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The Persistence of European Anti-Semitism

(BESA Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Monika Schwarz-Friesel - Almost every day in Europe there is a statement, a workshop, or a symposium on anti-Semitism. Do such activities have any effect on European anti-Semitism, which grows by the day? Eloquent speeches are given, appeals are published, cliches are uttered about confronting Jew-hatred with a "resolute fight" and "with all the severity of the law" - and everybody returns to business as usual. Researchers have been warning for years about the expansion, radicalization, and increasing normalization of Jew-hatred. This is occurring throughout European society and is especially worrying in terms of its focus on Israel. All the stereotypes of classical Judeophobia are projected onto the Jewish state. Its Jewish population is demonized and its right to exist contested. Little is done to reject this newly dominant pattern, and Israel-related hate is becoming a politically correct form of anti-Semitism. The writer is a cognitive scientist and anti-Semitism researcher at the Technical University of Berlin. Together with Jehuda Reinharz she published Inside the Antisemitic Mind: The Language of Jew-Hatred in Contemporary Germany (2017).
2019-01-18 00:00:00
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