http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1118386
Anti-Semitism in Europe
May 3rd 2002
>From The Economist Global Agenda
Growing hostility to Israel, and Islamic attacks on Jewish targets in
Europe, do not mean that old-style anti-Semitism is back
Opinion: Europe and the Jews
IT HAS become an article of faith in much of the American press that
anti-Semitism in Europe is surging and that age-old hatred of Jews,
after a post-Holocaust period of silence and shame, is once again coming
to the surface. Why?
First, there has been a sharp increase in anti-Jewish vandalism (against
synagogues, for instance), mainly but not only in France. Second,
criticism of the Israeli government's Palestinian policy, expressed
across Europe's political spectrum, has become so widespread and often
so fierce that some Jews in Europe feel it is spilling over into
hostility to them as people, for seeking to defend or even explain
Israel's actions. Third, a French populist, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has
expressed anti-Semitism in the past, has rocketed into prominence by
reaching the final round of France's presidential election. Fourth,
far-right parties elsewhere in Europe, from Austria, Italy, and Denmark
to Poland and Romania, some with anti-Semitic ingredients or histories,
continue to make a splash, sometimes even joining ruling coalitions.
Does this mean that anti-Semitism of a deep-seated kind is rising or
that Jewish fears of a return to the horrors of the 1930s are well
founded? No. There is never room for complacency. The fears are
understandable but should not be exaggerated.
True, since the Palestinians' second intifada against Israel began in
autumn 2000 and, more notably, since the uprising intensified this year,
synagogues and other Jewish buildings have been attacked in Belgium,
Britain and especially in France. A German rabbi, after two recent
street assaults on Jews (by youngsters of Arab appearance), has advised
his brethren in Germany not to display signs of their faith for fear of
being beaten up. This week a synagogue in London was ransacked at night.
France, in particular, is singled out as fundamentally anti-Semitic,
partly because of its long-standing friendship with Arab states at the
expense of Israel. A well-known British journalist says that
anti-Semitism is rising in Britain's "media and political
establishment", especially on the left. "This wave of anti-Semitism
across Europe," says an Israeli editor, echoing a view shared by many
Jews on both sides of the Atlantic, "is unprecedented since the second
world war."
Is anti-Semitism in the population as a whole is taking hold? Take
France first. As far as anybody knows, the perpetrators of nearly all
the attacks on Jewish property there have been disaffected young men
from among France's 4m-5m Muslims. Few have been attributed to the sort
of white extremist drawn to Mr Le Pen. A skilful opportunist who changes
with the populist wind, he now hurls most of his abuse at France's
Muslims, not its Jews. Indeed, a leading French Jew laments that quite a
few of his co-religionists voted last month for Mr Le Pen. There is
scant evidence that many of the misguided 17% who followed suit were
animated primarily by anti-Semitism.
French racial prejudice, including anti-Semitism, is commoner than it
should be, with a long and dishonourable history. But opinion polls in
France suggest that personal hostility to Jews, as opposed to the
Israelis' government, is neither widespread nor increasing. Jews in
France, who number some 600,000 (the biggest such community in Western
Europe), are on the whole respected, professionally successful, socially
assimilated and well represented in politics.
Pollsters suggest that anti-Semitism is only slightly more common among
the mainstream right than on the left. In the current government, Jews
hold several important portfolios (for finance, European affairs,
education and health, among others). The Socialists' secretary-general
is Jewish. So is a candidate to take over as the their party leader. Few
analysts put Mr Le Pen 's success down even partly to anti-Semitism.
French Jews themselves are divided over whether, French Muslims apart,
anti-Semitism is rising.
In Britain, too, Jews, who (loosely defined) number around 300,000, have
prospered in all walks of life, suffering few of the impediments that
slowed advancement in the past. Politically once mostly on the left,
many Jews moved to the right during Margaret Thatcher's and John Major's
time in power. Britons of Jewish background were appointed to such top
jobs as chancellor of the exchequer and secretary for defence, foreign
and home affairs.
With Tony Blair, who is popular in Israel, many Jews have returned to a
Labour Party that has shifted to the centre. Britons of Jewish descent
are well represented in Parliament, and better than ever in the now
largely appointed House of Lords, where they hold around a tenth of the
seats. Such success has bred no discernible resentment.
The most striking phenomenon, however, is the steady shift of sympathy
away from Israel, especially on the left. Last month an opinion poll
showed that only 14% said they were more sympathetic to Israel than to
the Palestinian Authority, while 28% sympathised more with the
Palestinians; Britons overwhelmingly and in equal measure disliked Ariel
Sharon, Israel's prime minister, and the Palestinians' Yasser Arafat.
Such views sharply diverge from those in the United States. Some 39% of
Britons favoured economic or other sanctions against Israel, compared
with 33% against the Palestinian Authority
Criticism of Israel's government does not, of course, equal
anti-Semitism. But many Jews are horrified by what they see as a new and
wilfully false moral equivalence between the Israelis and the
Palestinians and a tone of anti-Israeli hostility that has become so
strident as to smell of anti-Semitism. Many are particularly upset by
what they consider to be the editorial virulence and one-sided reporting
of two quality newspapers read mainly by leftish Britons, the Guardian
and the Independent, and of a leading left-wing magazine, The New
Statesman, once enthusiastically Zionist.
Germany, of course, is different again. Most Germans, in politics or
ordinary life, remain plainly wary of expressing outright hostility to
Israel's government. Few dare to contradict the leader of Germany's
Jewish community, when he states that anti-Semitism is a spiralling
threat. The number of Jews in Germany has grown in the past decade from
around 30,000 to more than 130,000 thanks to immigration from the former
Soviet Union. Has this caused resentment? In fact, far-right violence
over the past few years has mainly been directed against Muslims from
North Africa and Turkey, not against Jews, though in two recent events,
widely reported, young men of Arab appearance have attacked Jews in the
street.
But German opinion on Israel has shifted. Politicians on the left and
the right have openly criticised Mr Shar?on's tactics. Norbert Blüm, a
former Christian Democratic minister, says Israel is conducting a "war
of annihilation". The current aid minister has called Israeli troops'
behaviour "shocking". Karl Lamers, a leading Christian Democrat, says
that Israeli policy could "lead to a catastrophe".
Elsewhere in Western Europe there has been a rise in attacks on Jewish
property, again often by young Muslims. At the same time there has been
increasingly outspoken criticism of Israeli policies across the
political spectrum. It is this mix of physical assaults by thugs, mainly
on property, with verbal assaults on Israel by more respectable citizens
that has made many of Europe's Jews feel vulnerable in general.
It is in Central and Eastern Europe that fears of anti-Semitism have
previously deserved more attention. Russia still has the largest Jewish
population-more than 1m-in Europe, and one of the grimmest historical
records of persecution, from the time of the tsars to the Soviet era. In
the first post-communist general election, in 1993, an anti-Semite,
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, won the most party-list seats, with nearly 23% of
the vote.
Russian populists habitually blame Jews for the widening post-communist
gap between rich and poor, noting that most of the "oligarchs", the
dozen-odd influential tycoons who became hugely rich after communism
collapsed, are of Jewish background. Fraudulent documents, such as "The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion" that propagate the idea of a world
Jewish conspiracy, circulate widely and are even quoted approvingly by
populist politicians and some Orthodox churchmen. But as Russia has
become steadier, anti-Semites' political hopes have drooped.
Ultra-nationalists elsewhere in the ex-communist zone have played the
anti-Semitic card, often reminding voters of the prominent part played
by Jews both in the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and in the communist
takeovers in such countries as Poland and Hungary after the second world
war. Anti-Semites did quite well on the fringes in the last general
election in Poland (where only 7,000 Jews now live); one blatantly
anti-Semitic party took 8% of the vote. Another that carried a whiff of
it did slightly better.
In last month's general election in Hungary, the outgoing ruling party
on the nationalist right was criticised for failing to denounce an
anti-Semitic party more wholeheartedly lest it might need to co-operate
with it in parliament. In the event, the overt anti-Semites got only 4%
of the vote-and no seats.
In sum, anti-Semites have made occasional sallies in the past decade in
Central Europe. Crude anti-Semitic discourse is less thoroughly frowned
upon than it is in Western Europe. A strain of anti-Semitism lingers in
the Orthodox churches, whereas the Catholic hierarchy, once viewed by
Jews as a repository of anti-Semitic hatred, has made strenuous efforts
to acknowledge its ingloriously ambiguous past. But on the whole
anti-Semites have lost ground as people have grown more prosperous.
In any event, it is in the more mature democracies farther west that
Jews have been especially shocked by what they call the new
anti-Semitism. But the phenomenon, such as it is, is hard to define.
That sacrilegious vandalism has increased is disturbing. That the
anti-immigrant far right is strong (though far from dominant) rightly
worries minorities, not just Jews.
Growing hostility to Israel is a more complex trait. Anyone defending
Israel 's government nowadays is bound to have a harder time of it. But
that does not itself mean that heavily anti-Semitic sentiment goes
beyond a very small proportion of Europeans.
Serbian News Network - SNN
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