Canada, in comparison, takes a twentieth as many refugees proportionately.

In Malmö the immigrants are concentrated in one pocket of the city, Rosengaard. Unemployment in the area runs at 70 per cent, stones are thrown regularly at mail carriers and police, and 150 cars were torched during summer riots in 2013. Protests for and against Muslim immigrants are frequent and tough.

Engineer Peter Fribourg and his wife Marie, a lawyer, are what are now called ‘ethnic Swedes.’ “It’s a tough matter, you have different cultures colliding. We are not succeeding in the way we would like.”

Marie agrees, adding that Malmö meant well but was not properly prepared to help the huge influx of immigrants settle. “I was much more liberal and welcoming before … (but) there have been so many in the last few years we do not know how to deal with them. They will not assimilate.”

There have been 137 anti-Semitic incidents reported to authorities in Malmö the past two years.

The Rabbi of the Malmö synagogue, Shneur Kesselman, says he has been spat upon and cursed. Most recently, a bottle thrown from a passing car narrowly missed his head, he says.

The Rabbi of the Malmö synagogue says he has been spat upon, cursed, and was nearly hit recently by a bottle thrown from a passing car. (Karin Wells/CBC)

Some have left because they are scared. The Jewish community in Malmö has shrunk by 50 per cent to about 1,000 in the past 10 years.

“Hatred of Muslims, as bad as it is — and it’s terrible — is not challenging the Muslim minority, their safety,” Kesselman says.

“Anti-Semitism here in Malmö today is threatening the existence of a minority.”

Anti-Semitism in Malmö reveals flaws in Swedish immigration system – World – CBC News.

Filed under Antisemitism, Refugees Tagged with

Germany adds Jews to anti-Semitism watchdog after criticism

2015/05/23 Leave a comment

Corrective action.

One could not imagine having a group discussing bias and prejudice against Blacks without Black representation, anti-Muslim prejudice without Muslims, nor antisemitism without any Jews.

But conversely, only having representatives from the community under threat undermines the objective of  improving wider public understanding across society and thus influencing public debate:

The German federal government announced on Thursday that its anti-Semitism committee would be adding two Jewish members to its ranks, following criticism for not having done so at its inception. A statement from the government said that Interior Minister Thomas de Maizère (CDU) had invited the psychologist Marina Chernivsky to join, as well as Andreas Nachama, director of the Topography of Terror Foundation, the organization which operates Berlin’s museum on Nazi era.

The current incarnation of the anti-Semitism commission began work in December 2014, when de Maizère called for the creation of a group of experts to “resolutely combat anti-Semitism and continue promoting the sustainability of Jewish life in Germany.” The group had its first meeting in January of the year, and to the dismay of many Jewish groups, did not have a single member with a Jewish background.

Members of the group included Klaus Holz, the secretary general of the Evangelical Academy, Patrick Siegele, who runs the Berlin branch of the Anne Frank Center, and Juliane Wetzel, a historian at the Center for Anti-Semitism Research – but none of them are actually Jewish.

The sharpest critique came from Julius Schoeps, Director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies, who called it an “unrivaled scandal” on the part of the government.

Germany adds Jews to anti-Semitism watchdog after criticism | News | DW.DE | 21.05.2015.

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with

← Older posts

Newer posts →