Les Chevatim, a French Jewish boys choir
“I will bring them back to live in Jerusalem; they will be My people, and I will be faithful and righteous to them as their God.” (Zechariah 8:8)
An annual global survey reveals that acts of anti-Semitism are “growing in their intensity and cruelty.”
And as the popularity of far right parties continues to surge in Europe, especially in France, Hungary, and Greece, the future of European Jews appears uncertain.
“Anti-Semitism continued to infiltrate into the mainstream from the extreme left and right fringes, and its manifestations are no longer incidental, but rather have become an almost daily phenomenon,” the report said.
The report was released by The Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Moshe Kantor database for the Study of Contemporary anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University, in cooperation with the European Jewish Congress.
Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress
The study listed 554 registered violent anti-Semitic acts in 2013. This includes attacks on people and property, such as synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, and other Jewish institutions. For a second year in a row the highest number of attacks occurred in France.
But 554 is not a definitive number; the report suggests that many anti-Semitic incidents go unreported.
A survey by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), a research branch of the European Union (EU), claims that as many as 77 percent of Jews admit that they would not report anti-Semitic incidents to authorities.
“Jews do not feel safe or secure in certain communities in Europe,” said Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress. “Normative Jewish life in Europe is unsustainable if such huge numbers of European Jews are forced to live in fear and insecurity. European governments must be pressed to address this issue with utmost urgency.” (JTA)
“According to that survey, almost half of the Jewish population is afraid of being verbally or physically attacked in a public place because they are Jewish, and 25 percent of Jews will not wear anything that identifies them as Jewish or go near a Jewish institution for fear of an attack,” Kantor said. (JPost)
“The Jews in Europe do not have a future. I think that their future is bleak,” said Hebrew University’s Robert Wistrich, who is considered one of the foremost experts on anti-Semitism worldwide.
