Everything You Need to Know About Antisemitism in Europe
Antisemitism has been called the world’s oldest hatred. It is a tangible threat not only to Jews, but also to the very fabric of democratic societies.
We agree with the European Commission's assertion that “Europe can only prosper when its Jewish communities prosper too.”
The shocking rise of antisemitism in Europe is relevant for all of Diaspora Jewry. American Jewish Committee (AJC) will never give up on the Jews in Europe—or anywhere else. We will continue to work toward a world free of anti-Jewish hate.
With offices in Berlin, Brussels, Paris, and Warsaw, and representatives in Prague, Rome, and Sofia, AJC Europe’s strategic, on-the-ground presence allows us to help shape and impact policy at the highest levels. You can learn more at AJC.org/Europe.
Below you can find important resources that help break down this troubling rise in Jew-hatred and what it means for the Jewish people.
“The EU should be applauded for taking this significant step toward combatting antisemitism in Europe and abroad amid the dramatic surge of Jew hatred within living memory of the Holocaust,” said Daniel Schwammenthal, Director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute, the EU office of AJC, the global Jewish advocacy organization. “It is reassuring to see that the strategy aims at tackling antisemitism whether it originates from the far-right, the far-left, Islamists or mainstream society and clearly identifies “Israel-related antisemitism” as a major problem. As the Commission notes, it is in fact ‘the most common form of antisemitism encountered online by Jews in Europe today.’”
Today, a new strategy for combating antisemitism was announced by the European Union. Does it have a chance to help Jews in Europe? What are the plan’s implications for diaspora Jewish communities outside of the continent? Two of AJC’s leaders in Europe who have worked closely with the EU and member state governments in the effort to counter rising Jew-hatred, Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, Managing Director of AJC Europe, and Daniel Schwammenthal, Director of AJC’s Transatlantic Institute, answer these questions and more in this special bonus episode of AJC’s People of the Pod.
Here are eight lessons Americans can learn from Europe’s experience with intensifying antisemitism, according to Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, Managing Director of Paris-based AJC Europe.
I am feeling déjà vu. During the latest Israel-Hamas battle, my Twitter and Instagram feeds were flooded with messages from Hollywood stars, American supermodels, influencers and hard-left U.S. Democratic lawmakers condemning Israel in the strongest possible terms, often using terms such as “racial inequality,” “police violence” or “apartheid.” Sitting here in Europe, I have seen these kinds of descriptions before.
Four years after the murder in Paris of Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old French Jew, mother, and doctor, the case is back in the news in France. The French high court ruled this month that the perpetrator, Kobili Traoré, could not stand trial, even though no one contested that he had brutally beaten his victim and thrown her out a third-floor window, while declaring “Allahu akbar.”
From the children ruthlessly gunned down at a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012 to the savage stabbing of an elderly Holocaust survivor in Paris in 2018, it is hardly a shock that a majority of French Jews and the general public believe that anti-Jewish hatred is on the rise.
Movements to ban infant circumcision have swept through Iceland, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, threatening to make it difficult for Jews to practice their faith and continue to call Europe home. Other, more violent trends have swept through the Nordic countries, as well.
Unlike in other European countries, Jews in Ukraine generally do not face acts of violence or public condemnations of Israel. But traditional stereotypes of Jews persist.
As a European engaged around the clock with American Jews, I feel a sense of responsibility and urgency to share our experience. With every exhausting debate over what constitutes anti-Semitism, with every refusal to take into consideration anti-Semitism from the other side of the political divide, with every glance at the overwhelming amount of anti-Semitic hate speech online, and every time I see certain politicians in the U.S. fail to find the courage to speak out clearly and unequivocally and come up with a clear plan to combat this cancer, I get more nervous.
Antisemitism is sometimes compared to a virus. While we can’t eliminate it, we at least know how to keep it under control. But what if we’re wrong? What if, like a virus, antisemitism has developed a new strain, unresponsive to all the traditional treatments?
This week on AJC Passport, we’re joined by Katharina von Schnurbein, Coordinator on Combating Antisemitism for the European Commission, to discuss the troubling results from an EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) survey of Jews across Europe. AJC CEO David Harris also joins us to discuss how European governments respond to antisemitism.
The new CNN survey of attitudes towards Jews in seven countries – Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Poland, and Sweden – raises profound concerns. Jews are an infinitesimal percentage of Europe’s population, but continue to play an outsized role in the European imagination.
Antisemitism has been called the world’s oldest hatred. It is a tangible threat not only to Jews, but also to the very fabric of democratic societies.
We agree with the European Commission's assertion that “Europe can only prosper when its Jewish communities prosper too.”
The shocking rise of antisemitism in Europe is relevant for all of Diaspora Jewry. American Jewish Committee (AJC) will never give up on the Jews in Europe—or anywhere else. We will continue to work toward a world free of anti-Jewish hate.
With offices in Berlin, Brussels, Paris, and Warsaw, and representatives in Prague, Rome, and Sofia, AJC Europe’s strategic, on-the-ground presence allows us to help shape and impact policy at the highest levels. You can learn more at AJC.org/Europe.
Below you can find important resources that help break down this troubling rise in Jew-hatred and what it means for the Jewish people.