Europe, Headlines, Human Rights

RIGHTS-EU: Anti-Semitism Report Creates Stir

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Apr 1 2004 (IPS) - A new report says anti-semitism is on the rise in five EU countries. Controversy followed immediately on who is behind the incidents against Jewish people.

The report, ‘Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the EU 2002-2003’ published by the independent European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) says there has been an increase in anti-semitic incidents in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

France has seen the biggest increase with almost six times as many incidents in 2002 than in the previous year, the report says. The study found that acts against Jewish people range from verbal abuse to arson.

Several European officials and religious leaders welcomed the study, but a section of Jewish leaders accused the EU of covering up the true picture of anti- semitic violence.

The study cites “young, disaffected white Europeans” as the primary perpetrators and says extreme right groups are “stirring opinion” against Jews. Young Muslims and “people of North African origin” were also identified in the report, but several Jewish leaders point to this group as the main perpetrators of anti-semitism.

The European Jewish Congress accused the EU watchdog of twisting data from the EU’s 15 member states to suit its “own ideological bias”.

The publication of this latest report follows controversy over a decision to shelve a similar study last year. The report was shelved after staff at the centre questioned the definition of anti-semitism and its focus on Muslim perpetrators.

Cobi Benatoff, head of the European Jewish Congress, and Edgar Bronfman, head of the World Jewish Congress, had then accused European officials themselves of being anti-semitic.

In a statement Wednesday (Mar. 31) Benatoff renewed his criticism of the report. It was “unfortunate” that anti-semitism was being debated today and that it has not been “relegated to history”, he said.

“We cannot let it be said that the majority of anti-semitic incidents come from young, disaffected white men,” a Congress spokesperson told The Daily Telegraph newspaper. “This is in complete contradiction with the facts recorded by the police.”

The European Jewish Congress described the report as a catalogue of “enormous contradictions, errors and omissions.”

The report says that “on the basis of available data and looking at the EU as a whole, it is problematic to make general statements with regard to the perpetrators of anti-semitic acts.”

But the report acknowledges that most of the 193 violent attacks on synagogues, Jewish schools, kosher shops, cemeteries and rabbis in France in 2002 were “ascribed to youth from neighbourhoods sensitive to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, principally of North African descent.”

In Belgium “most of the fire-bomb and machine-gun attacks on Jewish targets were the result of a spillover from the Palestinian Intifadah,” the report says.

“The evidence presented today indicates that incidents of anti-semitism in Europe are on the increase and suggests that events in the Middle East are disturbing the social fabric of European society,” said European Parliament President Pat Cox in a comment on the report.

Director of the Islamic Religious Studies Institute in Vienna Amir Zaidan said it was “very important” to have such reports. “Muslims are just as much the victims of racism as Jews,” Zaidan said. “It is in the interests of Muslims to have this evil eradicated. We suffer from it too.”

Presenting the findings to the European Parliament Wednesday (Mar. 31), EUMC head Beate Winkler said “Europe has a problem with anti-semitism” and that “it has been getting worse over the past two to three years.”

The report aims “to provide accurate data and information which can start a debate in Europe on how to counter anti-semitism, and lead to effective policies across the Union,” she added.

The report urges European states to cooperate more closely to fight racism. It suggests that school textbooks be checked for bias, and teachers trained to increase awareness of race issues.

The report makes a series of recommendations to prevent such instances. These include “encouraging intercultural and interfaith dialogue” and setting up “efficient data collection systems”.

But it says the picture is not so bleak in other member states. In Finland, Ireland and Portugal there were either no or very few instances of anti-semitism, the report says. In Greece, Austria, Italy and Spain, instances were “rare”.