Experts say attacks go beyond Israel-Palestinian conflict as hate crimes strike fear into Jewish communities.
This is a most serious issue, but before we get to the article, the term Anti-Semitic needs defining.
The excerpt below is from a UK Guardian article. It uses the term anti-Semitic. That term is nonsensical in today’s world. Jews, Arabs, Syrians and most peoples of the Middle East are Semitic. The term today means Anti-Jewish. The groups in the world that are generally the most Anti-Jewish ones, are Semitic ones, such as Hamas.
A Semite is a member of any of various ancient and modern Semitic-speaking peoples originating in the Near East, including; Akkadians (Assyrians/Syriacs and Babylonians), Ammonites, Amorites, Arameans, Chaldeans, Canaanites (including Hebrews/Israelites/Jews and Phoenicians/Carthaginians), Eblaites, Dilmunites, Edomites, Ethiopian Semites, Hyksos, Arabs, Nabateans, Maltese, Mandaeans, Mhallami, Moabites, Shebans and Ugarites. Wikipedia
The word “Semitic” is derived from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in Genesis 5, Genesis 6, Genesis 1021, or more precisely from the Greek derivative of that name, namely Σημ (Sēm); the noun form referring to a person is Semite. This quick review shows how nonsensical the term Anti-Semitic is.
Now for the Guardian article about the Anti-Jewish hatred which does bear a resemblance to Hitler’s early years as the leader of Germany.
In the space of just one week last month, according to Crif, the umbrella group for France’s Jewish organisations, eight synagogues were attacked. One, in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, was firebombed by a 400-strong mob. A kosher supermarket and pharmacy were smashed and looted; the crowd’s chants and banners included “Death to Jews” and “Slit Jews’ throats”. That same weekend, in the Barbes neighbourhood of the capital, stone-throwing protesters burned Israeli flags: “Israhell”, read one banner.
In Germany last month, molotov cocktails were lobbed into the Bergische synagogue in Wuppertal – previously destroyed on Kristallnacht – and a Berlin imam, Abu Bilal Ismail, called on Allah to “destroy the Zionist Jews … Count them and kill them, to the very last one.” Bottles were thrown through the window of an anti-Semitism campaigner in Frankfurt; an elderly Jewish man was beaten up at a pro-Israel rally in Hamburg; an Orthodox Jewish teenager punched in the face in Berlin. In several cities, chants at pro-Palestinian protests compared Israel’s actions to the Holocaust; other notable slogans included: “Jew, coward pig, come out and fight alone,” and “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.”
Across Europe, the conflict in Gaza is breathing new life into some very old, and very ugly, demons. This is not unusual; police and Jewish civil rights organisations have long observed a noticeable spike in anti-Semitic incidents each time the Israeli-Palestinian conflict flares. During the three weeks of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in late 2008 and early 2009, France recorded 66 anti-Semitic incidents, including attacks on Jewish-owned restaurants and synagogues and a sharp increase in anti-Jewish graffiti.But according to academics and Jewish leaders, this time it is different. More than simply a reaction to the conflict, they say, the threats, hate speech and violent attacks feel like the expression of a much deeper and more widespread anti-Semitism, fuelled by a wide range of factors, that has been growing now for more than a decade.
“These are the worst times since the Nazi era,” Dieter Graumann, president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, told the Guardian. “On the streets, you hear things like ‘the Jews should be gassed’, ‘the Jews should be burned’ – we haven’t had that in Germany for decades. Anyone saying those slogans isn’t criticising Israeli politics, it’s just pure hatred against Jews: nothing else. And it’s not just a German phenomenon. It’s an outbreak of hatred against Jews so intense that it’s very clear indeed.”
Roger Cukierman, president of France’s Crif, said French Jews were “anguished” about an anti-Jewish backlash that goes far beyond even strongly felt political and humanitarian opposition to the current fighting: “They are not screaming ‘Death to the Israelis’ on the streets of Paris,” Cukierman said last month. “They are screaming ‘Death to Jews’.” Crif’s vice-president Yonathan Arfi said he “utterly rejected” the view that the latest increase in anti-Semitic incidents was down to events in Gaza. “They have laid bare something far more profound,” he said.
Nor is it just Europe’s Jewish leaders who are alarmed. Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, has called the recent incidents “an attack on freedom and tolerance and our democratic state”. The French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, has spoken of “intolerable” and clearly anti-Semitic acts: “To attack a Jew because he is a Jew is to attack France. To attack a synagogue and a kosher grocery store is quite simply anti-Semitism and racism”.
France, whose 500,000-strong Jewish community is one of Europe’s largest, and Germany, where the post-war exhortation of “Never Again” is part of the fabric of modern society, are not alone. In Austria last month, a pre-season friendly between Maccabi Haifa and German Bundesliga team SC Paderborn had to be rescheduled after the Israeli side’s previous match was called off following an attempted assault on its players.
The Netherlands’ main anti-Semitism watchdog, Cidi, had more than 70 calls from alarmed Jewish citizens in one week last month; the average is normally three to five. An Amsterdam rabbi, Binjamin Jacobs, had his front door stoned, and two Jewish women were attacked – one beaten, the other the victim of arson – after they hung Israeli flags from their balconies. In Belgium, a woman was reportedly turned away from a shop with the words: “We don’t currently sell to Jews.”
In Italy, the Jewish owners of dozens of shops and other businesses in Rome arrived to find swastikas and anti-Jewish slogans daubed on shutters and windows. One slogan read: “Every Palestinian is like a comrade. Same enemy. Same barricade”; another: “Jews, your end is near.” Abd al-Barr al-Rawdhi, an imam from the north eastern town of San Donà di Piave, is to be deported after being video-recorded giving a sermon calling for the extermination of the Jews.