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JewishWikipedia.info
Wilhelm Marr (1819-1904) was a German agitator and theorist, who coined the term "antisemitism" as a euphemism for the German Judenhass, or "Jew-hate".
Events moved to Nazism in Germany and the Holocaust in the 1930’s-40’s when 6,000,000 Jews were mrdered.
In 2005, the EU Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), now the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), adopted a “working definition of antisemitism” which has become the standard definition used around the world, including by the European Parliament, the UK College of Policing, the US Department of State, the US Senate, and the 31 countries comprising the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. In 2016, the powerful House of Commons Home Affairs Committee joined Campaign Against Antisemitism’s longstanding call for the British government and its agencies, as well as all political parties, to formally adopt the International Definition of Antisemitism, following which the British government formally adopted the definition. Campaign Against Antisemitism also uses the International Definition of Antisemitism. For details go to Definition of Antisemitism
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks at “The Future of the Jewish Communities in Europe” Conference at The European Parliament on 27th September 2016 in Brussels.
started by saying
The hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. That is what I want us to understand today. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Hitler. It wasn’t Jews alone who suffered under Stalin. It isn’t Jews alone who suffer under ISIS or Al Qaeda or Islamic Jihad. We make a great mistake if we think antisemitism is a threat only to Jews. It is a threat, first and foremost, to Europe and to the freedoms it took centuries to achieve.
Antisemitism is not about Jews. It is about anti-Semites. It is about people who cannot accept responsibility for their own failures and have instead to blame someone else. Historically, if you were a Christian at the time of the Crusades, or a German after the First World War, and saw that the world hadn’t turned out the way you believed it would, you blamed the Jews. That is what is happening today. And I cannot begin to say how dangerous it is. Not just to Jews but to everyone who values freedom, compassion and humanity.
The appearance of antisemitism in a culture is the first symptom of a disease, the early warning sign of collective breakdown. If Europe allows antisemitism to flourish, that will be the beginning of the end of Europe. And what I want to do in these brief remarks is simply to analyze a phenomenon full of vagueness and ambiguity, because we need precision and understanding to know what antisemitism is, why it happens, why antisemites are convinced that they are not antisemitic.
First let me define antisemitism. Not liking Jews is not antisemitism. We all have people we don’t like. That’s OK; that’s human; it isn’t dangerous. Second, criticizing Israel is not antisemitism. I was recently talking to some schoolchildren and they asked me: is criticizing Israel antisemitism? I said No and I explained the difference. I asked them: Do you believe you have a right to criticize the British government? They all put up their hands. Then I asked, Which of you believes that Britain has no right to exist? No one put up their hands. Now you know the difference, I said, and they all did.
For the continuation go to ‘ The Mutating Virus, Understanding Antisemitism
Locally Jews are a local group at whom prejudice is directed. This is seen by the actions. Over the past two thousand years by Christians through the Inquisition and concepts such as Christian Heresy and Limpieza de Sangre (Blood Purity) and Muslims by pogroms and concepts such as the dhimmis, the Muslim appproach to superiority, where non-Muslim subjects were treated as second clsass citizens. What happens changes with time, thus the Inquisition first appeared inj the 13th century and vanished in the nineteenth century and was aimed at Jews and converted Jews and converted Arabs (Morriscos) The Hamas charter states that they are aginst the Jews because they have a local non-Arab state (Israel). Similarly there has been a massive Muslim generated reduction of Christians Leaving the Arab World and Christianity and Antisemitism Catholicism and the Jewish Story, Antisemitism in the Arab World and Iran, Arab Discrimination Against the Palestinians
ANTISEMITISM
IT DIDN’T JUST START WITH HITLER
THE
INCREDIBLE
STORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE
Countries History and stories of Israel and the Diaspora around the world
NY Times review of ‘The Popes Against the Jews’
by David Kertzer, 2001
MEASURING HATE:
THE STATE OF ANTISEMITISM IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 03 Feb 2016
This major new report highlights that not enough is being done to combat antisemitism in social media.
Prepared for the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism, "Measuring the Hate: The State of Antisemitism in Social Media", highlights that not enough is being done to combat antisemitism in social media. The report, based on tracking over 2,000 items of antisemitism over the last 10 months, found that only 20% of the items were removed.
Traditional antisemitism made up almost half the sample and covered content such as conspiracy theories, racial slurs, and accusations such as the blood libel. The report also outlines where each type of antisemitism occurs, with content promoting violence against Jews far more likely to be found on Twitter (63% on Twitter, 23% on YouTube and 14% on Facebook), while content promoting Holocaust denial was more likely to be found on YouTube (44% YouTube, 38% Twitter, 18% Facebook).
The report highlights significant variations in the responses of the social media companies to online antisemitism. More significantly, the response by each company was found to vary depending on the nature of the antisemitism.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
On January 9, 2015 four French Jews were killed in an attack on the Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Paris, which was targeted following the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and an aborted attack on a Jewish center which left a police woman dead. On February 15th Dan Uzan, a community security volunteer, was killed outside the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark. In Israel there were a multitude of fatal knife attacks on Jewish targets. The far right is gaining in popularity, particularly in parts of Europe, while antisemitism from parts of the Muslim and Arab world inspire self-radicalisation and violent extremism. These are just some of the results of rising antisemitism in 2015, and highlight the need for urgent action.
Through the Internet, antisemitic content and messages spread across national borders, feeding not only anti-Jewish hate, but violent extremism more generally. Removing the online incitement which leads to knife attacks in Israel is part and parcel of tackling the larger problem of online incitement which has also led to a dramatic increase in attacks on refugees in Germany. Responding to the rising social media incitement and very real consequences, German prosecutors opening an investigation into the possibility of criminal liability of senior Facebook executives in late 2015.
Following this move an agreement was reached between the German Government, Facebook, Google and Twitter to see content that violated German law removed within 24 hours. Facebook has since gone further and announced a project to tackle online hate in Europe.
As 2016 starts it is clear we have reached a point where the status quo is no longer acceptable. Social media platforms are being clearly told by governments around the world that if they don't do better to combating incitement, hate and the use of their systems by violent extremists, government will look to legislate to impose increased regulation. Social media platforms are starting to respond, but some are doing so more effectively than others.
As governments increase their efforts to tackle threats in social media, antisemitism remains a core part of the wider fight against hate speech, incitement and violent extremism. It is an area where international efforts are well established, and where experts have been working on the problem since it was first raised at the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism in 2008. Through its Working Group on Antisemitism on the Internet and in the Media, the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism has continued to work steadily on this problem and released a major report of recommendations and a review of work to date in 2013, and an interim version of this report in 2015.
This report represents the latest research and a major step forward in efforts to tackle online antisemitism. It also lights a path for tackling other forms of online hate and incitement. Hate in social media is explored empirically, both with respect to its relative prevalence across the major platforms, and with respect to the nature of the antisemitic content. Most significantly, the rate of removal of antisemitic hate speech is reported on by social media platform and by antisemitic category over the last 10 months.
Categories of AntisemitismThe report is based on a sample totalling 2024 antisemitic items all from either Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. The categories the hate were classified into were: incitement to violence (5%), including general statements advocating death to the Jews; Holocaust denial (12%); traditional antisemitism (49%), such as conspiracy theories and racial slurs; and New Antisemitism (34%), being antisemitism related to the State of Israel as per the Working Definition of Antisemitism.
The results in this report indicate significant variation in the way antisemitism is treated both between companies and also within a single company across the four categories of antisemitism. Positive responses by the platforms remain far lower than a concerned public or the governments who represent them would expect.
The best initial removal rates occur on Facebook for Holocaust denial where 46% is removed within 3 months. The best overall result is for incitement on Facebook with only 25% of the content remaining online. The worst case was YouTube New Antisemitism where after 10 months 96% of the New Antisemitism on YouTube remained online. This reflected an overall problem on YouTube with 91% of the classic antisemitism, 90% of the Holocaust denial, and 70% of the incitement found on YouTube remaining after 10 months. Twitter is removing content on an ongoing basis but at a slow rate.
Takedowns of Holocaust denial, incitement, new antisemitism
On Twitter, classic antisemitism is the most likely to be removed (25% removed) and incitement is the least likely to be removed (14% removed). Changes to policies to move away from US legal standard which require a specific and immediate threat, and towards a wider definition covering advocacy or support for violence, do not appear to have had an impact on this data. In contrast the high response rate for classic antisemitism seems to reflect Twitters focus on racial slurs.
The German Government's moves, forcing the companies to apply domestic legal definitions of hate, and not those developed by the companies, is one way to close the gap between public expectations and current response rates. Another approach would be for the companies to actively work with civil society and governments to lift the internal standards close to public expectations. This applies not only to antisemitism, but to hate speech, incitement, and violent extremist content more generally. We hope this report sheds light on the areas where improvement is most urgently needed, and that it will encourage a closing of the gap between public expectations on how social media companies should respond to antisemitism and the reality of what is currently occurring.
THE RISING SCOURGE OF MODERN ANTI-SEMITISM
Violence and hatred are growing as the world
marks Auschwitz anniversary
The Financial Times, The editorial board January, 27 2020
Seventy-five years after its liberation in the closing months of the second world war, a disturbing paradox surrounds the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz. The place which symbolises the mass murder of European Jews in the 1940s, and which testifies to mankind’s enduring capacity for unfathomable evil, today receives more visitors than ever and exposes them to the terrible lessons of the past. Yet anti-Semitism is on the rise, not least in Europe, the historical heartland of the scourge.
In principle, the small tour companies in the nearby Polish city of Krakow that arrange day excursions to Auschwitz, and the schools across Europe that fly in pupils for educational visits, are making a useful contribution. World leaders rightly pay their respects at Auschwitz, as they did for Monday’s 75th anniversary commemorations. All this is a far cry from the communist era, when Auschwitz was a desolate, poorly maintained site where, for ideological reasons, the authorities played down the camp’s central role in the genocide of the Jews.
Yet there remains something unsatisfactory about modern efforts to raise public awareness of the Holocaust, especially among generations born long after the crimes were committed, and to protect Jewish communities against violence, hatred and prejudice. Museums, films, school projects, civic events and other public initiatives are failing to curb the spread of vicious anti-Semitic lies and misinformation on the internet. Still less are they preventing murderous attacks on Jews, from the French city of Toulouse in 2012 to Pittsburgh in 2018 and Halle in eastern Germany last October.
According to a European Commission survey published one year ago, 50 per cent of Europeans consider anti-Semitism a problem in their country, including majorities in Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Italy, Belgium and Austria. The worst examples of anti-Semitism were considered to be Holocaust denial, anti-Jewish material on the internet, graffiti, vandalism and hostility and threats to Jews in public places. Among Jews themselves, an overwhelming majority feel that anti-Semitism has risen strongly in Europe since 2013.
As the last survivors of Auschwitz and other death camps pass away, there is an obvious risk that we will find it harder to hold on to the feeling that our times have a direct connection to the era of the Nazi-led abominations. More worrying still is the pernicious misuse of the internet and social media, including by politicians and activists who should know better. This has undermined respect for objective truth and fact-based discussion, creating the swamp in which intolerance, ignorance and anti-Semitism breed.
Over the past decade or so, these pestilences have acquired an increasingly political form as the western liberal order has come under attack from within by forces of the radical right and radical left. For sure, Islamist terrorism has played a large part in making Jews feel under threat. At its heart, however, contemporary anti-Semitism is about the retreat of liberalism in societies polarised by economic crises, wooed by militant nationalists, disoriented by conspiracy theories and falling back on racial and religious stereotypes to account for their ills. Such a climate is dangerous for Muslims and other minorities, too.
In his 1898 tract “J’accuse”, the French author Emile Zola argued in unforgettable prose that anti-Semitism was not just an abomination in its own right but a threat to democracy, liberty and civilisation. Never since 1945 have Zola’s words served as a more urgent warning than they do today.
ANTISEMITISM BAROMETER UK 2019
Campaign Against Antisemitism
Editor’s Note
A General Election was held in December 2019 at which Labour was soundly defeated and their leader resigned. A new leader took office in April 2020 one of whose objectives was a new climate within the Partty. It is hoped that this will mean the disappearance of their antisemitism. Time will tell.
FOREWARD
Britain stands at a crossroads. This tolerant nation which has long been among the best places in the world in which to live as a Jew is being poisoned by antisemitism, and British Jews are considering leaving the country on a scale unprecedented since mediaeval times.
Incitement against Jews is proliferating, antisemitic crime is going unpunished, and in our politics Jew-hatred is becoming commonplace. This study has measured the results: a population in which antisemitic views have currency, and a Jewish community that has lost faith in the criminal justice system and politicians to protect it from racists, and now fears for its very future in our country. This comprehensive study, designed and analysed by one of the foremost academics in his field, reveals shocking truths about our country.
Antisemitism on the far-left now exceeds antisemitism on the far-right. The leader of the once fiercely anti-racist Labour Party is now the candidate of choice for anti-Jewish racists, and 84% of British Jews feel that he is a threat specifically to Jews. Two in five British Jews have considered leaving the UK over antisemitism in the past two years alone, 85% of them because of antisemitism in politics, with two thirds expressly mentioning the Labour Party or its leader as their reason.
And it is not merely a political crisis. Jews are fearful of antisemitic crime, with not even one in five saying that the authorities do enough. Years of failure to prosecute hate crime against Jews have demolished confidence in the criminal justice system.
Just over a third of Jews have any confidence that the authorities would prosecute the perpetrator of a hate crime against them, even if there was sufficient evidence to do so.
The Crown Prosecution Service has lost the faith of two thirds of Jews, and almost halfof British Jews who would normally wear outward signs of their Judaism now try not to show that they are Jewish in public.
The solutions are simple. We have been making the same recommendations for years and they are included in this report. The question is whether our political parties will act on them. But we cannot wait any longer. Our study finds that the majority in this country are decent people who reject antisemitism. We need ordinary people, regardless of politics, race or religion, to tell the Jewish community that we all stand together against antisemitism, and to tell their politicians that they will not stand by as Britain’s Jews become fearful and increasingly contemplate emigration. We have set up TogetherAgainstAntisemitism.com so that people can easily show their support.
It is up to all of us to ensure that Britain stands on the right side of history. We must demand action from our politicians, and we must ensure that Britain’s Jews are not abandoned to the forces of hatred.
It is not only Britain that stands at a crossroads. Now that you have read this, you do too.
Gideon Falter
CHIEF EXECUTIVE
THE END OF A JEWISH PRESENCE IN EUROPE?
Gatestone Institute, Guy Millière, December 20, 2019
- "Although Jews represent less than one percent of the population, half of the racist acts committed in France are committed against Jews." — French Member of Parliament Meyer Habib.
- Anti-Semitism is advancing throughout the continent and often has a Middle Eastern cast. Yet, the authorities also talk only about right-wing anti-Semitism.
- Leftist anti-Semitism is present all over Europe. Its followers, as in France, do their best to hide and protect Middle Eastern anti-Semitism.
- The demographic transformation taking place in France is also happening throughout Western Europe, and the growing submission to Islam is being silently accepted by the ruling authorities almost everywhere.
On December 3, the French National Assembly passed a resolution adopting the
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism.
MP Meyer Habib, who supported the resolution, delivered a passionate and poignant speech, highlighting the extent of the anti-Semitic threat in today's France,
and the close links between hatred of the Jews and hatred toward Israel.
On December 3, the French National Assembly passed a resolution adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism. The resolution stressed that the definition "encompasses manifestations of hatred toward the State of Israel justified solely by the perception of the latter as a Jewish collective." MP Meyer Habib, who supported the resolution, delivered a passionate and poignant speech, highlighting the extent of the anti-Semitic threat in today's France, and the close links between hatred of the Jews and hatred toward Israel:
"Since 2006, twelve French people have been murdered in France because they were Jewish. Although Jews represent less than one percent of the population, half of the racist acts committed in France are committed against Jews. Anti-Zionism is an obsessive demonization of Israel and an abuse of anti-racist and anti-colonial rhetoric to deprive the Jews of their identity."
He added that getting the votes to pass the resolution was extremely difficult because of a general lack of "political courage" -- sadly, a quality often absent in France when it comes to anti-Semitism and Israel.
French political leaders often declare that fighting against anti-Semitism is of utmost importance; they say it every time a Jew is murdered in the country. The only anti-Semitism they seem ready to fight, however, is right-wing anti-Semitism. They seemingly refuse to see that all the Jews killed or assaulted in France since 2006 were victims of Muslim anti-Semites -- and French political leaders never utter a word about it. They appear to hide Islamic anti-Semitism -- embedded in the Qur'an and Hadiths and reinforced in the 1930s by the Nazis' friendship with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini -- under a Muslim hatred of the Jews based on a supposedly "legitimate" Muslim hatred of 'Zionist crimes'".
French political leaders also seemingly refuse to see another form of anti-Semitism that is on the rise: leftist anti-Semitism. It is precisely this leftist anti-Semitism that uses the mask of anti-Zionism to spread anti-Jewish hatred.
French political leaders also never speak about the way the French mainstream media talk about Israel, or about the consequences of those articles and reports. They constantly -- and falsely -- describe Israel as an evil country whose soldiers cavalierly kill Arabs on a daily basis and whose citizens "illegally occupy" territories (despite having been there for more than 3,000 years) that might belong to another people whom they cruelly deprive of everything.
French political leaders do not criticize anti-Israel articles and reports: the way most of them talk about Israel is just as anti-Israel as the worst anti-Israel articles. The government itself does no better. When Israeli Jews are murdered in a terrorist attack, the French government publishes a statement "deploring" the attack and urging Israel to "show restraint" and avoid "starting a cycle of violence". When an attack takes place in the eastern part of Jerusalem or in the West Bank, the statement mentions that "East Jerusalem" and the West Bank are "Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel". It is a way of saying that Jews should not be there, that the victims are the guilty party, and that those who attack them had good reason to do so.
November 12, when US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Jewish communities in the disputed territories do not contravene international law, the French government immediately issued a statement saying that "the Israeli policy of colonization in the Palestinian occupied territories is illegal under international law, in particular international humanitarian law".
This reaction is in line with the positions taken by the French government in recent years: when US President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the US embassy there, French President Emmanuel Macron said that the move was a "serious mistake" and stressed that the French embassy would remain in the make-believe capital of Israel, Tel Aviv. An official statement added that France is "the friend of Palestine" and supports "the creation of a Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital". France does not recognize Jerusalem as part of Israel's territory: the French consulate in Jerusalem is described in French official documents as "the French Consulate in Jerusalem"; the word "Israel" is omitted. When French citizens residing in Israel vote, the votes of those in Jerusalem are counted separately from the votes of those elsewhere in Israel.
At the Institute of the Arab World, funded by the French government and Arab countries, opened its doors in the center of Paris in 1987, the conferences and exhibitions are often imbued with anti-Israeli hatred. Currently, at an exhibition called "AlUla, marvel of Arabia", visitors can see a map where the entire land of Israel is covered with the words "Palestinian territories". When Jewish organizations protested, the word, Israel was finally added next to "Palestinian territories".
Almost all the murders of Jews in France were not only committed by Muslim anti-Semites, but by Muslims unjustly identifying French Jews with "criminal Israel". Mohamed Merah, who murdered Jewish schoolchildren in Toulouse, told a police officer that he killed Jewish children because "the Jews kill Palestinian children" and that he saw "many reports on French TV showing it". What he said did not prompt the French government to ask French television stations to be more careful to avoid whatever could be regarded as incitement to hatred and murder.
At the moment, Meyer Habib is nearly the only French MP denouncing anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, anti-Israeli bias in the French media and the anti-Israel positions of the French government and many politicians. He often receives anti-Semitic death threats; his family and he need to live under around-the-clock police protection. He represents French citizens living abroad -- in Israel, Italy and Turkey; he could not be elected anywhere on French territory.
Habib has also said that the December 3 resolution is just a resolution. Only a minority of MPs voted in favor of it. The only reason it was passed at all is that many MPs chose to abstain. Several voted against it and once again announced that they were proudly "anti-Zionist". Either way, the resolution will not become a law and has no consequences.
The French media, political leaders and government will almost certainly not change their hostile positions regarding Israel. No French political leader supports Meyer Habib or dares to disagree with the French government's statements regarding Israel, except to say that the French government is still too pro-Israel.
As a demographic change is rapidly taking place in France, the country's media, political leaders and government are behaving accordingly. Jews have become a shrinking part of the population -- 0.6 % -- and carry no political weight. The French Muslim population is quickly growing -- to more than 12% of the total. It has become virtually impossible to win an election in France without now counting on the Muslim vote.
The few people who still criticize Islam and Muslim anti-Semitism in France are mercilessly harassed by Islamic organizations and even more harshly condemned by the courts. A few days ago, on December 4, a prosecutor asked the court to sentence Christine Tasin, president of the anti-Islamic movement Republican Resistance. In June 2017, she wrote an article containing the statements: "Anti-Muslim acts of anger are inevitable in the short or medium term in all European countries, including France, which are undergoing a Muslim invasion" and "Islam may be incompatible with Western civilization". Tasin was accused by the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) of inciting "anti-Muslim terrorism". The CCIF, is an organization created by Muslims of France, the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The prosecutor said that the charge pressed by the CCIF was "perfectly valid", and that Tasin "needs a lesson". She could be the first person in France to be sent to prison for the "crime" of "Islamophobia".
Many participants at the Islamic and leftist demonstration against "Islamophobia" in Paris on November 10 shouted explicitly anti-Zionist slogans, such as "Israel Assassin" and "Palestine shall win". Several demonstrators carried Palestinian and Hamas flags. By contrast, a demonstration a week later, denouncing Islamic terrorism, brought together fewer than 2,000 participants.
On October 30 in Paris, when President Macron inaugurated the European Center for Judaism, he named all the Jews recently murdered in France. He did not, however, name the murderers. He merely denounced the "foul beast", an expression created by Bertolt Brecht and now often used in France to incriminate Nazi sympathizers. He mentioned threats posed by "those who want to sow hatred and division " and expressed his support for the Muslims wounded in a failed attack on the mosque in Bayonne, in southwest France. He spoke positively of a time when a large part of Spain was Muslim, and said that there, in Andalusia, "the Jews, despite their dhimmi status, developed an extraordinary culture".
The author Barbara Lefebvre saw in these words a eulogy for Jews -- an acceptance of dhimmitude [being ruled under Islam as a third-class "tolerated" citizen, sometimes paying a "protection" tax] and of the submission that comes with it. She wrote that "summoning the brown plague and the dark hours of our history to evoke the threat faced by the Jews living in France is a historic, memorial and political insult", and that Macron's speech paved the way for condemning the French Jews to "move out of the country or lock themselves in a community bubble, like dhimmis in the land of Islam".
In Europe, France is no exception. Anti-Semitism is advancing throughout the continent and often has a Middle Eastern cast. Yet, the authorities talk only about "right-wing anti-Semitism".
In Germany, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution conducted a study analyzing Muslim attacks perpetrated against the Jews there in 2017 -- but it explicitly refused to say that these attacks were anti-Semitic, and instead attributed them to "religious and cultural beliefs that Muslim immigrants bring with them" to Germany.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas added, as if it were an excuse, that Muslims arriving in Germany "come from countries in which the powerful incite hatred toward Jews and Israel". A study conducted in the United Kingdom by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research showed that anti-Semitism is far more prevalent among British Muslims than among other citizens of the country -- but the study was reported only in the British Jewish press.
Leftist anti-Semitism is present all over Europe. Its followers, as in France, do their best to hide and protect Middle Eastern anti-Semitism.
In the United Kingdom, anti-Semites entered the Labor Party through the Left. The leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, was recently accused by Britain's chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis of "anti-Jewish racism".
Most major European media are as anti-Israel as the major French media. In July, Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, described an article published by the magazine Spiegel as using "anti-Semitic clichés" to vilify Israel. It is not the only article of its kind in the German press. Shuli Davidovich, an Israeli press attaché in London, said a decade ago:
"Definitely some papers never give any credit to Israel ... for some people especially in such papers as the Guardian, the human face of the Israeli does not exist. It's always the helmet, the rifle, the aggressor, the occupier."
Today, nothing has changed. The Guardian often publishes articles supporting the economic and cultural boycott of Israel. Manfred Gerstenfeld, a commentator, noted the growing abundance of anti-Semitic cartoons that now accompany anti-Israeli articles in the European press. Anti-Semitic cartoons, he pointed out, abound in Norway -- a country with only 700 Jews. Many cartoons, he said, depict Jews as "parasites", exactly as in the Muslim countries' press.
Most of Europe's political leaders are as hostile to Israel as France's political leaders are. The European Union stubbornly defends the idea that Israel must return to the 1949 armistice line, often referred to as the "1967 borders". The EU claims that Israel illegally occupies "Palestinian territories". Every time Federica Mogherini, Vice President of the European Commission until last month, speaks about the Middle East, she describes Israel as an "occupying power". Her successor, Josep Borrell, advocates for unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood. "Iran wants to wipe out Israel," he has said; "nothing new about that. You have to live with it". Nine of the 28 member States of the European Union -- Sweden, Cyprus, Malta, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania -- recognize a "state of Palestine" but ignore that the Palestinian Authority has never renounced its plan to obliterate Israel and take its place, nor stopped committing acts of terrorism.
The demographic transformation happening in France is also spreading throughout Western Europe, and the growing submission to Islam is being silently accepted by the ruling authorities almost everywhere. Political parties opposed to Islamization are pushed to the margins. Some Central European leaders – Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Poland and President Miloš Zeman in the Czech Republic -- are the only ones explicitly to reject the Islamization of their countries and take measures to curb Muslim immigration. They are often condemned by Western European leaders who want to force them to welcome immigrants by the thousands.
Reports show, not surprisingly, that the rise in the number of Muslim immigrants has led to an even broader rise in anti-Semitism.
In 2018, the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency surveyed Jews in the 12 European countries with the largest Jewish populations. The report concluded that "28% experienced some form of harassment for being Jewish", "47% worry about anti-Semitic verbal insult or harassment and 40% about physical attack", "38% have considered emigrating in the past five years over safety fears".
Another study, undertaken by Germany's University of Bielefeld in 2011, showed that 40% of European adults agreed with the statement, "Israel behaves toward the Palestinians like the Nazis behaved toward the Jews."
In an article named "Judenrein Europe", the American political commentator Joel Kotkin wrote that all available data show that anti-Jewish hatred and anti-Israel prejudices will continue to spread throughout all Europe, and that it could mean the end of Jewish presence on the continent:
"For millennia, following the destruction of the Second Temple and the beginning of the diaspora, Europe was home to the majority of the world's Jews. That chapter of history is over. As Jews continue fleeing the continent, by the end of this century all that's left will be a Jewish graveyard".
WHY IS FRANCE
FACING AN UPSURGE IN ANTI-SEMITIC ATTACKS?
A spate of high-profile anti-Semitic incidents has shocked France, where officials say attacks against Jews rose by 74% last year – an alarming trend experts have linked to the spread of hate speech
and the tension surrounding "Yellow Vest" protests.
France 24 Henrique VALADARES, Date created : 13/02/2019, Latest update : 28/02/2019
During a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “unacceptable increase” in anti-Semitic acts and hate speech, which he linked to the latest wave of demontrations against his government.
The incidents mark "a new turn of events linked to the movement", Macron said, referring to the so-called "Yellow Vest" anti-government rallies that have roiled France over the past three months.
"Anti-Semitism is a repudiation of the Republic, in the same way that attacking elected officials or institutions is a repudiation of the Republic”, the French president added.
Yellow Vest demonstrators, who have staged often violent protests on consecutive weekends since late November, have come under scrutiny amid a string of racist and anti-Semitic incidents reported during their weekly rallies.
While many Yellow Vests have publically denounced anti-Semitism, some in the movement – a broad-based grassroots phenomenon with no single political bent – have expressed extreme views and adherence to conspiracy theories.
Last weekend several anti-Semitic incidents were reported in France, including swastikas drawn on portraits of the late Holocaust survivor and prominent politician Simone Veil, and a bagel shop sprayed with the word “Juden” (German for “Jews”) on its front window.
On Monday, municipal workers in the Paris suburb of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois found a tree planted in memory of the late young Jewish Ilam Halimi chopped down and a second one partly sawn.
Halimi was kidnapped and tortured for three weeks in 2006 by gang members demanding huge sums of money from his family, assuming he was rich because he was Jewish. He died on his way to hospital.
The total of registered anti-Semitic acts and threats rose to 541 in 2018 from 311, a surge of 74 percent after two years of decrease, French interior minister Christophe Castaner announced on Monday while attending a ceremony at the Halimi memorial.
“Anti-Semitism is spreading like a poison, like a venom," he added.
Honte à celui qui, abject, a défiguré d'une croix gammée mon hommage à Simone Veil, rescapée de la Shoah, peint l'an dernier sur les boites aux lettres de la mairie du 13e arrondissement de Paris, lors de sa panthéonisation. Quelle lâcheté... très choquant. pic.twitter.com/Cj8Aog292U
Christian Guémy C215 (@christianguemy) February 11, 2019
France is home to the world’s largest Jewish population outside Israel and the United States.
Although anti-Semitism is not new to the country, “a new threshold has been set: these acts are growingly extreme and violent”, Pierre Tartakowsky, honorary president of the French Human Rights League (LDH), told FRANCE 24.
According to Frederic Potier, a French government official in charge of fighting anti-Semitism, racism and anti-gay discrimination, “what is new and what is feeding this anti-Semitic fever [...] is the resurgence of a far right with really violent speech and acts”.
Until now, most of the anti-Semitism in France was derived from Islamism and linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the French official added.
But why such radicalisation now?
French female rabbi Delphine Horvilleur told FRANCE 24 that these “horrifying numbers” are a “warning sign” of “a society in a state of breech and failure”.
Delphine Horvilleur: 'Anti-Semitism is always a prelude to a general violence'
“If a society is seen as stable, fair and democratic, its members would never attack an MP or destroy everything during demonstrations,” added Tartakowsky, who stands close to the Communist Party. The growing tension on all sides of the political spectrum “favours a radicalization of acts, in a phenomenon of rising irritation”, he said.
Since the beginning of the Yellow Vest movement, around 50 MPs have been attacked or threatened, including with death threats and gunshots. Most of them were members of Macron’s La République en Marche (LREM) party, though some were targeted for being black or women.
Violent acts are also fuelled by “an enabling context”, argues sociologist Michael Wievorka, coupled with a “liberation of hate speech – mostly on the internet but also in public”.
According to Vincent Duclert, a historian at the Paris-based School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), anti-Semitism has also found “a breeding ground inside the Yellow Vest movement because it is violent”.
On the fringes of the tenth consecutive weekend of protests, on January 19, various anti-Semitic groups, including prominent anti-Jewish figure Alain Soral, tried to coordinate and “goad the Yellow Vests”.
Three weeks later, a graffiti spraying “Macron Jew’s Bitch” was found in the heart of Paris after another day of protests.
But the increase in hate speech
“is not particular to France,
even though it has been
really strong lately here:
it is everywhere”,
Horvilleur told FRANCE 24.
In Germany, anti-Semitic offences rose almost 10 percent in 2018, with violent attacks up more than 60 percent. Police recorded a total of 1,646 offences motivated by hatred of Jews, including 62 violent offences that left 43 people injured. In comparison, there were 37 physical attacks in 2017.
According to Potier, the French government official, the same figures also surged by “66 percent in Italy last year, and around 50 percent in the US.”
The increase in anti-Semitic attacks witnessed in France last year doesn't necessarily reflect a constant upward trend over the years, Tartakowsky cautioned.
“Any act of that kind is extremely worrying and horrendous and we are at a peak of hate crimes. But this peak is less important than those of 2014, 2009 or 2004, when there were 800 acts of anti-Semitism in France,” he explained.
However, "people are now being killed simply because they are Jewish," Tartakowsky added, pointing to recent terrorist attacks on French soil, in which jihadists have targeted the Jewish community.
In 2012, Islamist Mohammed Merah shot dead a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse. Three years later, gunman Amedy Coulibaly, who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group, killed four people at a kosher supermarket in Paris.
All religions targeted
Horvilleur warned that the rising attacks are alarming not only for the Jewish community, but for the wider population too.
"We have known this for centuries, anti-Semitism is always a prelude to a general outbreak of violence: when there are attacks against Jews, it always means that the rest of the population is going to be attacked very soon,” she explained.
The Jewish community is not the only target of hate crimes, with all communities and religions, including Roman Catholics, coming under threat. Last week, at least five churches were desecrated around the country, according to the police.
“Muslims have also been largely targeted”, Tartakowsky added. “But unlike Christians, Muslim communities rarely press charges in such cases, so we don’t have a precise figure concerning them. The same is true of Romani people.”
ANTISEMITISM:
FROM ITS ORIGINS TO THE PRESENT
Join 50 leading scholars in exploring antisemitism,
from its roots to its contemporary forms.
Yad Vashem - Future Learn
In this course, 50 leading scholars from all over the world will explore questions and issues relating to antisemitism including: what is antisemitism? How has it changed throughout history? Why can it be found among so many diverse cultures, and even among opposing ideologies? What happened to antisemitism after the Holocaust? How is antisemitism expressed today, and what are the main spheres in which it can be found?
We will examine different periods and societies, exploring the development of antisemitism as well as its changing nature over time, place and culture.
WHAT TOPICS WILL YOU COVER
- The nature of hate
- The perception of the “other” in the Greco-Roman world
- The advent of Christianity and its effect on the history of antisemitism
- The Middle Ages and anti-Jewish discourse, libels and violence
- The ideologies and revolutions of the Modern Period and their impact on the development of antisemitism
- Nazi ideology and the Holocaust
- Antisemitism in the Far-right and Far-left
- Holocaust Denial
- Anti-Zionism and antisemitism
- The case of the Islamic and Arab world
- Online hate
WHEN WOULD YOU LIKE TO START?
WHAT WILL YOU ACHIEVE?
By the end of the course, you'll be able to...
- Discuss what antisemitism is and what is unique about it
- Identify antisemitic language and actions in the past and in the present
- Explain the historical and ideological roots of antisemitism and how it has developed
- Identify different types of antisemitism presented in the course and explain the differences, commonalities and dynamics between them
- Discuss the characteristics of antisemitism today
- Distinguish between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of the State of Israel
- Who is the course for?
This course, designed by Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, is for anyone with an interest in history, in social dynamics and human nature, and in the phenomenon of antisemitism.
WHO WILL YOU LEARN WITH?
Yossi Kugler
Yossi Kugler completed his graduate studies in History. He is a project manager, content developer and educator at the E-Learning Department at Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies
Dafna Dolinko
Dafna Dolinko completed her graduate studies in Jewish History. She is a content developer and educator at the E-Learning Department at Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies
Dmitry Kolotilenko
Dmitry Kolotilenko completed his graduate studies in History. He is a content developer and educator at the E-Learning Department at Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies
WHO DEVELOPED THE COURSE?
As the Jewish people’s
living memorial
to the Holocaust,
Yad Vashem safeguards
the memory of the past
and imparts its meaning
for future generations.
JOIN THIS COURSE
- Free £0
- Access to this course for 8 weeks
- Includes any articles, videos, peer reviews and quizzes
- Upgrade £32
- Unlimited access to this course
- Includes any articles, videos, peer reviews and quizzes
- Certificate of Achievement to prove your success when you're eligible
- Download and print your Certificate of Achievement anytime
- Upgrade
WANT TO KNOW MORE? CHECK OUR FAQS
Do you know someone who’d love this course? Tell them about it...
Or can use the hashtag #FLantisemitism to talk about this course on social media.
BRITS MAKE
170,000 ANTISEMITIC GOOGLE SEARCHES A YEAR
Jeremy Corbyn's meeting with Jewish leaders last year caused an 80 percent spike in searches, says CST. One in 10 of searches is for violent terms.
Jewish News, Jue Millis, January 13, 2019
About one in 10 of the more than 170,000 antisemitic Google searches made in Britain every year include violent phrases such as “kill Jews”, the Community Security Trust (CST) has revealed.
The CST study – Hidden Hate: What Google Searches Tell Us About Antisemitism Today – released on Friday, revealed that while most of the searches are for jokes mocking Jewish people, the most common negative stereotypes claim Jews are “evil” and “racist”.
There was a rise of almost 80 percent in antisemitic searches in April, after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn held talks with Jewish communal leaders.
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The findings cover a 14-year period starting in 2004 and are based on analysis of Google data, as well as material from the archive of the far-right website Stormfront, one of the oldest and largest neo-Nazi websites.
The study, commissioned jointly by the CST and the Antisemitism Policy Trust, set out the most common abusive searches, where they are most popular and at what time of the day, and how trends have changed over time.
As well as 17,000 of the searches having violent connotations, the CST report also found that they tended to spike between 2am and 3am, and that Wales had the highest proportion of searches with the lowest in Scotland.
It also found that someone searching for jokes about Jews is 100 times more likely to search for jokes about black people, using the N-word, and that there was little difference between Labour- and Conservative-voting areas.
There was also a sharp rise in antisemitic searches immediately after Israel’s Netta won last year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
Netta Barzilai won this year’s Eurovision for Israel
The research also pointed to an enduring fascination with conspiracy theories about the role of the Rothschild banking family in “running the world”.
The report acknowledged “it is impossible to know for sure that any given search is made by a person with antisemitic attitudes”. However, it said people tended to be far more open when they search for something online, revealing prejudices, hatreds and interests they might otherwise have kept hidden.
Report author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz said: “We have found that searches looking for information on the Holocaust being a hoax rise about 30 percent every year on Holocaust Memorial Day.
“We learned that Jewish women in public life or positions of power are the subject of more antisemitism searches than Jewish men in similar positions.
Dave Rich
“We found evidence of the rise in popularity of antisemitic conspiracy theories … and we found that sometimes heightened media focus on Jews or Israel, even if it is positive, can still lead to an increase in online searches for antisemitic content.”
CST head of policy Dr Dave Rich said: “Search engines and internet companies have a responsibility to ensure that people asking these questions are directed away from hateful content and towards material that might challenge their prejudices.”
Google said it “does its best to prevent inappropriate predictions”. A spokesperson added: “We partner with organisations in the UK who work to tackle hate speech, including CST and Stop Hate UK.
“Autocomplete helps you get to the information you are looking for as quickly as possible. For certain issues, including hateful predictions against groups and individuals based on religion, we have developed policies to exclude such terms.”
Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust reflected on the news, saying: “This research just goes to prove what many of us have been aware of for years. Online platforms have become places where one can easily access hate.
“The report finds that Google searches for “Holocaust hoax” are roughly 30 per cent above average on Holocaust Memorial Day (27th January). Surely there is a way for internet search engines to prevent hate being so readily available, at the click of a button.”
HIDDEN HATE:
WHAT GOOGLE SEARCHES TELL US
ABOUT ANTISEMITISM TODAY
CST Protecting Our Jewish Community, 11 Jan 2019 by CST
What can the internet tell us about antisemitism in the United Kingdom? Today , CST and the Antisemitism Policy Trust publish a new report, called Hidden Hate: What Google searches tell us about antisemitism today, that uses Google search data from 2004 to 2018 to show what people in the UK are searching for in relation to Jews, Zionism and the Holocaust, and what this tells us about antisemitic attitudes in Britain today. The report is authored by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, who wrote the acclaimed 2017 book Everybody Lies: What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. The report also uses data from the complete archive of the far right website Stormfront, which has been used as a discussion board by neo-Nazis across the world for over 20 years.
It has been shown that people are remarkably honest when they search for information online. Their Google searches and queries reveal interests, prejudices and hatreds that they might keep hidden from friends, family members, neighbours, surveys and even from themselves. They have been shown to share their health secrets, sexual preferences, and hostility towards other groups. This ground-breaking report uses this data for the first time to reveal the antisemitism in Google searches in the UK.
Hidden Hate shows:
- An average of 170,000 Google searches with antisemitic content are made per year in the United Kingdom. Approximately 10 per cent of these searches involve violent language or intentions.
- The top negative stereotypes searched for in relation to Jews are that they are “evil” and “racist.” When Google removed “Are Jews evil?” from its auto-complete function in December 2016 (following a series of articles on the Guardian/Observer website), approximately ten per cent fewer people searched for “Are Jews evil?” than had done so in the previous year. This shows that prior to that change, Google had been leading people to make antisemitic searches who otherwise would not have done so.
- The most common antisemitic Google searches in the UK are for jokes mocking Jews. There is a direct correlation between these searches and those mocking other minorities: someone who searches for “Jew jokes” is 100 times more likely to also search for “n****r jokes.” Overall, Google searches with the word “Jewish” tend not to be antisemitic; searches with “Jew” tend to be antisemitic.
- There are more Google searches in the UK into the Rothschild banking family than for top Jewish celebrities such as David Baddiel or Tracy-Ann Oberman. Almost all of these searches are looking for conspiracy theories related to the alleged Rothschild domination of the world (a common antisemitic conspiracy theory), and there has been a 39 per cent increase in Rothschild-related searches in the past three years. Moreover, in months when searches for information on the Rothschild family increase, other antisemitic searches also increase in number.
- There was a 79 per cent rise in antisemitic Google searches in April 2018, most of which occurred on the day after Jewish community representatives met Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
- Sometimes even positive media coverage of Jews, Israel or the Holocaust can lead to an increase in antisemitic searches: Google searches for “Holocaust hoax” are roughly 30 per cent above average on Holocaust Memorial Day (27th January) each year, and antisemitic searches increased by 30 per cent in the days following Israel’s victory in the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest.
- The United Kingdom ranks third in the world for searches about Zionism, behind only Israel and Lebanon. Searches for Zionism are 29 per cent higher in the United Kingdom than in the United States. “Hitler Zionism” is the fourth most popular search about Zionism in the United Kingdom. Searches related to Zionism rose 25-fold in April 2016, shortly after former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone was suspended by the Labour Party for claiming that Hitler “was supporting Zionism.”
- Antisemitic searches are higher in Wales than in any other part of the United Kingdom, and antisemitic searches are just as high in cities that mostly vote Labour as they are in cities that mostly vote Conservative.
- There are more searches in Google for “Luciana Berger Jew” than for “Luciana Berger policy”, “Luciana Berger votes” or “Luciana Berger Brexit.” Looking specifically at the far right website Stormfront reveals the connection between antisemitism and misogyny: the two Jewish parliamentarians with the most mentions on Stormfront are Margaret Hodge and Luciana Berger, and in the history of Stormfront, there have been 14 per cent more mentions of female Jewish MPs than male Jewish MPs, even though UK male Jewish celebrities are mentioned more than UK female Jewish celebrities on the site. Overall, there are more than 9,000 threads on the far right Stormfront website related to feminism, 60 per cent of which also mention Jews.
DOWNLOAD HIDDEN HATE
2017 Anti-Semitism Report shows hike in worldwide anti-Jewish incidents
The Middle East Conflict, Antisemitism and the Holocaust
Denial vs. "revisionism": Antisemitism go to Notes
Antisemitism - Overview of data available in the European Union 2007–2017
European Anti-Semitism: Trends to Watch in 9 Countries in 2018
Anti-Semitism in Europe is back, and some blame recent refugees for fuelling it
German Jews propose anti-Semitism lessons for Muslim migrants
Antisemitism: How the origins of history’s oldest hatred still hold sway
S.198 - Combating European Anti-Semitism Act of 2017
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Measuring the Hate: |
ALL JEWISH HISTORY IN UNDER 18 MINUTES
Dr Henry Abramson 2020 (16.24)
An expanded version of "they tried to kill us, we survived,
let's eat." Jewish history for ridiculously busy people.
Please only watch this if you don't have time for a longer video.
(Go to ’4,000 Years of Jewish History’)
ANTISEMITISM
The murder of 6,000,000 Jews.
under the German Nazis, during the 1930-40’s,
saw the most horrific event
in the history of Antisemitism.
This was called THE HOLOCAUST