Remarks by rights chief come as civil society groups
warn of a rise in antisemitism amid Israel-Hamas war
Jason Burke
International security correspondent
Mon 30 Oct
2023 05.00 GMT
Antisemitism
is a “deeply ingrained racism in European society” that poses an existential
threat to the continent’s Jewish community and the fundamental aims of the
European Union, an EU official has warned.
Michael
O’Flaherty, the director of the bloc’s agency for fundamental rights, said it
was worrying that only a third of the general population considered
antisemitism a big problem, when there was no doubt “dramatic moments in our
societies trigger antisemitic responses”.
He told the
Guardian: “It happened with Covid, it’s happening now with the Russian
aggression [in Ukraine] – and now it’s happening again. Media and civil society
organisations warn of a rise of antisemitism as the crisis in the Middle East
unfolds.
“I honestly
think that with any big negative issue in our society, you’re going to find
antisemitic tropes finding their way in there. It’s indicative of the extent …
antisemitism is a deeply ingrained racism in European society.”
O’Flaherty
added that it was “also important at this time to be vigilant and condemn all
forms of hatred that manifest themselves in Europe, including hatred against
Muslims”.
The war
that has followed the terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel on 7 October has led
to an unprecedented increase in antisemitic incidents. High numbers of civilian
casualties caused by Israel’s response have raised tensions further.
Recent
figures compiled by the US-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) revealed a 300%
rise in Austria. In the UK, London police said 218 antisemitic hate crimes had
been reported from 1-18 October,more than 13 times more than the same period
last year.
In Germany,
the antisemitism monitoring organisation RIAS reported a 240% increase in
antisemitic incidents since 7 October, a total the country’s antisemitism
commissioner warned risked transporting the country back to its “most horrific
times”.
Many
experts in hate crimes point to deeply rooted negative ideas about Jews that,
though always present, surface at times of societal stress.
One recent
study by the ADL found that anti-Jewish tropes remained entrenched in 10
European countries, with roughly one in four people harbouring historically
familiar antisemitic beliefs, particularly false beliefs about Jews and money,
and Jews controlling governments.
Polling
carried out among Europe’s Jewish communities found that 90% of respondents
felt antisemitism was getting worse, said O’Flaherty. “So that is the strong
view of the Jewish community itself. What’s more, they predominantly said …
that the single biggest problem in their lives is antisemitism. That is quite
startling. It was not about a job, healthcare, education, putting food on the
table … It was antisemitism.”
Experts
estimate the “core” Jewish population of the EU to be 781,200, though many more
have at least one parent who identifies as Jewish. The population immediately
after the second world war and the Holocaust, which killed at least 6 million
European Jews, was about 3.8 million.
Now that
very few survivors were still alive, Europe must find a new way of
communicating the tragedy of the Holocaust, O’Flaherty said, calling for
greater efforts in education.
“Another
aspect that is very relevant right now … is the extent to which we are
forgetting about the Holocaust,” he said. “Almost all the survivors have gone
now … and we are yet to find a new way of effectively transmitting the story to
our children, to people in our societies.”
The ADL
found that, among the six countries polled in western Europe, Spain remained
the country with the highest level of antisemitic attitudes, with 26% of the
population harbouring extensive antisemitic beliefs, followed by Belgium (24%),
France (17%), Germany (12%) and the UK (10%). In the Netherlands, only 6% of
those polled held antisemitic views.
In eastern
Europe, antisemitic attitudes were more widely held, though becoming rarer. The
ADL found high levels of antisemitic beliefs in Hungary (37%) and Poland (35%).
Studies
have confirmed a sharp rise in online antisemitism in Europe during the Covid
pandemic and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year.
The Dohány
Street synagogue in Budapest
The Dohány
Street synagogue in Budapest. Antisemitic attitudes are more widely held in
eastern Europe, though becoming rarer, according to the ADL. Photograph:
Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters
AFR
research has revealed a growing number of Jews who say they would consider
leaving Europe as a consequence of prejudice and discrimination.
“It is an
existential issue in the sense that when we asked Jews whether they would
consider leaving Europe, a significant number said they would … And more
worrying still, when you look at who are those Jews, they are mainly young,”
said O’ Flaherty, previously a professor of human rights law at the National
University of Ireland.
“We built
the modern Europe on the basis of the repudiation of the horrors of the second
world war, and uppermost of those horrors is and was the Holocaust – the
genocide perpetrated against Jews … That’s why the persistent assault on this
relatively small community of people is of such fundamental importance for
Europe and for the values that we claim to uphold.”
Experts say
the issue of emigration and the decline of Jewish populations in much of Europe
is complicated. In some countries, including the UK and Austria, Jewish
communities are growing, albeit incrementally as immigration offsets deaths
among an often elderly population. In others, such as Germany, Jewish
population levels are stable. However, many small communities never recovered
from the Holocaust, and a further decline in numbers of Jewish communities in
Europe appears inevitable.
Most
emigration by European Jews is driven by the same factors that prompt the
movement of members of any other community: a search for stability, security
and prosperity, research by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) has
shown.
Violent
attacks that target Jews or are motivated by ideologies that have strong
antisemitic elements can be linked to increases in emigration by Jews, such as
from France between 2015 and 2016 when the country was rocked by a series of
terrorist attacks, including several against Jewish targets.
Jonathan
Boyd, the executive director of the JPR in London, told the Guardian in
September: “Many European countries where there were once really big vibrant
Jewish communities now have tiny Jewish populations – often just a few thousand
– which are ageing and really struggling to maintain themselves … When you have
antisemitism on top of that, it obviously doesn’t help.
“When
people are very worried by that – particularly when it becomes murderous – the
fears become acute enough to push some at least to leave.”
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