Anti-Semistism in Europe has grown with the pandemic

• Memorial Day, UN Secretary General Guterres: "Anti-Semitism is alive and well"

• Mattarella in Jerusalem: to be vigilant against anti-Semitism and fascism

Share

November 09 2021 The Covid-19 pandemic has had a major impact on Jewish communities in Europe. Impact originated by "new myths and conspiracy theories that blame Jews for the current health crisis." An existing lifeblood, which especially with a closed world at home but online 24/24 has spread. perhaps without memory is the latest report on anti-Semitism in the EU by the European Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). A phenomenon followed with great concern by the Union but without a database capable of giving a updated and homogeneous photograph of what is happening 

Although the lockdowns may have led to a physiological containment of anti-Semitic episodes in the open, the spread of anti-Semitic conspiracies online - the Agency report points out - shows that the number of recorded incidents is not indicative of the situation. In fact, the polls carried out show that attacks against Jews are highly underestimated and that hatred on the web, including anti-Semitism, has firmly taken root in European societies. The document collects, both official and unofficial, data on the episodes of anti-Semitism detected in various states of the Union. These include Germany, which in 2020 recorded the highest number of politically motivated crimes in Europe with an anti-Semitic motive: 2,351. A figure, we read in the report,which is the highest recorded in the 2010-2020 period. A number that, however, warns the European Agency, means that Germany has a more effective system for detecting anti-Semitic cases

Italy, which with 101 episodes identified by the Observatory for security against acts of discrimination (Oscad) on the basis of investigations conducted by the State Police or the Carabinieri, ranks fourth after Germany, the Netherlands ( 517) and France (339). Of the cases reported by the SCAD, 86 fall within the crime of inciting violence. In some countries such as Greece and Hungary, according to unofficial data, the number of anti-Semitic incidents on the contrary has decreased, but the problem, the Agency notes, remains the same throughout Europe: most cases are not yet reported. Here the problem is reversed because victims and witnesses must be encouraged to report anti-Semitic incidents,but authorities should have systems in place that allow for the recording and comparison of such incidents.

The European Agency for Fundamental Rights concludes that the EU and the Member States must share this commitment against all forms of discrimination against the different and to effectively combat anti-Semitism.

Brussels presented in October its first strategy to fight anti-Semitism, to fight hatred online: to strengthen the protection of synagogues but above all to promote the memory of the history of the Shoah and of what happened in the concentration camps.