Posted on 04/18/2002 1:41:34 PM PDT by knighthawk
PARIS (Reuters) - A spate of attacks against Jewish targets from Marseille to Kiev has triggered fears that tension in the Middle East is spilling over into the streets of Europe and dividing once close communities.
There has been a sharp increase in anti-Semitic attacks ranging from anti-Jewish graffiti to assaults on Jews and their schools, synagogues and shops since Israel launched an offensive in the Palestinian territories on March 29.
"We are seeing a transfer of the conflict to Europe and as Jews, we are paying the price, which is intolerable," said Diane Sheinberg of the European Union of Jewish Students.
"Jews are being stigmatized as Israelis, whereas these are two very different things," she said.
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Melchior said the wave of attacks was the worst since World War Two, while French Jewish leaders raised fears of another "Kristallnacht," a reference to a pogrom in Nazi Germany in 1938. In the western German town of Herford, vandals daubed anti-Semitic graffiti on a synagogue this week, including the words "Six million were not enough," a reference to the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Even in the traditionally tolerant Netherlands, Orthodox Jews, identified by the way they dress, have suffered sporadic verbal abuse, mainly from foreigners.
"It's a very new and surprising thing for Jews in the Netherlands," said Ruben Vis, spokesman for the country's Organization of Jewish Communities.
ATTACKS ABOUND IN FRANCE
The brunt of the assaults has concerned France, home to western Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim populations.
Police are now counting 10 to 12 anti-Semitic attacks daily, even in traditionally peaceful ethnic melting pots like the Mediterranean port city of Marseille.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which monitors global neo-Nazi activity, last week issued a travel advisory to its members urging "extreme caution" when traveling to France and Belgium.
Prime Minister Lionel Jospin Thursday announced a bolstering of government measures against anti-Semitic attacks. "Any act of violence against Jews is an assault on our national community as a whole," he said.
Despite the official condemnations, some Jewish leaders say authorities turned a blind eye for too long to anecdotal evidence that anti-Semitic attacks and sentiment were on the increase even before the Middle East conflict deepened.
"Unfortunately, traditional anti-Semitism has not disappeared," said Serge Cwajgenbaum, secretary general of the Paris-based European Jewish Congress.
"The conjunction of this covert anti-Semitism with that of some sectors of the North African Arab community, which is much more direct and much more violent, fuels concerns within the Jewish community," he added.
The threat of European Union trade sanctions against Israel and a resolution by the United Nations' top human rights body condemning Israel for "mass killings" were seen as evidence of the hardening of the anti-Israel mood in Europe.
However Cwajgenbaum expressed confidence that the tide would soon turn. "We are feeling small signs of a reversal in public opinion toward greater moderation," he said.
CAUTION ON LINK
The European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia, based in Vienna, says there is no proof as yet of a direct correlation between the Middle East conflict and the attacks.
"Of course, you can elaborate on the situation and say what is going in some European member states is a reflection of what is going on in the Middle East, but who is guilty or not guilty, you cannot say," said spokesman Bent Sorensen.
That position is echoed by Muslim organizations, who caution against automatically blaming their community for the attacks.
When skinheads beat up Jewish worshipers and smashed windows at the main synagogue in Kiev, Ukrainian police denied the attack was anti-Jewish, blaming football supporters.
Ukraine's Chief Rabbi Moshe Azman linked the assault to the Middle East conflict, but added that he was satisfied with the official investigation, which has led to eight arrests so far.
Nonetheless, local leaders stepped up security in synagogues across the country amid fears that violence will peak with the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birthday on April 20.
Meanwhile, Denmark's far-right Danish People's Party (DPP) filed a motion in parliament Thursday to ban a Muslim group called Hizb-ut-Tahrir after it handed out leaflets in Copenhagen calling for the murder of Jews.
A World Cup warm-up soccer match Wednesday between Denmark and Israel in Copenhagen was overshadowed by street clashes between police and anti-Israel protesters.
Danish police said they had detained 153 anti-Israel demonstrators after clashes with 1,800 protesters. Later a steel ball was fired from a sling against the U.S. embassy. (Additional reporting by Olena Horodetska in Kiev, Birgitte Dyrekilde in Copenhagen, Erik Kirschbaum in Berlin and Paul Gallagher in Amsterdam).
This is one of the reasons the leftist media slams the right all the time: they support Jews. And not the terrorists like the lefties.
...The European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia, based in Vienna, says there is no proof as yet of a direct correlation between the Middle East conflict and the attacks.What Sorensen says is that the attacks may be founded in anti-semitism alone. (I think certainly excited by recent mid-east events, and TV.) That's a valid argument. The reporter lies by narrative effect, implying that Sorensen's argument comports with a "muslim" argument that they are not to blame. That's not what Sorensen said at all. And there are plenty of articles showing that particularly young Muslim males are involved in the violence - and proud of it."Of course, you can elaborate on the situation and say what is going in some European member states is a reflection of what is going on in the Middle East, but who is guilty or not guilty, you cannot say," said spokesman Bent Sorensen.
That position is echoed by Muslim organizations, who caution against automatically blaming their community for the attacks.
When skinheads beat up Jewish worshipers and smashed windows at the main synagogue in Kiev, Ukrainian police denied the attack was anti-Jewish, blaming football supporters....
Next is a report about skinheads in the Ukraine. By narrative implication the reporter suggests that violence in Western Europe might be from the same cause. This is a lie of omission. The skin head problem in the East is completely separate, ongoing, and much targeted at black visitors and people from the Caucasus. The argumentative journalistic technique is similar to that practiced in America, always finding some white punks to undermine understanding of separate incidents of violence.
This piece is crafty, politically correct B.S. It is not meant to inform, but to disinform.
Sunday there will be a pro-Israel demo in Amsterdam at 16.00. I saw some threats of muslims to attack the demonstrators on Joods.nl, a Jewish forum.
I bet when they attack the Jews get the blame!
Somehow from about AD 305 until AD 1905, they kept wrongly seeing their tormentors (in Europe) as "Christians" rather than as Slavs, Teutons, Franks, etc.
Any Christianity the anti-Semites had, is what reined them IN, and made things NO-WORSE, ...that is the only reason any Jews survived at all, otherwise routine human hatred of the Others, would have eliminated them from Europe...
As it now has, from the Middle East, except the little enclave of Israel, and that too will soon go unless Christians bail it out, which I pray we will...
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