“The EU report on anti-Semitism that the EU decided to shelve has been leaked to the Jerusalem Post, and is available here.” Via Eugene Volokh, and the Head Heeb. Neither them nor I have read it yet.
There’s undoubtedly anti-semitism in European countries. Speaking of Europe as one entity here is inappropriate, by the way.
There’s a fair amount of anti-semitsim among Arab immigrants, and some other immigrant communities, but not “Muslims.” Most people in the arab world are anti-semitic, often virulently, so immigrants take it with them, pass it on to their children. Isolation from their adopted countries limits positive influences. Subjected to racsim, feeds militancy, need for people to hate. Radicalized Arab youth appear to be the ones behind most harassment and violent incidents.
The general population: Anti-semitism, once quite non-trivial, has trended downwards since WWII. Now I read unsubstantiated claims it’s trending upwards. I think I’ve read substantiated claims it is still trending downwards (ie it is rarer the lower you go in the age brackets), but no link at the moment, sorry. May be as some say that more of them are less reluctant to voice their beliefs, in opinion polls or whatever, feeling the taboo is less strong.
Third category, strangely absent from the present debate, are Nazis. Nazis are a very small group, but violent. Not wayward youth or whatever, but serious-minded, militant, nasty people. Surely much of the violence comes from them.
The antisemitism of everyman bigots in contrast is rather passive in contrast, I don’t know if jews ever notices it, and it doesn’t appear to hold them down in their proffessional careeers and such, unlike anti-immigrant bigotry. So, relatively “harmless”?
Where do you find anti-semitic sentiment. I’d venture they’re overrepresenteed in anti-immigrant parties, Haider, i Haugen, etc, and probably underrepresented in leftist parties. (I’m center-right, btw.) This is connected to the question of a connection between anti-semitism and criticism of Israel. There’s a NYRB piece somewhere, citing polls saying that people supportive of Israel are more likely to be anti-semites than critics, and I think validating my claim about rightist/leftists, but I can’t find it anywhre on their site, even though it should still be there.
What percentage of pop. is mildly or strongly anti-semitic in the various countries? Surely far from a majority but more than you’d think (unless you’re a crazed likudnik.) What are the differences between countries?
Is anti-semitsism in fact more widespread in any or most European countries than it is in the US?
Lots of conjecture in this post, and plenty elsewhere too (some less upfront.) I need data!
Maybe I should read that report.
Update: Or maybe not. Jonathan Edelstein writes in the comments to this post:
“Actually, I have read it, and it does blur the lines somewhat – some of the incidents listed in the report involved offensive anti-Israeli slurs but nothing anti-Semitic as such. The report is also anecdotal rather than statistical and thus suffers from the flaws of all anecdotal evidence. There are certainly some scary incidents described in the report, and that in itself should be a wake-up call, but there’s no real way of judging how representative these incidents are or placing them in context.
I’ve never personally encountered anti-semitism any of the times I’ve been in Europe and I’ve seen the surveys suggesting that anti-Semitic opinions among non-Muslims are at historic lows, but I do know that a lot of European Jews are genuinely scared. Hopefully someone will conduct a rigorous study soon to see how serious and deep-rooted the problem really is.”
Amen to that. In the comments on his blog, Miranda, a Jewish German who’s strongly pro-Israeli, also says the report is crap. That good enough for me. The pre-fooled will of course still cite the report, but their minds were made up long before it even surfaced.
