Declaration to fight anti-Semitism signed in London
February 23, 2009 by SAF Desk
Filed under News at a glance
A declaration pledging to challenge anti-Semitism was signed on behalf of all participating nations on Tuesday, the final day of the London Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism.
Noting the dramatic increase in anti-Semitism being disseminated in the media and attacks targeting Jewish persons and property, the London Declaration was signed by 125 parliamentarians from 40 countries.
It called on national governments, parliaments, international institutions, political and civic leaders and civil society to “affirm democratic and human values, build societies based on respect and citizenship and combat any manifestations of anti-Semitism and discrimination.”
It made the promise that the parliamentarians affirm their commitment to a comprehensive program of action to meet this challenge.
Signatories also pledged to expose, challenge and isolate those who engage in hate against Jews and target the State of Israel as a Jewish collective.
It also called upon governments to challenge any form of Holocaust denial. Again in reference to Iran it stated “any foreign leader, politician or public figure who denies, denigrates or trivializes the Holocaust” must be challenged.
“There is a new sophisticated, globalizing, virulent and even lethal anti-Semitism, reminiscent of the atmospherics of the ’30s and without parallel or precedent since the end of the Second World War,” former Canadian attorney-general and founding co-chair of the conference, Irwin Cotler, said.
“Silence is not an option. This time has come not only to sound the alarm but to act. For as history has taught us only too well: while it may begin with Jews, it does not end with Jews. Anti-Semitism is the canary in the mineshaft of evil, and it threatens us all,” he added.
“The Internet, the globalization of the media, a resurgence of the extreme right and an anti-Zionist hard left have combined to create a febrile environment, in which the spread of old and new anti-Semitic theories and attitudes have been able to gain traction with alarming ease,” said John Mann MP, chair of the Parliamentary Committee Against Anti-Semitism. “The Durban conference was amongst the manifestations of this trend.
“Anti-Semitism is a touchstone for other ills within wider society and unless we move to address its spread now, and as a matter of the utmost urgency, we will all pay a heavy price,” he added.
US reaches out to Jewish leaders on ‘Durban II
February 19, 2009 by SAF Desk
Filed under News at a glance
HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
Senior White House and State Department officials held a conference call with American Jewish leaders Monday to reassure them over the administration’s decision to participate in preliminary discussions about the United Nation’s World Conference Against Racism conference in Geneva this April.
The previous UN World Conference against Racism held in Durban.
Photo: AP [file]
Jewish leaders were told that Washington’s decision to participate in the conference was being coordinated with the Israeli government, and that the US presence was an effort to change the direction of the conference, dubbed “Durban II,” according to participants in the call who would not be identified.
The US officials said that they were “under no illusions” that the nature of the gathering – which featured anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic material in its first incarnation held in Durban, South Africa in 2001, causing the Bush administration to pull its participation – would be easy to change.
Israel and many Jewish organizations have objected to the April conference and some of its preliminary material, which echoes the 2001 parley. Several had urged the Bush administration to announce it would boycott the event, but no official announcement was made.
World depressions lead to a rise in anti-Semitism. All over Europe, the evidence is around us
February 18, 2009 by SAF Desk
Filed under News at a glance
Denis MacShane
The periodic crises that have shaken world capitalism in the century and a half since Marx wrote Das Kapital are marked by a common political phenomenon. It is the rise of political anti-Semitism. Attacks on Jews and Jewishness constitute the canary in the coal mine that tells us something is going seriously wrong.
Last month a 32-year-old IT worker, Michael Booksatz, was beaten up in the streets of north London by two hooded men shouting about Palestinians. Jewish students at the London School of Economics – home to many brilliant Jews who fled Hitler’s Germany – are now frightened by anti-Jewish abuse from Islamist students. Graffiti such as “Kill the Jews†or “Jihad 4 Israel†appear close to synagogues in London.
The Metropolitan Police report four times as many anti-Jewish incidents in recent weeks as Islamaphobic events. The respected Community Security Trust, which records anti-Jewish attacks with scrupulous rigour, reports as many attacks on Jews – verbal, vandalism and some violent – in the first weeks of 2009 as in the first six months of last year.
As the world enters a new era of crisis, anti-Semitism is back. History, as ever, begins to repeat itself. The slumps and stock market fever expressed in Zola’s novel, L’Argent, or the populist anger against Wall Street at the end of the 19th century gave rise to the virulent anti-Semitic politics witnessed in France in connection with the Dreyfus case or the takeover of Vienna by openly anti-Semitic politicians. The Great Depression gave rise to the worst expressions of anti-Semitism ever seen, namely the politics that led to the Holocaust. But even in Britain the Duke of Wellington of the time was leader of a secret anti-Jewish organisation which had the initials PJ – Perish Judah – on its letterhead.
The economic crises of the 1970s led to a marked increase in the vote for the National Front in Britain and the openly anti-Semitic BNP, its successor extreme party, is doing very well in local elections – below the radar of the national opinion polls.
The distress and upset over the terrible pictures of children killed in Israel’s attacks on Hamas in Gaza have allowed anti-Israeli feelings to be more violently and vehemently expressed than ever before. Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic. But all anti-Semites hate the existence of a Jewish state and hiding behind code words such as anti-Zionism increases the density and viciousness of their anti-Jewish utterances.
In Italy, the streets of Milan are daubed with slogans urging Italians not to buy goods at Jewish shops – an echo of the Nazi slogan “Kauft Nicht Bei Judenâ€. In Germany, radio phone-ins are full of accusations that the bankers accused of being responsible for the current economic crisis are Jews. In anti-Israel demonstrations in Berlin, placards stating “It was a good idea to use gas†or “I’m anti-Semitic and that’s a good thing†were carried. Thus every Jew is made to feel as if they do not fully belong in the countries where they were born or the societies that they participate in.
UK anti-Semitic attacks rise after Gaza conflict
February 14, 2009 by SAF Desk
Filed under News at a glance
LONDON (AP) – The number of anti-Semitic attacks on British Jews rose sharply after the start of the conflict in Gaza, a Jewish charity said Friday.
The London-based Community Security Trust, which monitors anti-Semitism and works to safeguard the Jewish community in Britain, said 250 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in the four weeks after Dec. 27, when Israel launched attacks on Gaza to stop Hamas rocket attacks.
That compares to 40 incidents from the same period the year before.
Dave Rich, a spokesman for the trust, said Jews in Britain are unfairly seen as local representatives of Israel—a view that fuels some of the anti-Semitic attacks.
“This is racism,” he said. “And like all forms of racism, it is unacceptable.”
The trust said crimes included assaults, damage to Jewish property, threats, hate mail, verbal abuse and anti-Semitic graffiti.
Police figures echo this rise. London police have recorded about three times the number of anti-Semitic incidents from Dec. 27 to Feb. 3 as compared to the same period last year. Though some of that increase came from a change in the way the statistics were kept, the data still reflected a surge in incidents in the capital.
Around Europe, several attacks were reported against Jews and synagogues in France, Sweden and Belgium in the weeks after the Israeli offensive, Rich said.
The figures were released before an international conference Monday in London on tackling anti-Semitism.
Israel’s three-week offensive left nearly 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza dead, according to Gaza officials. Thirteen Israelis were killed, including three civilians.