EU suspends anti-Semitism seminar

European Commission President Romano Prodi has suspended a seminar on anti-Semitism after World Jewish Congress President Edgar Bronfman and European Jewish Congress President Coby Benatoff accused the commission of encouraging anti-Semitism.

Prodi, who declared himself to be "both surprised and shocked" by the charges, told Bronfman and Benatoff that the seminar will not now go ahead as scheduled next month: "The attitude you have shown forces me to suspend the preparations," he wrote them.

In a letter to the Financial Times, published Monday, Bronfman and Benatoff accused the commission - the executive branch of the European Union - of suppressing a study that highlighted Muslim involvement in the rise of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe.

They also accused the commission of releasing of a "flawed and dangerously inflammatory" poll conducted throughout the European Union which showed that the majority of respondents regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace.

"Let us not mince words," wrote Bronfman and Benatoff. "Both of these actions were politically motivated, demonstrating a failure of will and decency.

"Outside Israel, the majority of the world's violent anti-Semitic attacks took place in western Europe. For the EU to hide these facts reeks of intellectual dishonesty and moral treachery."

"Anti-Semitism," they wrote, "can be expressed in two ways: by action and inaction. Remarkably," they added, "the European Commission is guilty of both."

In response, Prodi denied that the commission censored the study from the Vienna-based European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia: "You perfectly know that the Vienna Center is an independent institution and that the European Commission has no power at all to interfere," he wrote.

He also dismissed suggestions that the Eurobarometer poll was "politically motivated," adding that no such criticism was leveled when he met Jewish leaders after its release in November.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose country held the rotating presidency of the European Union at the time, called Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to express his "surprise and indignation" at the results of the poll, saying the question had been "misleading." (ENDS)

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"Outside Israel, the majority of the world's violent anti-Semitic attacks took place in western Europe. For the EU to hide these facts reeks of intellectual dishonesty and moral treachery."

Bravo.

Edgar Sr. also made the Bronfmans the most celebrated name in Jewish philanthropy. Since the late '70s, he and his brother Charles have been distributing their fortune to Jewish causes, endowing professorships, buildings, and scholarships in the United States and Israel. (I challenge you to find an American student who studied in Israel and received no Bronfman aid.) He also appointed himself the Jewish ambassador to the world. He paid off the World Jewish Congress' debt, took over its presidency in 1981, and used it as his platform for action. His wealth and fame were an ax. He pressured Soviet leaders to release Jewish dissidents. He and the WJC exposed Kurt Waldheim's Nazi past in the mid-'80s. Edgar Sr. harassed and condemned the former U.N. secretary-general so effectively that Waldheim tried to sue him. For the last three years, Edgar Sr. has been hunting Swiss bankers who profited from Nazi evil and Jewish sorrow. He recruited Sen. Al D'Amato to hold hearings on Swiss misdeeds, persuaded the Clinton administration to investigate, and eventually forced the Swiss to pony up $7 billion to compensate Jewish victims.

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