Long before the Holocaust, for centuries Jews were the victims
of institutionalized prejudice, systematic marginalization and often outright
violence. It is a fact that anti-Semitism is nothing new in Europe, but over
the last few decades there have been a few small glimmers of hope, reasons to
be optimistic that attitudes were perhaps starting to shift as we saw a resurgence
of Jewish life in places like Germany, and many European leaders and
governments began to take a more vocal stand against the kind of intolerance
that fueled hatred toward Jews in the past. But there are disturbing signs that
some people are working very hard to reverse this trend of tolerance.
In the last few days alone there have been a number of media
reports on antisemitism in Europe today which have caught the attention of the
world. Earlier this month the Anti-Defamation League released The ADL Global 100: An Index of Anti-Semitism which
reflected a depressing, if not surprising level of negative attitudes toward
Jews in most of the Middle East/North Africa, and much of Europe. On a positive
note countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands displayed much lower
rates (lower, even, than the United States). The survey raises a number of
important questions, not least of which being what is at the root of these
responses, do they reflect broader attitudes toward ethnic and religious
minorities in these countries and what, if anything, can be done to help steer these
societies in a direction of greater tolerance and understanding?
I don’t know what the answer is, but clearly a need exists to focus our
efforts on finding one. This weekend
alone we saw 3 people savagely murdered at a Jewish museum in Brussels in what is likely to have been a hate crime as
well as the violent beating of two Jewishbrothers outside a synagogue in France. These are two concrete examples of the
threats facing Jews and Jewish communities in Europe today.
There seem to be two different cultural forces at work behind this
violence – one is an ultra-nationalist, right-wing ideology that is gaining
increasing traction on the continent, while the other comes from within the
ranks of Islamic extremists. Each presents its own set of difficulties.
In the case of right-wing nationalism, a push by politically active and
ideologically vocal leaders to gain political legitimacy and ultimately
influence on policy, stands on a platform that is nativist and intolerant,
expressing distaste and disgust for any group seen as “the other.” It is a
stance which is unapologetically anti-Semitic, anti-Immigrant and very often
anti-Muslim.
We find its representatives
in France in the form of Marine Le Penand her National Front party, in Greece with Golden Dawn and in Hungary with Jobbik It is particularly frightening that not only are these political
movements gaining popularity at home, but that they also have their sights set
on influencing the European Union as a whole.
The other threat facing Jewish communities comes in the form of Muslim
extremist terrorists who target not only Jews, but broader society as well. The
most prominent example of this was the heartbreaking murder of 4 people at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, last
year.
Antisemitism itself has also become a tool in the discourse around Russian
aggression in Ukraine, as Ira Forman, the US State Department Special
Envoy to Monitor and Combat antisemitism, notes in a recent post on the official State Department blog that despite
Vladimir Putin’s assertions to the contrary “Members of the Jewish community in
Ukraine do not see themselves as victims of Ukrainian government-sponsored
anti-Semitism. And where those acts of anti-Semitism have occurred, they are
often associated with pro-Russian provocateurs.”
There is no doubt that anti-Semitic incidents have taken
place in Ukraine in this period of great internal turmoil – last month there was a firebomb attack on a
synagogue. But exactly who is behind
these incidents and what their precise aims might be (beyond using the Jewish
community as a convenient target for attempted intimidation) remain unclear,
but it is telling that Putin has felt comfortable in using anti-Semitism in his
rhetorical (and literal ?) siege of Ukraine.
So where to start? I think the first thing people need to do
is pay more attention to events happening in Europe when it comes to political
activity by right-wing nationalists both when it comes to their efforts to gain
political legitimacy as well as the influence they are likely having in
preventing the vigorous investigation and prosecution of hate crimes. The
latter is particularly pernicious, contributing to a culture of impunity and
undermining the tenets of democratic civil society that so many European
nations have worked very hard to achieve in the post World War II period.
The
more we shine a light on these people, the harder it will be for them to hind
behind the thin veneer of respectability they are trying to cultivate as cover
for their odious behavior. In the case of Muslim extremists the response is
perhaps a little more complicated, since part of what fuels their ability to
find support in Europe lies in the hostile climate surrounding immigration and
identity that the aforementioned right-wing nationalists are actively
cultivating.
Certainly education has a role to play in helping immigrants from
Muslim and Arab lands to understand that lashing out at the Jewish community is
not going to help them when it comes to finding their place in Europe.
Prominent leaders have also pointed out that a hatred for Israel, often the
propaganda target of choice for unfriendly Arab leaders, is also having a
spill-over effect in Europe. Such
vitriol has had the effect of not only placating the masses at home in the
Middle East and North Africa, but infecting emigrants with a hatred for a
country they know nothing about, that they carry with them to their adopted countries.
To be sure I am only offering a glancing touch at the surface of the issues
that lie beneath recent acts of Anti-Semitic violence in Europe – the murders
in Belgium and the attacks in France this weekend are but the tip of a very large
iceberg of intolerance and hate that is creeping once again into European
society, but they are warning signs nonetheless. I think it would behoove us to
pay attention.
Copyright Daniel E. Levenson 2014.
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