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What lies behind rise in anti-Semitism

BY DAVID N. MYERS

Jews around the world have watched with growing alarm a dramatic rise in the number of anti-Semitic acts, particularly in Europe. A recently released report sponsored by the European Union (EU) noted a six-fold increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents from 2001 to 2002, with increases in violent acts against Jews in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain over the same period. Mindful of this trend, Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, recently wrote: “I am convinced that we currently face as great a threat to the safety and security of the Jewish people as the one we faced in the 1930s — if not a greater one.”

Many observers find Foxman’s statement inattentive to key contextual differences between the 1930s and the present. There is, after all, no Nazi Germany bent on eradicating European Jewry. What, then, lies behind the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe? The recent EU report observes that “it is problematic to make general statements with regard to the perpetrators of anti-Semitic acts” in Europe. Interestingly, this conclusion stands in contrast to a 2003 EU-sponsored report whose publication was withheld. The earlier report suggested that the chief perpetrators of anti-Semitic acts in Europe were disaffected Muslim youth.

In either case, the current wave of anti-Semitism mixes old and new motifs. Clearly, the salience of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially following the collapse of the Oslo peace process and the outbreak of the Al-Aksa Intifada, has played a role. News reports and photo images of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians have served as a prod not only to criticism of the Israeli government but also to anti-Semitic rhetoric and — according to the first EU report — anti-Semitic deeds.

The image of the violent Israeli soldier, a visible symbol of Jewish power, may also serve to mitigate the lingering guilt that Europeans feel 60 years after the mass murder of European Jews. This complex psychological dynamic engenders anti-Jewish resentment that may well tap into the deep historical reservoir of anti-Semitic images dug in the European landscape.

On another level, Europe’s new anti-Semitic wave may have less to do with Jews per se than with other social and political factors, including the slow and difficult integration of the large Muslim minority into European society and the powerful anti-American sentiment in European political culture (with which supporters of Israel, and Jews, are often associated). Perhaps for these reasons, Europe’s political leaders were slow to respond to the rise in anti-Semitic acts in 2002, at first denying the rise and then understating its significance. More recently, these leaders have seen fit to quickly and unequivocally condemn anti-Semitism and shore up security at Jewish institutions.

One of the more interesting related developments, especially evident in France, is the attempt to reassert the primacy of a state-based national identity at the expense of ethnic or religious particularism. Hence, Muslim headscarves as well as “ostentatious” Jewish or Christian religious symbols are no longer to be permitted in French public schools or workplaces. Whether this step will reduce anti-Semitism or other forms of group discrimination remains an open — and very important — question for Europeans today.

Myers is professor of Jewish history and vice chair of the history department.