Ahead of Int'l Holocaust Remembrance Day, Bennett warns cabinet of rising anti-Semitism
01/26/2014 
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Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett at a World Trade Organization conference in Indonesia. Photo: Courtesy- Economy and Trade Ministry
Anti-Semitism around the world is getting worse, Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennet warned the cabinet during its weekly meeting on Sunday.
Despite some trends which have been interpreted as an amelioration of anti-Jewish sentiment, including the lack of such high profile attacks against Jewish targets as 2012’s Toulouse school massacre, the situation for Jews deteriorated last year, a report presented by Bennet to his fellow ministers asserted.
“The situation has only worsened,” Bennett wrote in the introduction to the report.
While last year’s Diaspora Affairs report dealt primarily with hard numbers, quantifying levels of violence, this year’s was more concerned with Jewish perceptions of anti-Semitic sentiments, although the new report retread much of the same ground.
The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) report upon which the ministry’s paper was based, was built on Jews' perceptions and not so much the actual level of violence directed against Jews, Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University Professor Dina Porat told The Jerusalem Post. While this gave an accurate picture of the general atmosphere, this does not mean that the situation is necessarily worse for Jews in comparison to 2012 when there were attacks in Toulouse and in Burgas,” she said.
When it comes to fighting anti-Semitism, Porat said that Israel should "lend a shoulder" to Diaspora communities and make a coalition with other minorities that suffer from discrimination in Europe such as the Muslims and Roma.
There is an oppressive atmosphere that weighs on European Jewry which is caused by “verbal and visual expressions , insults , harassment and threats” directed against them, the report noted.
Citing a 2013 study by the FRA, the Ministry described how European Jews seek to hide their identity for fear of attack. Twenty three percent of Jews avoid attending Jewish events or going to Jewish venues while a third of Jews polled refrain from wearing religious garb or Jewish symbols out of fear. However, while sixty six percent of Jews have reported antisemitism as having a negative affect on their lives, a majority of seventy seven percent do not bother reporting abuse or harassment.
Almost a third of European Jews are mulling emigration as a response to heightened anti-Jewish sentiment, according to the agency. The countries facing the worst antisemitism are Hungary, France , Belgium and Sweden, the ministry asserted, quoting the FRA report.
“It is clear that monitoring bodies are not aware of but small part of the picture,” the report stated, adding that the report also showed that antisemitism is of concern even to non-Jews.
Jewish leaders have previously expressed concern over this phenomenon, with Anti-Defamation League National Chairman Abraham Foxman telling the Post last week that “There is no serious monitoring by continental entities. We [the Jewish community] take the poll, we do the measuring and they’re not doing their job, they’re not monitoring.”
Pointing a finger at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and “even governments,” Foxman said that more must be done by national and European bodies.
Following up on previous Foreign Ministry comments, the Diaspora Ministry report castigated the FRA for recently removing a working definition of antisemitism from its website. Jerusalem’s dismay at the removal of the formulation was partially due to its equation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
The definition, the report stated, “was considered an achievement on an international scale.”
Asserting that the FRA’s critics have misunderstood the organization’s move, Ioannis N. Dimitrakopoulos, the Head of the FRA’s Equality and Citizens’ Rights Department, told theJerusalem Post in December that the definition was “basically a guide to collectors of primary data.”
“We don’t have a mandate to develop [and] impose, in any way, definitions. We cannot provide a measure based on which people will assess how one Jewish organization records incidents in one country versus a Jewish organization in another country versus a police authority in a third country versus a civil society organization in a fourth country.”
The sentiments expressed by those Jews polled by the FRA in October could form the basis for a replacement definition, the Ministry asserted. A new definition would include the delegitimization of Israel as well as enumerating various actions in both the public and private sphere that would constitute antisemitism.
Prior to the release of the report, Bennet said in a statementthat “Anti-Semitism [has been] gaining momentum at a regular pace over the past few years and has no connection with regional developments or our policies.” This sentiment was expressed in the report as well.
“The simple truth is that anti-Zionism is prevalent worldwide” but that it is “mostly” seen on the left, the report stated, calling it the most common form of antisemitism in the west.
The Ministry will “uncompromisingly fight antisemitism,” and will “continue to work in collaboration with national institutions and other organizations for the benefit of eradicating anti-Semitism.” While a Ministry spokesman said that not everything being done can be divulged, the report did cite the 2013 renewal of the International Forum for Combating Antisemitism after a two year lull. The event, a joint project of the Diaspora and Foreign Ministries, brings politicians and Jewish leaders from around the world to discuss methods of undermining hate.
The gathering will now be reconstituted on a biannual basis and will reconvene in Jerusalem in 2015.
Citing an explosion of hate online and the widespread use of the inverted Nazi salute known as the Quenelle, the report called on “Governments and parliaments to emphasize the legislation as a tool against the trend of extremism.”
“It is clear that there is a large gap between the effectiveness of legislation and statements by political leaders and the reality on the ground,” however, it continued, emphasizing that the “only” solution is to attack the root of antisemitism through education.
The internet has been an important vector in transmitting conspiracy theories about Jews, the ministry reported, citing such theories in common currency in South and Central America, Russia and the Middle East.
Citing the Kantor Center, the ministry report asserted that attempts to ban circumcision and ritual were not intrinsically antisemitic and are not directly against Jews only but also against the Muslim community.
The report seemed to differ from a Saturday evening statement by Bennet who said that while The Right’s attacks stem from ultra-nationalism, left-wing anti-Semitism takes the form of attacks on Jewish traditions such as ritual slaughter and circumcision due to human and animal rights concerns.
All of the aforementioned factors have created a “bleak atmosphere” for Jews in Europe, the report stated.
Rabbi Yosef Pevzner, the director of the hassidic Sinai school network in Paris, recently told the Post that many French Jews felt trapped between Islamic antisemitism on the one hand and increasing state secularism on the other, leaving them the feeling that they no longer belong there.
The rise of ultra-nationalist parties affiliated with Neo-Nazi movements in the Ukraine, Hungary and other European nations was also cited, as well as Palestinian and Arab popular antisemitism, which is deeply culturally embedded.
“Despite what people might think, anti-Semitism does not strengthen our ties with Jews overseas,” Bennett said in a statement on Saturday evening. “For every Jew who makes aliya as a result of anti-Semitism, there are many others who cut ties with Judaism and the Jewish way of life.”
“Efforts to increase personal and community security must also be bolstered through the various funds and resources dealing with the matter.”
In response to Bennet’s statements, the Israeli Jewish Congress, which works to represent several European communities to the Israeli government, stated that it believed that “the various branches of Government, including the Diaspora Affairs and Foreign Affairs Ministries understand the urgency in tackling anti-Semitism, and more specifically, the need to engage Jewish communities in Europe in this regard.”
Mati Wagner contributed to this report.
Mati Wagner contributed to this report.
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