Antisemitism rising sharply across Europe, latest figures suggest

Antisemitism is rising sharply across Europe, experts have said, as France reported a 74% increase in the number of offences against Jews last year and Germany said the number of violent antisemitic attacks had surged by more than 60%, The Guardian reports.

The figures confirm the results of three recent Europe-wide surveys showing Jewish people feel at greater risk, and are experiencing markedly more aggression, amid a generalised increase in racist hate speech and violence in a significantly coarser, more polarised political environment.

France’s interior ministry said this week that recorded incidents of antisemitism rose to 541 last year from 311 in 2017, while the German government said offences motivated by hatred of Jews hit a 10-year high of 1,646 in 2018. Physical attacks rose from 37 to 62, leaving 43 people needing medical treatment.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, denounced the trend as “unacceptable”, telling ministers that antisemitism in France was “a repudiation of the Republic and its values”. Petra Pau, an MP for Germany’s Die Linke party, said more and more people felt free to “deny the Holocaust and engage in antisemitic agitation”.

In the largest ever survey of Jewish antisemitism opinion, addressing more than 16,000 Jewish people in 12 European countries, the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency said at the end of last year that antisemitic hate speech, harassment and an increasing fear of being recognised as Jewish were becoming the new normal.

“Decades after the Holocaust, shocking and mounting levels of antisemitism continue to plague the EU,” the FRA director, Michael O’Flaherty, said. “Jewish people have a right to live freely, without hate and without fear for their safety.”

The report found 90% of respondents felt antisemitism was growing in their country and 30% had been harassed. Over a third avoided going to Jewish events or sites because of safety fears, while the same proportion had considered emigrating. Nearly 80% no longer reported minor incidents because they thought “nothing would change”.

A 28-nation EU Eurobarometer poll released last month revealed a widening gulf between public perceptions of antisemitism and those of the Jewish community: while 89% of Jewish people polled said antisemitism had “significantly increased” over the past five years, only 36% of the general public felt it had.

Another major recent survey of public attitudes for CNN found more than a fifth of the 7,000 people polled in seven countries believed Jewish people have too much influence in finance and politics, while 34% felt they knew little or nothing about the Holocaust – even if 32% still thought Jews exploited it to “advance their position”.