‘Nothing is Being Done’ About Rising Anti-Semitism in Europe, Survey Finds

A man wearing a Kippah protests antisemitism in Berlin © Reuters / Fabrizio Bensch

Seven decades since the end of World War II, a new survey has found that anti-Semitism is once again on the rise in Europe. The anti-Jewish sentiment is pervasive on social media and increased with Muslim migration to Europe.

Seems to me, I've been saying this for 3 years now!

The survey, conducted by the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights, found that 89 percent of Europe’s Jews feel that anti-Semitism has increased since the last such survey was taken in 2012. Almost a third of respondents said they have been harassed in the last year, with those who “can be recognized as Jewish” subjected to more frequent harassment. Three percent had been physically attacked for being Jewish.

“I never wear any Jewish symbols publicly and I always look over my shoulder when I attend a Jewish event,” one Swedish woman said. “I only want to be left in peace and be able to practice my religion.”

For many European Jews, social media has given a platform to voices that would previously have remained on the fringes. Jews have long been the subject of conspiracy theories, from the 1920s pamphlet ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ up to present day conspiracies about Jewish bankers secretly running the world. Some respondents felt that while conspiracy theories are not a crime, they reinforce harmful stereotypes about Jews.

“These are the sort of things that you can’t report to the police or even to the media platform, but strengthen a hostile culture,” one British man said. “For example, references to Jewish bankers, Rothschild cults, etc etc."

While anti-Semitism in Europe has historically come from the extreme right and elements of the socialist left, the 2015 refugee crisis and the subsequent influx of millions of Muslim migrants have helped bring an ancient religious conflict to the streets of modern Europe.

Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor experienced this first-hand earlier this year. After surviving the Vichy government’s roundup of Paris’ Jews in 1942, Knoll was stabbed to death and burned in her apartment this March by her Muslim neighbor. Prosecutors said the attack was motivated by the neighbor’s anti-Semitic beliefs.

“She was absolutely massacred. Eleven knife wounds. That is hatred of the Jews, we see it in the fury of the murderer. This is how we recognize anti-Semitism,” Francis Kalifat, the head of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, told the New York Times.

One year earlier, another elderly Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, was killed by a Malian man who shouted, “Allahu Akbar” before throwing her out a window. A year before that, a gunman pledging allegiance to the Islamic State terror group killed four people in a Kosher supermarket in Paris.

Many of the Jews surveyed feared attacks from their Muslim neighbors. 30 percent of those harassed or attacked said the perpetrator was someone with “extremist Muslim views.”

“One of the fundamentally biggest problems for Jews in Denmark is that we do not dare visibly show our Jewish identity in public, at school, at the gym, etc. for fear of anti-Semitic statements, unfortunately, in particular from our Muslim neighbors,” said one Danish man. “The majority of these have been initiated by people of a Muslim background,” another Danish woman added.

Among the other perpetrators were people with “left-wing political views” (21 percent), and people with “right-wing political views” (13 percent).

Interesting, considerably more lefties than righties. Who would have expected that?

Over two-thirds of respondents feel their governments are not doing enough to tackle anti-Semitism. So prevalent is this worry that many have decided to uproot and move to Israel, where citizenship is a birthright for Jews worldwide. Out of the thirteen countries surveyed, German, French, and Belgian Jews felt most like emigrating.

“In two months we’ll be emigrating to Israel because of the anti-Semitism in Europe,” one French woman said. “Nothing is being done about it. So we are leaving voluntarily.”

'There Will Soon Be No Jews in France' as AntiSemitism Escalates

Like Germany, France is willing to admit that anti-Semitism is a big problem in the country. Unlike Germany, there seems to be no serious will to put an end to it.

FILE PHOTO © Hannah Mckay / Reuters

The antisemitic sentiment already prevalent among French Jews will intensify in the wake of Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel last month, locals believe.

“Every day we have people who are hurt, every day we have people who are insulted," Ricard Abitbol, President of The Confederation of Jews in France and Friends of Israel told RT. "We can be hurt by words, but we don’t mind, but when we are hurt by a knife, a gun, you can’t say I don’t mind."

Attacks against the Jewish community surged dramatically in 2015, when authorities officially registered 808 antisemitic attacks. The actual number of cases, however, can be much higher, as not all the victims filed official complaints. And while attacks against Jews decreased in 2016, according to assessments by Jewish Community Protection Service in France (SPCJ), 335 assaults were registered by French Jews that year. The drop is partly due to enhanced security measures introduced after the November 2015 Paris attacks which killed 130 people and led to the introduction of a two-year state of emergency.

"One out of four racist acts committed in France in 2016 targeted a Jewish person, while Jews represent less than 1 percent of the population," the SPCJ said in their annual 'Report on Antisemitism in France' released in October.

Antisemitic acts committed in France are a "home-grown phenomena," the SPCJ said, saying, that the "number of Jews who leave the country, or think about leaving France for another country, keeps on increasing."

The wave of antisemitic attacks began on January 9, 2015, after 29 people were taken hostage in a kosher supermarket. By the end of the terrorist's siege, four people were executed. The violence sparked a mass exodus of Jews from France. In 2015, almost 8,000 left and another 5,000 fled in 2016. Overall, in the last decade, more than 40,000 have packed their bags. That’s almost ten percent of the around 465,000 Jews that continue to reside in France.

"Europe is continuing in peace what Hitler had done by war"

Apart from the obvious security concerns, French Jews feel they are "misunderstood" within the French society. Others fear the loss of their identity.

"In a few decades, there will be no Jews in France. And there is also a problem in Europe," Abitbol told RT. "There are almost no Jews now, they are leaving. So, it’s terrible what I will say, but Europe is continuing in peace what Hitler had done by war."

Members of the Jewish community described their experiences and persistent fears to an RT crew who visited the Parisian suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, the former heart of the Jewish community in France. "I was viciously attacked with an individual by a machete because I'm Jewish," one of the victims of a recent assault said.

"Radical Islamists stuck a knife in my chest. I'm very scared for my family and myself," said another."Every day we are attacked. They enjoy it," a female member of the Jewish community lamented.

"I'm scared of going outside and showing my face. I'm forced to wear a cap every day to hide my kippah [brimless cap]," another Jewish person told RT.

Last month, France's PM acknowledged the scale of the problem. “In our country, antisemitism is alive. It is not new, it is ancient. It is not superficial, it is well-rooted and it is alive," Edouard Philippe noted in December.

"It hides always behind new masks, attempts to justify itself through diverse reasons. This ideology of hate is here, it’s present and it’s making some French Jews to make 'aliyah,' [immigration of Jews to Israel]” Philippe said. “It should be a spiritual choice but it pains all citizens of the republic when it’s a form of self-exile, made out of insecurity and fear.”

Philippe's statement came a few days after Donald Trump made the explosive decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – a move that triggered anti-Israel protests across Europe, and laid the ground for more anti-Semitic attacks. A number of anti-Israeli rallies have already unsettled Paris in the wake of Trump's Jerusalem decision.

As if the Jews in Paris had anything to do with Trump's announcement! It's just another excuse for Muslims to practice the ancient art of hatred toward Jews and it's only going to get worse if the government doesn't do anything about.