Rise in anti-Semitism in Western Europe, decrease in Eastern Europe: poll | i24news

2016/07/14 Leave a comment

Interesting findings and linkage to concerns over large-scale arrival of migrants and refugees:

A recent survey has revealed a rise in anti-Semitism in Western Europe, while at the same time there has been a decline in anti-Jewish sentiments in Eastern European countries.

The survey was conducted by the EJA (European Jewish Association) ahead of a discussion Wednesday on anti-Semitism in Europe at the Israeli Knesset’s Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora.

The poll found that 19 percent of Jewish communities – the vast majority of them in Western Europe (mainly in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Northern Ireland) – reported a rise in anti-Semitism.

In Antwerp, Belgium, one community reported a marked rise in antisemitism (5 on a scale of 5), while another community in the same city reported relative calm.

Communities in the Netherlands reported a rise in anti-Semitism (4 on a scale of 5), as did the Jewish community in Nancy, France.

However, some 9.5% of Jewish communities – the vast majority of them in Eastern Europe – reported a decline in anti-Semitism in the past year.

Around 66% of Jewish communities throughout Europe (East and West) reported a lack of real change in the level of anti-Semitism in the past year.

The survey was conducted last Thursday among a representative sample of communities in capital cities and outlying towns throughout Europe, from Belfast in Northern Ireland in the West to Tbilisi, Georgia in the East.

In cities where there are large concentrations of Jews (Paris and Antwerp, for example), the sample included a number of communities in the same city.

The survey comes just months after an annual study on global anti-Semitism found that the number of violent anti-Semitic incidents worldwide fell considerably in 2015, partly because the extreme right has been focused on Muslims.

Violent anti-Semitic incidents dropped more than 40 percent in 2015, but other kinds of anti-Semitic displays increased dramatically in Europe, stated the Annual General Analysis on Anti-Semitism Worldwide, published jointly by Tel Aviv University, Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the European Jewish Congress.

The report attributed the decrease to a number of factors, including an increase in security measures, the growing fear of terrorism that may increase sympathy for Jews targeted for violence, and the lack of a military confrontation involving Israel in 2015.

Another factor cited in the report was the flow of over a million immigrants and refugees to Europe in 2015, which caused a trend of anti-immigrant sentiment that has strengthened extreme right parties. In Scandinavian countries, extreme right sympathizers have been gravitating towards major centrist and right parties for practical reasons.

The extreme right has also in many cases pointed at Jews as the root cause of terrorism, claiming they fostered Muslim immigration in order to undermine European culture. “The Jews are depicted as directly responsible for the migration wave, either by causing the war in Syria and Iraq and by creating ISIS […] because of the wish to achieve the following goals: to destroy European racial identity, to incite Christians and Muslims against each other, to create a Middle East devoid of Arabs and Muslims and even to destroy western democracies in order to control them – an accusation which is a derivative of conspiracy theories. Jews are guilty of the Islamization of Europe by bringing in the refugees, and of the opposite as well, of Islamophobia, by allegedly misusing the anti-Muslim rhetoric in order to invoke support for Israel,” said the report.

Source: Rise in anti-Semitism in Western Europe, decrease in Eastern Europe: poll | i24news – See beyond

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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’.

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