Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which will be commemorated around the world on Monday, the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs on Sunday published its report on antisemitism for 2019.
The report reveals extremely disconcerting trends of increased and intensifying antisemitic incidents across the globe in general, and in Western Europe and the United States in particular.
In 2019, according to the report, seven Jews and non-Jews were murdered in a series of antisemitic attacks, and many others were wounded. The report also states that antisemitic violence came from different directions and was inspired by various ideologies, by the far-right, white supremacists, the extreme left, radical Islam and even escalating street violence perpetrated by African-American youths.
The report reveals that antisemitism mainly poses a threat to Jews living in Western democracies with large Jewish communities – the US, France, Great Britain and Germany. The US saw a rise in the number of violent antisemitic incidents, with over 100 violent street attacks in Brooklyn alone in the past year.
In France, too, there was a drastic increase in the number of reported antisemitic attacks in the first half of 2019. And for the second consecutive year, online antisemitic abuse intensified, with many antisemitic commenters no longer searching for an excuse, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to spew classic antisemitic rhetoric.
In Germany, there was a 20% increase in antisemitic incidents, among them the Halle synagogue shooting on October 9, in which two bystanders lost their lives. Additionally, throughout 2019 Jews were assaulted in the streets, targeted with insults and threats, and neo-Nazi groups and political parties openly disseminated neo-Nazi propaganda and called for the release of Holocaust deniers from prison.
In Great Britain, meanwhile, where an ant-Semitic candidate, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, vied for the premiership in 2019, the Jewish community sensed an existential threat to its future in the country.
A positive trend noted in the report was the drastic drop, about 25%, in antisemitic discourse on monitored online sites and forums, primarily the result of new policies – mainly on Facebook and Twitter. However, antisemitic activists have been moving to alternative social media sites and to the dark web.
Source: israelhayom
