ANTI-SEMITISM GETS WORSE ACROSS IN EUROPE
Berlin, 5 Muharam 1435/9 November 2013 (MINA) – A report by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) has shown that anti-Semitism has got worse across Europe over the past five years, facilitated by social media and file-sharing websites.
A total of 76 percent said it had worsened in the past five years, with abuse especially prevalent on the Internet, where social media and file-sharing websites allowed anti-Semitism to travel around even faster than before.
The report, which was released on Friday, was timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms in Nazi Germany, Aljazeera reported as monitored by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).
Based on a poll of European Jews, the study has found that more than three-quarters of those questioned believe anti-Semitism is on the rise in their home countries and close to one-third have considered emigrating because they do not feel safe.
Hungary, France and Belgium reported the highest rates of anti-Semitism in the media and in political life, as well as vandalism and open hostility in the street, the study showed.
Among the findings: 34 percent of poll respondents in Sweden and 29 percent in France said they never wear a Star of David or anything else that could signal their religion.
The Agency said 5,847 self-identified Jews were surveyed in eight Western European countries. It said its findings aim to provide guidance on measures to take against anti-Semitism.
One third of the respondents experienced some form of anti-Semitic harassment in the five years before the survey, while 26 percent encountered such harassment in the 12 months before the survey.
Of the five forms of harassment listed in the survey, offensive comments in person were the most widespread. Almost one in five respondents experienced such comments at least once in the 12 months preceding the survey.
As FRA collected data for this survey, antisemitic incidents took place in all of the EU Member States surveyed. The Jewish community in Hungary was targeted in a number of violent incidents.
In Malmö, Sweden, a series of attacks culminated in the bom bing of a Jewish community centre. In March 2012 the tragic murders at a Jewish day school in Toulouse, France, shocked public opinion.
Anti-semitism is prejudice, hatred of, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. A person who holds such positions is called an “antisemite.
While the term’s etymology might suggest that antisemitism is directed against all Semitic people, the term was coined in the late 19th century in Germany as a more scientific-sounding term for Judenhass (“Jew-hatred”),and that has been its normal use since then. For the purposes of a 2005 U.S. governmental report, antisemitism was considered “hatred toward Jews—individually and as a group—that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity.
Antisemitism may be manifested in many ways, ranging from expressions of hatred of or discrimination against individual Jews to organized violent attacks by mobs, state police, or even military attacks on entire Jewish communities.
Although the term did not come into common usage until the 19th century, it is now also applied to historic anti-Jewish incidences. Notable instances of persecution include the pogroms which preceded the First Crusade in 1096, the expulsion from England in 1290, the massacres of Spanish Jews in 1391, the persecutions of the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, Cossack massacres in Ukraine, various pogroms in Russia, the Dreyfus affair, the Holocaust, official Soviet anti-Jewish policies and the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries. (T/P04/E1)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
