Our Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin has written to the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Mr Josep Borrell after it emerged that a senior EU diplomat to the Palestinian Authority advised Palestinian groups that terrorist activity or support for it was not an impediment to receiving EU grants and funding.
Rabbi Margolin has asked for urgent clarification and a clear repudiation of this position from Mr Borrell. You can read his letter to the EU high representative below:
EUROPEAN JEWISH CHIEF WARMLY WELCOMES COUNCIL DECLARATION ON ANTI-SEMITISM BUT SAYS TWO VITAL PIECES ARE MISSING
Brussels 6 December 2018. The Chairman of the European Jewish Association (EJA) today welcomed the Council of the European Union unanimous adoption of a declaration in the fight against anti-Semitism as a significant step forward, but said that the document misses two key points and arguably the two most important factors affecting anti-Semitism – ongoing efforts to curb Freedom of Religion and practice, and anti-Zionism as typified by the BDS movement.
Urging Europe’s leaders to sign up to the “Jewish red lines” ratified by the members of the European Jewish Association at their conference in Brussels in November, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, whose EJA represents thousands of Jews across Europe and is headquartered in the Belgian capital, said in a a statement:
“The EJA can only welcome the declaration and the commitment by the Council of the European Union to fighting anti-Semitism and better protect Jewish Communities and Institutions in Europe. I am particularly grateful to First Vice-President Timmermans, Commision Jourova, and Katharina Von Schnurbein, the EU’s special envoy on combatting anti-Semitism, for their on-going commitment to safeguarding European Jewry. This triumvirate is making a real difference and putting our concerns front and centre across the EU. The European Jewish Association and its many thousands of members and supporters is deeply appreciative of their efforts, and those of the council members who adopted this declaration unanimously.
“There are however, two vital and missing pieces in the declaration, and these two pieces form the root of much of the anti-Semitism felt by Jews in Europe: on-going efforts by some European countries to target Jewish freedom of religion and practice through legislation on circumcision and religious slaughter for instance, and Anti-Zionism typified by the BDS movement.
Taken together, and notably absent from the declaration, they represent to European Jewry the touch-paper issues of anti-Semitism, attacks on Jews and their communities, and their way of life.
“Therefore, it is clear to me as Chairman of the European Jewish Association, that any declaration on tackling and fighting anti-Semitism that doesn’t include these two key factors is a declaration that can never be a complete declaration when it comes to tackling anti-Semitism properly and meaningfully.”
“Ce qui s’est passé à Terezin est le meilleur exemple des conséquences que peuvent entraîner les fake news”
120 dirigeants, parlementaires et diplomates de toute l’Europe se sont réunis à Prague pour visiter l’ancien camp de concentration de Theresienstadt, où ils allumeront des bougies à la mémoire des 80 000 victimes juives, à l’occasion de la Journée internationale dédiée à la mémoire des victimes de la Shoah qui aura lieu vendredi.
L’Union des organisations juives d’Europe, qui organise l’événement, a lancé l’opération d’allumage des bougies pour la Journée internationale de la Shoah, qui sera distribuée à tous les parlements d’Europe.
Le président de l’Union des organisations juives d’Europe, le rabbin Menachem Margolin, a déclaré à l’ouverture de la conférence que ce qui s’est passé à Terezin est le meilleur exemple des conséquences que peuvent entraîner les fake news. Les nazis ont utilisé le camp comme une “vitrine” pour conjurer les critiques internationales sur les mauvais traitements qu’ils infligeaient aux Juifs dans les ghettos et ont présenté des gens apparemment heureux, y compris des enfants qui mangent à leur guise et mènent diverses activités culturelles – alors que la plupart d’entre eux étaient plus tard transféré dans les camps d’extermination.
“Terezin est un camp où les nazis ont tenté de montrer par la manipulation de films et de photographies un ‘ghetto modèle'”, a-t-il déclaré. “Aujourd’hui, dans le contexte de l’épidémie de Covid-19, de la guerre en Ukraine et de la diffamation d’Israël, les antisémites utilisent exactement les mêmes méthodes. Le Juif est le bouc émissaire. La polarisation en politique contribue à répandre l’antisémitisme. La législation contre l’abattage rituel en Europe s’inscrit dans cette ambiance. De moins en moins de Juifs en Europe se permettent de montrer leur judéité sans crainte. Si les Juifs quittent l’Europe, ce sera un très mauvais signal de l’état du continent”, a-t-il expliqué.
Margolin a appelé à une coopération entre les parlements, les gouvernements européens et les communautés juives pour lutter contre l’antisémitisme.
46% des incidents antisémites en 2022 ont eu lieu en Europe et 39 % en Amérique du Nord. La propagande occupe 39% des actes antisémites, le vandalisme 28%, les violences physiques 14%, les violences verbales 11% et la délégitimation 7%, a indiqué le nouveau rapport de l’Organisation sioniste mondiale pour l’antisémitisme.
France24: https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240125-anti-semitic-acts-nearly-quadrupled-last-year-in-france-says-jewish-organisation
Anti-Semitic acts in France nearly quadrupled in 2023 compared with the previous year, a Jewish organisation said Wednesday, reflecting a surge in discrimination since the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.
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Citing figures from the French interior ministry and a French-Jewish security watchdog, the Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) said there were 1,676 anti-Semitic acts last year compared to 436 the year prior.
Nearly 60 percent of those acts were attacks involving physical violence, threatening words or menacing gestures, CRIF said in its report.
Worryingly, nearly 13 percent of anti-Semitic acts last year took place in schools, most of them in junior high schools.
“We are witnessing a rejuvenation of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic acts. Schools are no longer a sanctuary of the Republic,” the report said.
The spike in anti-Semitism is the worst on record, according to CRIF, which has figures dating back to 2012.
Read moreFrench Jews speak out amid rising anti-Semitism
The organisation cautioned that its tally reflects only acts “that have been the subject of a complaint or a report to the police”.
France is home to Europe’s largest Jewish community and the largest number of Muslims on the continent, although no precise figures are available as the country’s census does not include religious identity.
According to CRIF, the bloodshed in the Middle East has unleashed a wave of anti-Semitic vitriol.
Read moreFrance’s Jewish community faces a surge in anti-Semitism
In the three months following Hamas’ October 7 attack and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza, the number of anti-Semitic incidents “equalled that of the previous three years combined”, according to the report.
A third of the acts glorified jihadism, according to CRIF, and a quarter were “calls to murder”.
France has seen previous surges of anti-Semitism, including after a 2012 attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse and a 2015 attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris.
For two days, September 29 and 30, 1941, 33,771 people were exterminated. More than thirty thousand of them were Jews.
A zoom press conference was dedicated on Tuesday to the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre ahead of an event “Lessons from Babyn Yar: History, Memory and Legacy” which is jointly organised by the House of European History in Brussels and the Kiev-based Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (BYHMC).
The conference, organized in cooperation with the European Jewish Asociation, discussed lessons 80 years later, as well as unveiling new and unique tools to keep the lessons, history and memory alive, including actually putting faces and names to those murdered for the first time.
Among the speakers, French Father Patrick Desbois, founder of Yahad-In Unum and head of the scholarly council of BYHMC, stressed that Babi Yar was a criminal site where the genocide of the Jewish people took place in the center of a large city in a large country (Kiev, today Ukraine).
‘’The locals willingly aided the young fascists. The gunmen were given sandwiches and tea with little vodka in it as the mass executions lasted many hours,’’ he noted.
Father Patrick asked a practical question: where did the tons of items and valuables taken from the Jews before their execution go? ‘’It would seem that everything should be documented, but it is easier to find detailed evidence and statistics of the shootings than information about the confiscated property of those killed. It was as if the Germans were embarrassed to write about such facts.’’
He added, ‘’For me, this is another terrible evidence of the Babi Yar tragedy: human life is reduced to zero. It is only the result of statistics, nothing more. Even more terrible is that the USSR, on whose territory the tragedy took place, tried to hide the truth about Babyn Yar for a long time. Nevertheless, our generation has a goal: to find the hidden facts and restore the history of this bloody genocide.’’
“I visited Raka in Syria where there was a mass grave. Journalists came, journalists went. Perhaps in 80 years there can be a debate about what is a ‘fitting’ memorial. What is important is keeping the memory and lessons alive,’’ stressed Father Desbois.
One of the panelists, Marek Siwiec, Director of European Affairs at BYHMC, provided information about many ongoing projects, each of which can contribute to the restoration of the truth about Babyn Yar.
Colossal work has been done: out of more than 33,000 dead, 28,428 names have been identified, and essential family and personal facts have been restored. All these invaluable findings became the basis of a vast program titled “Project Names.”
‘’It brought us closer to the real life of those who were shot at Babi Yar. They say that the death of one person is a tragedy, but the death of tens of thousands is a statistic,’’ said Siwiec, who is a former member of the European Parliament.
‘’Project Names’’ allows us to turn dry statistics into pain for everyone who was left in that terrible place, who did not live, who did not love, who did not leave their continuation on earth,’’ he added.
Another project mentioned by Siwiec, “Red Dot” (Red Dot Remembrance), is unique: more than 3,000 people provided information about the WWII war crimes. This app has so far registered 2,850 sites across of Europe of the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ which enables users to see and learn what took place wherever they are.
‘’These are mass extermination sites, eyewitness accounts, evidence supported by documents, which were kept with German punctuality and pedantry throughout the war,’’ explained Siwiec.
On the Babyn Yar massacre anniversary date of 29th September, 15,000 schools in Ukraine will participate in a “lessons of the Holocaust Day”.
‘’The key word underpinning all of our activities is education. It is only through education that the tragic disasters of the past can never be repeated,” said Siwiec.
Marek Rutka, a member of the Sejm, the Polish parliament, and chairman of the parliamentary group for the commemoration of the crimes at Babyn Yar and for a Europe free from genocide and hatred, explained that members of his political party regularly visit the sites of the Shoah executions. ‘’They see heartfelt tragedies lead to politically literate conclusions about the need to talk about the Shoah on a European scale. There is no genocide without the tolerance of neighboring countries. These words can be taken as a motto for the whole debate.’’
Anton Schneerson, who contributed this article for European Jewish Press, is a Ukrainian Jew living in Germany. The Jewish community of his hometown, Dnipro, managed to build one of the world’s most prominent Holocaust museum that deeply covers the Babyn Yar tragedy.
https://ejpress.org/80-years-after-babyn-yar-massacre-tools-to-keep-the-memory-alive-learn-the-lessons/
It’s a challenging time for Jewish communities in Europe. Anti-Semitism is on the rise as populism and the politics of the lowest common denominator are gaining traction. Our communities often need round the clock protection and our practices and customs such as keeping Kosher are under pressure from increasing political interference.
