Anti-Semitism in the EU

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The facts are on the table. Anti-Jewish violence and harassment in the EU. After the attack in Germany calls on EU to act again. Bernd Riegert from Brussels.

Anti-Semitism and violence against Jews in the European Union for years. The stop of a suspected right-wing extremists in Halle (Saale) is not an isolated case. This is evident from the studies presented by the European Agency for fundamental rights (FRA) in Vienna in December 2018 and 2013. “We see in some countries, an increase in violence against Jews, simply because they are Jews. The anti-Semitism that permeates the societies, gives to the Jews the feeling that you can’t live like everyone else. You can no longer live as Jews in their own country,” said Ioannis Dimitrakopoulos of the German wave. He is a scientific Advisor to the EU Agency for fundamental rights. “Apart from the terrible crime, as in hall, the everyday harassment, abuse, vilification of many Jews, has become ‘normal’ in some societies. This is really worrying for us.”

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“A nationwide Problem”

In the year 2018, 65 percent of French and 43 percent of Germans in the survey were the fundamental rights Agency, anti-Jewish incidents for a “very large Problem. In Italy, there were only 21 per cent, and in Denmark only 14 percent. Most of the cases of anti-Semitic harassment registered in the EU Agency in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. The least cases were reported from the United Kingdom, France and Italy. A real regional focus Ioannis’t see Dimitrakopoulos of the EU. “I think this is a Problem in all member States. Of course, countries such as Germany and France, with a relatively large number of Jewish communities are more affected, because that is where Jewish life is visible.”

The Advisor to the FRA indicates that anti-Semitism is not only the Problem of the Jews, but the majority of society will always be intolerant. “Of course, there is a Link between the rising right-wing populism in the EU and the anti-Semitism. There is a Link to each political ideology, not necessarily a specific party, which promoted intolerance.” Anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia fed from the feeling that you can treat people who have a different Religion, a different skin color, a different Background, different, discriminate against, exclude. “Because I want to exclude any country. That’s the whole of Europe,” says Ioannis Dimitrakopoulos.

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A long series of attacks

Heavy attacks against Jewish institutions, there was in a number of European countries. In 2012, a radical Islamist in France, murdered three students and a teacher in a Jewish school. 2014 a Frenchman shot and killed in the Belgian capital of Brussels, four people at the Jewish Museum. In 2015, a radical Islamist attacks takes hostage a Jewish supermarket in Paris, killing four people. In the same year, a supporter of the terrorist group “Islamic state” in Copenhagen, shoots two people, one of them in front of a synagogue. Also in the USA, in Tunisia and in Turkey in the last 13 years of bloody attacks on Jews. A year ago, about a right-wing man rushes in the American city of Pittsburgh, a synagogue and kills eleven of the visitors to the divine service.

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EU action plans

The EU has decided in 2018 for the umpteenth Time at a summit meeting to strengthen the fight against anti-Semitism and intolerance. The member States committed themselves to improve the safety of Jews in Europe. The Representative of the EU for the fight against anti-Semitism, Katharina von schnurbein, noted that a number of States have pent-up demand. “It’s nothing, only to declare intentions,” said cord leg at an anti-Semitism conference in Brussels in September. The EU justice Commissioner Vera Jourova called on the governments of the member States after the attack in the hall now, in writing, to pay the costs for security measures at synagogues and parish houses. The competence of the EU and state interference from the top, however, were limited, says the scientific Advisor to the EU Agency for fundamental rights Ioannis Dimitrakopoulos. “Intolerance and ideological delusion arise in the neighborhood, in schools, in sports clubs,” Because the regions or the local levels were asked. The national level could not because, apart from the prosecution of the crime, of course, aligning so much.

“Europe is losing its soul”

The Jewish Lobby Organisation of the “European coalition for Israel” speaks in Brussels of anti-Semitism in Europe, the “epidemic proportions” have adopted and the “soul of Europe” is threatening. In fact, the study of the EU proves the Agency for human rights, not more, feel many of the Jews in Europe and more secure. “If people are not immigrants, but for generations in their home countries, no longer feel welcome there, then that is a very serious fact,” said Ioannis Dimitrakopoulos of the DW. So important was it that the EU are pushing institutions to the Problem much more thoroughly tackled in the last few years.