Haaretz
Shvat 10, 5767
Last year
saw a substantial rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Germany,
Austria and the Scandinavian countries, according to the Global Forum
Against Anti-Semitism.
In an annual press conference, the forum
explained that 2006 was characterized by escalation in the number and
violent nature of attacks on Jews, proliferation of Holocaust denial and
increased comparison of Israel to the Nazi regime.
The Global Forum
- a joint effort of the Jewish Agency, the Foreign Ministry and the Prime
Minister's Office - counted 360 anti-Semitic incidents in France in 2006,
compared to 300 in 2005. In the United Kingdom, the report listed a yearly
decrease from 321 incidents in 2005 to 312 incidents in 2006. Russia
recorded 300 incidents in 2006 compared to 250 the preceding year, and
Austria saw a jump from 50 incidents to 83 last year. The Scandinavian
countries saw 53 incidents in 2006, substantially more than the previous
year's 35. The report cited a 60-percent rise in incidents in the Berlin
area, although it did not include figures for all of
Germany.
Spokesmen for the forum emphasized yesterday the many
difficulties in classifying and reporting anti-Semitic incidents that
affect the accuracy of the figures, which are primarily valuable as
indicators of trends in the countries examined.
Foreign Minister
Tzipi Livni said yesterday that national leaders abroad must understand
that anti-Semitism is first and foremost their own problem.
Jewish
Agency chair Zeev Bielski commented that, "Anti-Semitic phenomena in
Europe are very grave and countries like France and England are struggling
to handle them."
January 2006 brought the shocking murder of French
Jew Ilan Halimi. Bielski said Halimi's mother has recently decided to
bring her son's remains to Israel for interment on the first anniversary
of his death, next Friday in Jerusalem.
"There is no doubt the
recent Lebanon war and the Qana incident led to the most severe incidents
in the past decade," said Jewish Agency official Amos Hermon.
The
gravest incident related to the war was the shooting at the Jewish
Federation Building in Seattle, Washington last July, when staffer Pamela
Waechter was killed and three other people were critically
wounded.
The war engendered a wave of criticism in which Israel's
deeds were compared to those of Nazi Germany. Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez claimed last August that Israeli aggression in Lebanon was
"reminiscent of Hitler's fascist manner."
Montreal Mayor Stefane
Gendron said in August that "Israelis are modern-day Nazis."
An
editorial cartoon in a Norwegian newspaper showed Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert as the sadistic SS officer depicted in the movie "Schindler's
List." Hermon noted that Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder included
elements of historical Christian anti-Semitism in his book "God's Chosen
People," including statements such as, "Don't worry, Israel will go to
exile again," and, "We laugh at the idea that God chose one people ...
gave them stupid stone tablets and a license to kill."
Other
serious incidents in 2006 included the stabbing of synagogue-goers at the
Chabad Center in Moscow in January. In a September shooting attack on an
Oslo synagogue, no one was injured. The attackers were Islamic extremists
who were aided by the extreme right; they had also planned to kidnap the
Israeli ambassador, Miriam Shomrat.
Various reports were published
in European nations during the year revealing the scope and severity of
anti-Semitism. A British parliamentary commission determined that
Islamists and the radical left were responsible for increased
anti-Semitism in the country. Research published in Germany indicated
widespread use of anti-Semitic expressions in schools, primarily by Muslim
students. Research in the Ukraine found that about a third of the
country's citizens had negative opinions of Jews.