EJC President Moshe Kantor described anti-Semitism as a disease. He suggested creating a multidisciplinary forum in the EU capital, to be a kind of university of tolerance and reconciliation.
For Richard Prasquier, “anti-Semitism is a tactic, a political strategy”. Anti-Semitism is a kind of hotchpotch whereby anti-Semites seek to convince the widest possible audience that Jews are the quintessence of evil. At the beginning of the 21st century, it is radical Islam which is picking up these old patterns and making out Jews to be the emblem of evil. Establishing such an enemy allows fundamentalists to structure themselves.
But there are other groups who are making anti-Semitism a formidable “weapon”. Richard Prasquier listed two others. Those who, according to him, seek to free their “fatherland” from so-called foreign influences, be they Anglo-Saxon (American) or Jewish (Zionist). According to Richard Prasquier, this group is capable of establishing an alliance with fundamentalist Muslims. Lastly, there are those who are defending all the oppressed people in the world and expose to public condemnation all their (presumed) oppressors, imperialists, capitalists, Americans, Zionists…
All this in a specific context, a kind of media vulgate. Because, according to Prasquier, “journalists who have been trained in the school of pacifism” tend to be excessively inclined to compassion for the “victims”. In such a context of loss of values, anti-Semitism prospers.
French journalist Mohamed Sifaoui came to speak about extremist Islam, which he knows well because he has been working on these movements for 21 years: “No policy has been set up to respond to and contain such a threat by the European leaders – who are petrified because they fear that people will confuse Islam and a totalitarian ideology that I would call fascist. (…) We have every reason to believe that this ideology is a threat for Europe.” Our democracies must consequently discuss this enterism of the Islamists and point out “all the contradictions that exist between Islamist movements and European values.”
Haras Rafiq, the executive director of the British Sufi Muslim Council, told how one day his own daughter had said to him that she no longer wanted to be a Muslim, because, she said, “Muslims are always angry”. “This - he said – made me ask myself the question about how the Muslim community should respond to this radicalisation, which moreover is not something new.” Rafiq has an action plan to fight fundamentalism: “We must reaffirm that human beings and their faith must be respected. We also need to free people to speak, to meet people, believers from other religions, and see if we cannot build up something.”
However, “we cannot build a common future without values, without democracy, without rule of law, without respect for the human person,” responded Jacques Barrot, vice president of the European Commission, in charge of Justice, Freedom and Security. He spoke of his worry caused by the upsurge of anti-Semitism observed in recent months.
For the General Director of the Jewish Community Protection Service in France (SPCJ), the upsurge observed in the number of anti-Semitic acts between the end of December 2008 and January 2009 shows that the situation is extremely worrying. 352 acts were recorded during this period. Photographs were projected in addition to the figures published by the head of SPCJ. They are enough to send shivers down one’s spine: virulent and obscene anti-Semitic tags; during pro Palestinian demonstrations activists use symbols and images referring to the Holocaust, such as panels with the Star of David surrounded by swastikas or slogans such as “Stop the genocide of the Palestinian people!”; anti-Semitic tags on synagogue walls, etc.
However, the conference’s most moving moment, stronger even than the photo projection, came when Ruth Halimi came to the rostrum to speak of her son, Ilan Halimi, who died as a result of torture by the young thugs who had abducted him. “Some young men had chose to target a Jew and consequently went hunting for one across Paris. They had selected a number of shops where they thought they would find Jewish retailers or salespersons. These were young people for whom Jews were necessarily rich.” In fact, “any Jew could have found themselves in Ilan’s place, abducted, starved, beaten and murdered because they were Jews.”
Anti-Semitism is also prospering in the other countries of the European Union. Mike Whine, who heads the International Affairs Department of the Community Security Trust (CST), used the same term “riot” to describe the situation. Riots, which in his opinion, have or sometimes may have been stirred up (or coordinated) by Islamists as well as by activists from the far left. In England and in Belgium the situation is extremely serious, worse than anything that has been seen since 1945: from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009 there were 40 acts reported in Belgium, 352 in France, 977 in Germany and 260 in England.
Peter Feldmajer, President of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Hungary spoke of a similar situation in his country. There aren’t many Jews left in Hungary, but the situation is alarming. Hungarian Jews are not being attacked but, because there aren’t any laws against racism, the far right is really going to town and anti-Semitism is prospering, particularly in the country’s universities and schools.
Scandinavian Jewish communities are small and in recent years Jews have been able to live peacefully. But according to Rony Smolar, President of the Jewish Community of Finland, these days Jews are afraid. When there is talk of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, they are taken to be Israelis, and so to be enemies of humankind.
A major conference against racism is to be held in Geneva from 20th to 24th April 2009. Should we be afraid of this? Yes, if we remember what happened during the previous conference in Durban in August 2001. Jacques Barrot, vice-president of the European Commission for Justice, Freedom and Security is very clear: “We must be very vigilant, and the European Union must be ready to react if unacceptable texts are proposed. If necessary we will put in a request that the European Union pull out of the conference.”
Aleksander Kwasniewski, President of the European Council for Tolerance and Reconciliation, and former President of Poland spoke in a similar vein. He said that recently Polish celebrities had written an open letter to the Polish government to demand that Poland not take part in Durban 2. For the Finn Thomas Sandell of the European Coalition for Israel, things are clear. “The Durban2 conference must not be endorsed. I hope that the European Union will have the courage to pull out, because once you go to this conference, it is too late, much too late to walk out.”
Haim Musicant, Director General of CRIF spoke next. “So, what should we do? as one famous revolutionary asked? ‘Nothing’, say those who think that Jews exaggerate, are inward-looking, cry “Anti-Semitic Wolf!” to clear their name of their support for Israel. But others do not agree. The presence in this room and on the balcony of celebrities from all walks of life who share certain basic values, leads us to believe that a lot of people refuse Manichaeism, defeatism and fatality, and believe in the saying of the French poet Victor Hugo: ‘Those who live are those who fight’. We have gathered members of the intelligentsia and media personalities. We expect them to analyse the situation, to go further than words of compassion and denunciations, and make concrete proposals for action.
In the Europe of 2009, in this age of Internet and TV, how can the words of an intellectual or an article by a journalist carry weight, not just with opinion leaders but with the general public? Must we make do with articles, books, colloquia and petitions, or can we do something else so as not to disappoint the founding fathers of Europe, and act so that now, less than a month from Durban2, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would not be rendered void of meaning?” Musicant continued.
If there can be zero tolerance of anti-Semitism, can we develop and/or believe in the primacy of intercultural dialogue?
Hassen Chalghoumi, Imam of Drancy, shared from personal experience. “I am Imam of a very large town in the Paris suburbs called Drancy. The town has a black spot: its internment camp. Every day, I drive past this memorial site. I did a lot of thinking, and decided to work in my town, for the town”, he declared. We now feel the winds of change, so that Jews and Muslims can live together in harmony and brotherhood. This is continuing.” Chalghoumi is convinced of it, as he tells of the journey made by men of faith from the Israeli city of Sderot to Gaza, to “go over there”, as he puts it. “But why go ‘over there’?” he asked. “Israel and Palestine are miles away from us, but when something happens there, we feel it here. And then, (from here too) we must ‘fight for the existence of two States where people can live together.’”
A few minutes later, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin spoke of his city of Lyon. “We have a long history of coexistence, and relationships between Jews and Christians are longstanding and marked by our faith. We want to listen to the faith of the other.” In the same frame of mind, Philippe Barbarin reminded the audience that he had recently had “a long dialogue with the Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim. A intellectual dimension exists which is not without a spiritual basis.” And Cardinal Barbarin concluded: “when you move forward in your deep faith as a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim, you are a peacemaker.”
For Haim Musicant, “We have been naïve. Many of us thought that with Auschwitz we had reached the peak of horror, that anti-Semitism was over, that the world had understood. We believed that never again in post-war Europe would synagogues be burnt, Jewish schools wrecked, rabbis molested or children beaten, never again would demonstrators cry ‘Death to Jews’! Or that Jews like Ilan Halimi would be assassinated. We were falsely optimistic, believing that with the founding of the State of Israel, the refuge for Holocaust survivors, we would be somehow protected. We began, full of energy and enthusiasm, to build Europe, imagined by Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and other visionaries like Paul-Henri Spaak, who would make it function.”
Israeli journalist Boaz Bismut had the last word: “I came here to Brussels pessimistic. But I’m leaving reassured. We are not alone, despite all.”
English
Français