Charlemagne: Europe’s Jewish question

Date: 21/02/04

American charges of anti-Semitism are not all hyperbole

A SENIOR official at the European Commission travelled recently to a family gathering in the United States. The official, who is Jewish, was startled by his reception. “People treated me like I'd arrived from occupied Europe,” he says. “They seemed convinced that Europe has been engulfed by anti-Semitism.”

It is not surprising if American Jews have this impression. Some of America's leading journalists and diplomats have given credence to the idea. George Will, writing in the Washington Post in May 2002, argued that anti-Semitism among Europeans and Arabs “has become the second - and final? - phase of the struggle for a 'final solution to the Jewish question'.” Rockwell Schnabel, the American ambassador to the European Union, told a dinner organised by the American Jewish Committee in Brussels this month that anti-Semitism in Europe “is getting to a point where it is as bad as it was in the 1930s.”

Come again? By the mid-1930s Germany had passed laws excluding Jews from state employment and forbidden marriage between Jews and gentiles. Nothing like this is happening in Europe now. The fact that such accusations of European anti-Semitism have been so wildly over-stated helped to ensure that the initial European reaction to these charges was usually anger and denial. Many European politicians argued, at least in private, that the charge of anti-Semitism was being used to intimidate critics of Israel, or of American policy in the Middle East.

But European politicians are now coming round to the idea that there may be something to discuss. This week, the president of Israel, Moshe Katsav, paid an official visit to France, the first by an Israeli head of state for 17 years. Jacques Chirac, the French president, promised to be “uncompromising” in combating anti-Semitism in France (although he also complained of “groundless accusations that are sometimes made against us”). Later in the week, the European Commission was due to hold a seminar on anti-Semitism with such luminaries as Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister and Elie Wiesel, the Nobel peace prize winner and Holocaust survivor.

Some might conclude that the Europeans have found it more politic to respond to accusations of anti-Semitism with seminars than with anger. But that would be too cynical. The fact is that, stung in part by American jibes, many Europeans have begun to recognise that while they may not be on the brink of a new Holocaust, there has indeed been an alarming outbreak of anti-Semitism in parts of Europe in recent years. The problem has been most acute in France, home to Europe's largest communities of Jews and Muslims, at 600,000 and around 5m respectively.

In 2002 the main synagogue in Marseilles was burned to the ground. Last November a Jewish school on the outskirts of Paris was also gutted by arson. Street assaults on Jews have become common enough for the chief rabbi of Paris to advise Jewish boys to cover their heads with a baseball cap rather than a traditional kippa. Similar attacks on Jewish targets, albeit on a smaller scale, have been reported from several other European countries, including Belgium and the Netherlands. After initially ignoring the issue, European politicians began to speak out. Shortly after taking office, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the French prime minister, declared: “Attacking a Jew is tantamount to attacking the French republic.” The French government has stepped up protection of potential Jewish targets, and told teachers to crack down on anti-Semitic taunts among their pupils.

Some EU officials, ever in search of the elegant compromise, predict a new consensus. Europeans will admit anti-Semitism is a problem and try tackling it; Europe's American and Israeli critics will tone down their attacks. But maybe that is too hopeful. It is easy to agree that assaults on Jews in the streets are bad. But there are other issues on which rancour will persist. When does legitimate criticism of Israel blur into anti-Semitism? And is there a wider problem of European anti-Semitism, going beyond the Muslim-dominated ghettos?

One trigger for recent accusations of endemic anti-Semitism in Europe was a poll conducted by the EU which ostensibly showed that Europeans rated Israel as the biggest threat to world peace. It was partly in response to the poll that the commission called its seminar. Clearly, there are cases where a line is crossed between harsh criticism of Israel and something more sinister - but where to draw the line? Some argue that European criticism of Israel is so one-sided that it must reflect a broader anti-Semitism in society. There is polling evidence to suggest that anti-Semitic attitudes remain disturbingly durable in Europe. But these attitudes are not confined to Europe. A poll conducted on behalf of the American-based Anti-Defamation League found in 2002 that 30% of people in ten EU countries agreed with the statement that “Jews have too much power in the business world”. Another ADL poll in the same year also found that 24% of Americans agreed with the same statement.

Muslims, too, are in the firing line

However strong anti-Jewish sentiment is in Europe, Muslims face even deeper levels of prejudice. In a recent French poll, 10% of people admitted disliking Jews, but 23% expressed prejudice against North Africans. Xenophobic parties such as France's National Front are making gains primarily on the back of prejudice against Muslims, not Jews. So European leaders face a dilemma. It is both convenient, and largely accurate, to blame the rise in anti-Semitic acts on disaffected Muslim youths. But the same leaders are acutely conscious of the need to foster Muslim assimilation into mainstream society, and to combat the racism that fuels the far right. The pat solution is to insist that all citizens embrace tolerance and free debate - and accept the need for post-Holocaust Europe to be ultra-vigilant against anti-Semitism. But that argument resonates better in a seminar room than it would on a housing project outside Paris.

Commentary feature on the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe. Feature says that there is also rising anti-Muslim feeling as well.

• Primary Source

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3507945.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3507945.stm

---