Police guard a synagogue in the German city of Dessau-Rosslau on October 22. POOL (via Portal)
The war in the Middle East has sparked a wave of anti-Semitic acts in Europe, where some six million Jews were exterminated eight decades ago. None of these acts were fatal, but Jewish communities on the continent are concerned.
The drop is daily. According to the local newspaper Le Progrès, a 30-year-old woman of Jewish faith was stabbed to death this Saturday in her home in the French city of Lyon. His life is not in danger. Someone, it is not known whether it was the same attacker, left an inscription with the swastika on the door.
The anti-Semitic motive has not been officially confirmed, but if confirmed, it would be the most serious hostile act and gesture towards European Jews in recent weeks. The list is long. A synagogue in Germany attacked with Molotov cocktails and buildings where Jews live painted with swastikas. Property attacks in the UK and hate on social media. A fire in the anteroom of the mourning hall of the Jewish section of the Vienna Cemetery. Viral images of anti-Semitic chants in the Paris metro.
The anti-Semitic wave began on October 7, when Hamas killed 1,400 people and kidnapped 240 in Israel. And it has accelerated with the Israeli response, which Palestinian authorities say has already resulted in more than 9,000 deaths in Gaza. According to the French government, 857 anti-Semitic acts were registered in France in October, twice as many as in the whole of 2022. In Germany, the research and information organization on anti-Semitism recorded a 240% increase in incidents of this type. In the Austrian capital Vienna alone, the increase was 300%, according to the city’s Jewish community. In the first half of October, 218 hate crimes against Jews were recorded in London, tripling the number in the same period last year. The British capital’s Metropolitan Police and other security forces in the country have deployed more than a thousand officers to protect synagogues and Jewish community centers.
“Since October 7, the word anti-Semitic has been in circulation,” says with concern the writer Pierre Assouline, author of Return to Sefarad (Navona Editorial, in Spanish) and Sephardic citizen with dual nationality, French and Spanish. “The atmosphere is difficult, sad, tense.”
Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur explains that anti-Semitism is nothing new in France and there is no need to return to French collaborationism during World War II. There is a cycle that began at the beginning of the 21st century and coincided with the Second Intifada. Horvilleur, author, among other things, of Living with Our Dead (Books of the Asteroid, in Spanish), recalls the kidnapping, torture and murder of the young Ilan Halimi in 2006, the massacre at a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012 and the attack in the Jewish supermarket Hyper Cacher, in January 2015.
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Lower your voice when speaking about Israel in public
“In my synagogue we adopted completely unusual security customs for years, but they have become our norm,” says the rabbi, one of the main figures of progressive Judaism in France. And he tells an anecdote with his own daughter. A few years ago the girl built a building out of Lego bricks. It was a synagogue. When he decided on figures, he put a policeman at the door instead of a rabbi or the faithful. “This is how Jewish children are raised today, parents say,” he adds. “They lower their voices when they talk about Judaism or when they say the word Israel in public.”
The authorities fear that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is moving to France. Philippe Bernard, editor for Le Monde, asked in a column a few days ago: “Can one remember that the Jews of France are no more responsible for the violent acts of a right-wing extremist government than the Arabs of France are part of Hamas terrorism?” “
According to Le Progrès, the attacker knocked on his victim’s door in Lyon at around 1pm on Saturday and stabbed her twice when the woman opened it. Then he fled. According to the same media, investigators are giving priority to the anti-Semitic trail. A source close to the investigation quoted by Le Monde says that “further leads are being investigated.”
Anti-Semitism has changed. “The old extreme right from before the war and the occupation still exists: there is still an anti-Jewish background among good French people, upper class people and Catholic aristocrats,” says Assouline. “But the massive presence of Muslims changed things.” The author also blames radical leftist Jean-Mélenchon, who refused to classify Hamas as terrorists after October 7. In a video message, the German Vice Chancellor and top politician of the Green Party, Robert Habeck, warned of the new Islamist anti-Semitism: “Whoever lives here lives according to the rules of this country and whoever comes here must know that.” That is the case and “So “It will be enforced.” He also recalled the anti-Semitism of the old extreme right. And he referred to a “part of the left” that he warned: “Anti-colonialism must not lead to anti-Semitism.”
For the state responsible for the Holocaust, Israel’s security is a “reason of state,” emphasized Chancellor and Social Democrat Olaf Scholz. Germany, like France, has prevented pro-Palestinian demonstrations because it sees them as incitement to anti-Semitism, and has specifically banned the activities of Hamas and the pro-Palestinian association Semidou.
In a statement this Saturday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, lamented the “sharp increase in hatred worldwide, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.” He also expressed concern about restrictions on protests because of the conflict.
In the United Kingdom, home to just over 300,000 Jews and more than four million Muslims, pro-Palestinian protests and protests against the bombing of Gaza have brought together tens of thousands of people in major cities. But the most controversial expression of anti-Semitism in recent times here has been in the Labor Party. During the years that Jeremy Corbyn led the organization, Jewish MPs and their members protested against comments, attitudes and gestures from the leadership that an independent commission described as “harassment and discrimination” against this community. Corbyn’s rejection of the commission’s conclusions led to his expulsion from the party by his successor Keir Starmer.
Pro-Palestinian demonstration, this Saturday in London. Carl Court (Getty Images)
Every country has its sociology and its history, but since October 7th there has been concern. Rabbi Horvilleur explains that her grandparents, survivors of the Shoah, told her: “Be careful, everything can start again”: she didn’t believe it. “But for many of us, October 7th fully reopens the Pandora’s box that we wanted to keep hermetically sealed.”
“Everyone says October 7th is like September 11th, 2001, but worse,” Assouline said. “It represents an anthropological break, because before it was said: ‘Israel protects us.’ “If we have a problem, we go to Israel.” But now Israel has become the most dangerous country for Jews.”
With information from Sara Velert in Madrid.
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