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Expulsions of Jews from Europe, 1100-1600, image via Wikipedia
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1.840, December 7, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: For some 20 years, the EU has been largely inactive, incompetent, negligent, and at times even evil in the battle against anti-Semitism. During that period, hatred of Jews and Israel has increased considerably in the EU. The EU Commission has announced that in 2021 it will present a comprehensive strategy to combat anti-Semitism. No such strategy can be successful without a detailed explanation of the long history of anti-Semitism in Europe. If the strategy does not explicitly admit that anti-Semitism is an integral part of European culture, it will fail.
The EU Commission has stated that it plans to address the issue of anti-Semitic incitement in the next year. Its program for 2021 states: “Given the increase in anti-Semitic violence and hate crimes, the Commission will present a comprehensive strategy to combat anti-Semitism to complement and support the efforts of Member States.” The EU also intends to adopt a declaration against anti-Semitism at its December summit.
The long European history of anti-Semitism, which has spanned over a thousand years, had its origins even before the notion of Europe existed. No EU strategy against anti-Semitism can be effective without a detailed explanation of the history of millennial anti-Semitism in Europe. This will require, first of all, a focus on the Roman Catholic Church, but it will also have to involve attention to individual figures such as Erasmus, Martin Luther, Voltaire, the early 19th century French socialists, and Karl Marx.
The EU document will have to explain how vile and rabid Christian anti-Semitism laid part of the foundation of the second great wave of this hatred, national ethnic anti-Semitism and its most extreme genocidal expression: Nazism.
In the years since World War II, a third form of anti-Semitism gradually took shape: anti-Israelism. The EU and several of its member states have participated in this version of anti-Semitism from time to time. All of this has to be detailed and illustrated; otherwise the final document will not be valid.
An important milestone in the distortion of the European reality of anti-Semitism occurred in 2003, when the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism (CRA) of the Technical University of Berlin received an order from the European Monitoring Center for Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) to analyze the data. and summarize the findings on anti-Semitism that the European organization had compiled.
American academic Amy Elman detailed this failure in her 2015 book, The European Union, anti-Semitism and the politics of denial. In an interview she said:
The CRA completed its document in October 2003. It found that violent attacks on Jews often stemmed from virulent anti-Zionism across the political spectrum. Furthermore, it specifically identified young Muslims of Arab descent as the main perpetrators of physical attacks on Jews and the desecration and destruction of synagogues. Many were themselves victims of racism and social exclusion.
The EUMC did not publish the study and insisted that the one-month period covered in the CRA’s investigation was too short. He also claimed that the report was never intended for publication. The CRA investigators commented that their focus on Muslim perpetrators of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionist attacks disturbed the EUMC. They claimed that this EU Agency had repeatedly asked them to modify their “divisive” conclusions. After investigators rejected this revisionism, the EUMC shelved their report in November 2003.
Gradually, studies on extreme anti-Semitism from various European countries began to be published, but the EU did very little. A critical development was the publication of a study in 2011 by Bielefeld University that was carried out on behalf of the German Social Democratic Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. It found that at least 150 million EU citizens aged 16 and over held the view that Israel is demonic.
The study was carried out in seven European countries. The researchers surveyed 1,000 people per country over the age of 16 in the fall of 2008. One question was whether the respondent agreed with the claim that Israel is waging a war of extermination against the Palestinians. The lowest percentages of those who agreed were in Italy and the Netherlands, at 38% and 39%, respectively. Other percentages were Hungary 41%, United Kingdom 42%, Germany 48% and Portugal 49%. In Poland, the figure was 63%.
The European Commission should have been surprised by these findings. They showed that a “new Europe” only exists in part, while the old Europe of Jewish hatred and anti-Semitic incitement is very much alive. The EU should also have analyzed the consequences of its own contribution to this problem in terms of its unilateral criticism of Israel and its willingness to look away from the majority support of the Palestinian electorate for the genocidal Hamas movement, as well as its finances. support for the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Palestinian Authority is controlled by the second largest Palestinian movement, Fatah, which financially rewards terrorists who murder Jews. (If the terrorist dies, their families receive the cash). The culture of glorification of death is very prominent in the Palestinian worldview, but the EU has nothing to say about it.
The EU also donates money to Palestinian NGOs that incite against Israel. NGO Monitor has pointed out that several of these NGOs are linked to terrorism. The EU also supports the biased UN Special Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). There is no valid reason for the existence of this agency outside of the regular UN refugee assistance system.
In several EU member countries, anti-Semitism flourishes without any response from the EU. Sweden is one of those cases. Its third largest city, Malmö, was the capital of anti-Semitism in Europe for a long time. This was mainly due to segments of its large Muslim population. It was made possible by the inaction and sometimes even active participation in the anti-Semitic propaganda of the local Social Democratic administration led by Mayor Elmar Reepalu. Malmö was gradually overtaken as the antisemitism capital of Europe by the much larger Berlin. Another scandalous event in Europe (and unique, so far at least) was the closure of the Jewish community in the Swedish city of Umea due to harassment from local Nazis.
Spain is another country where anti-Semitism is ingrained at the highest level. The Podemos party denies Israel’s right to exist. Podemos is the junior partner in the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, dominated by the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE). Any serious plan for an EU strategy against anti-Semitism should lead to the resignation or expulsion of the High Representative of the Commission for Foreign Policy and Security, Josep Borrell, a Spaniard, who said Politician, “Iran wants to end Israel; nothing new in that. You have to live with it. “This is the worst kind of appeasement. Such a man should not have a place in an EU Commission that claims to have a strategy against anti-Semitism.
The EU appointed its first European Commission Coordinator to combat anti-Semitism, Katharina von Schnurbein, in 2015. She does her best in this field. The fact that it does not rank high in the EU hierarchy and is understaffed is yet another indication of the EU’s negligence in the battle against anti-Semitism.
In recent years, various studies have been published on the spread of anti-Semitism in various EU countries, as well as on the perceptions and experiences of the Jews living there. The relative importance of the perpetrators differs between countries. In general, Muslim anti-Semitism is dominant, but in Germany, right-wing anti-Semitism is more prevalent. The latter is also increasing overall. Left-wing anti-Semitism expresses itself largely in extreme hatred for Israel.
It is important that long before work begins on the study, a detailed outline is presented to the EU Commission including the elements to be covered in it. The question is, who can or will do this? The Israeli government has many vested interests in interactions with the EU and is unlikely to do so. This is all the more due to his own incompetence and negligence in the field.
This leaves the subject very open for the main Jewish organizations, but they are generally not familiar with a strategic overview of European anti-Semitism.
As the EU Commission has committed to this study, this is a unique opportunity to confront Europe and pressure it to finally produce a valuable strategic paper that addresses the battle against anti-Semitism, the continent’s anti-Semitic past and the enormous failures of the EU in the field.
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Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is a Senior Research Associate at the BESA Center, former Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and author of The war of a million cuts. Among the honors he has received is the 2019 International Lion of Judah Award from the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research which honors him as the leading international authority on contemporary anti-Semitism.
