By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
May 05, 2005
Israel and the West are fond of saying "never again" when remembering the Holocaust, but a new study has rekindled concerns that Jew-hatred could again reach genocidal levels in the future.
The study - conducted by Tel Aviv's Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism, the World Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League - was published Wednesday, just one day before a two-minute siren brought the nation to a grinding halt as Israelis stood for a moment of silence Thursday morning in remembrance of the six million Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
It showed global anti-Semitism in 2004 had reached its highest level since 1989.
During 2004, some 480 severe cases of violence against Jews and 20 anti-Semitic terror attacks were recorded, Ynetnews reported. In 2003, there were 30 terror attacks and 330 cases of severe violence.
Most worrying was the drastic increase in physical attacks on Jews, especially in Britain, Canada, France and Russia, the study noted. It is a trend that has been mounting since the start of the current "Palestinian" terrorist war.
The report pointed out those nations that experienced the most serious rise in anti-Semitism have burgeoning Arab Muslim populations, which often attack local Jews as an extension of their hatred for Israel.
That growing phenomenon was first revealed in a continent-wide study commissioned by the EU's Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) and prepared by the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism for the Monitoring Center in Berlin in 2003.
"Anti-Semitic incidents in the monitoring period were committed above all either by right-wing extremists or radical Islamists or young Muslims, mostly of Arab descent," the report stated, noting that the "pro-Palestinian left" was behind much of the anti-Semitic rhetoric as part of its crusade against the Jewish state.
The results were never officially released after EUMC officials decided the report's conclusion that Muslims and their allies were largely responsible for the new wave of hatred could be "inflammatory."
At the time, European Jews expressed concern for their future safety over their governing body's reluctance to publicly acknowledge the growing threat to their wellbeing.
The report, titled "Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the European Union," was later leaked, and can now be found at numerous locations on the Internet.