Antisemitism around the world
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- See also New antisemitism, Christianity and antisemitism, Islam and antisemitism, & Arabs and antisemitism.
Contents |
[edit] Current antisemitism in specific countries
[edit] Asia
[edit] Pakistan
The U.S. State Department's first report on global anti-Semitism finds increase in anti-Semitism in Pakistan [1].In Pakistan, a country without Jewish communities, anti-Semitic sentiment fanned by anti-Semitic articles in the press is widespread [2].
Pakistan refuses to recognize Israel as a legitimate state [3] on account of their sympathies with the Arabs in the Arab-Israeli conflict and their media often touts anti-Semitism, interspersed with anti-Zionist rhetoric [4]. This has increased since Israel established diplomatic relations with India, Pakistan's arch rival, in 1992.
Pakistan-based Islamic terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba have also expressed anti-Semitic views. Their propaganda arm has declared the Jews to be "Enemies of Islam", Israel to be the "Enemy of Pakistan"[5].
Pakistan, an Islamic republic, has declined Israel's offer for humanitarian aid after the 2005 earthquake in the country. ZOA President Morton A. Klein said, "We are deeply disappointed by President Musharraf's snub of Israel's generous offer of aid. It seems to indicate that Pakistan's hatred of Jews is greater than their desire to save Pakistani lives."[6]
[edit] India
India is home to several communities of Jews. There have been no anti-Semitic incidents from other Indians in the nearly 3-millenium history of Indian Jewry.
In August 2006, a restaurant opened in the Indian city of Mumbai named "Hitlers' Cross", a Nazi-themed restaurant, which raised the ire of the small community of Jews in Mumbai. This incident invited widespread condemnation in India as well as in the west. The owner, Puneet Sablok, has since changed the name, apologizing to the Mumbai Jewish community and clarifying that he did not intend to offend Indian Jewry.
[edit] Syria
[edit] Russia
Today, anti-Semitic pronouncements, speeches and articles are common in Russia, and there are a large number of anti-Semitic neo-Nazi groups in the republics of the former Soviet Union, leading Pravda to declare in 2002 that "Anti-semitism is booming in Russia."[1] Over the past few years there have also been bombs attached to anti-Semitic signs, apparently aimed at Jews, and other violent incidents, including stabbings, have been recorded.
Though the government of Vladimir Putin takes an official stand against anti-semitism, some political parties and groups are explicitly anti-Semitic, in spite of a Russian law (Art. 282) against fomenting racial, ethnic or religious hatred. In 2005, a group of 15 Duma members demanded that Judaism and Jewish organizations be banned from Russia. In June, 500 prominent Russians, including some 20 members of the nationalist Rodina party, demanded that the state prosecutor investigate ancient Jewish texts as "anti-Russian" and ban Judaism — the investigation was actually launched, but halted amid international outcry.[citation needed]
[edit] Europe
[edit] France
- Further information: History of the Jews in France
Today, despite a steady trend of decreasing antisemitism among the indigenous population,[2] acts of antisemitism are a serious cause for concern,[3] as is tension between the Jewish and Muslim populations of France, both the largest in Europe. However, according to a poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, 71% of French Muslims had positive views of Jews, the highest percentage in the world [7]). According to the National Advisory Committee on Human Rights, antisemitic acts account for a majority— 72% in all in 2003— of racist acts in France.[4]
In July, 2005 the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that 82% of French people questioned had favorable attitudes towards Jews, the second highest percentage of the countries questioned. The Netherlands was highest at 85%.[5]
Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic speech are prohibited under the 1990 Gayssot Act.
[edit] Historical antisemitism in specific countries
[edit] Europe
[edit] Denmark
In 1813, Denmark had gone bankrupt and people were looking for a scapegoat. A German anti-Semitic book, translated into Danish, provoked a flood of polemical articles both for and against the Jews. [citation needed]
In 1819 a series of anti-Jewish riots in Germany spread to several neighboring countries including Denmark, resulting in mob attacks on Jews in Copenhagen and many provincial towns. These riots were known as Hep! Hep! Riots, from the derogatory rallying cry against the Jews in Germany. Riots lasted for five months during which time shop windows were smashed, stores looted, homes attacked, and Jews physically abused.
However, during World War II, Denmark was very uncooperative with the Nazi occupation on Jewish matters. Danish officials repeatedly insisted to the German occupation authorities that there was no "Jewish problem" in Denmark. As a result, even ideologically committed Nazis such as Reich Commissioner Werner Best followed a strategy of avoiding and deferring discussion of Denmark's Jews. When Denmark's German occupiers began planning the deportation of the 8,000 or so Jews in Denmark to Nazi concentration camps, many Danes and Swedes took part in a collective effort to evacuate the roughly 8,000 Jews of Denmark by sea to nearby Sweden (see also Rescue of the Danish Jews).
[edit] France
Antisemitism was particularly virulent in Vichy France during WWII. The Vichy government openly collaborated with the Nazi occupiers to identify Jews for deportation and transportation to the death camps.
[edit] Norway
Jews were prohibited from living or entering Norway by paragraph 2 of the Constitution, which originally read, "The evangelical-Lutheran religion remains the public religion of the State. Those inhabitants, who confess thereto, are bound to raise their children to the same. Jesuits and monkish orders are not permitted. Jews are still prohibited from entry to the Realm." In 1851 the last sentence was struck, and in 1897, the next to last sentence was removed.[citation needed]
[edit] Poland
- Further information: History of the Jews in Poland
At the onset of the seventeenth century, tolerance began to give way to increased anti-Semitism. Elected to the Polish throne King Sigismund III of the Swedish House of Vasa, a strong supporter of the counter-reformation, began to undermine the principles of the Warsaw Confederation and the religious tolerance in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, revoking and limiting privileges of all non-Catholic faiths. In 1628 he banned publication of Hebrew books, including the Talmud.[6] Acclaimed twentieth century historian Simon Dubnow, in his magnum opus History of the Jews in Poland and Russia, detailed:
- "At the end of the 16th century and thereafter, not one year passed without a blood libel trial against Jews in Poland, trials which always ended with the execution of Jewish victims in a heinous manner..." (ibid., volume 6, chapter 4).
In the 1650s the Swedish invasion of the Commonwealth (The Deluge) and the Chmielnicki Uprising of the Cossacks resulted in vast depopulation of the Commonwealth, as over 30% of the ~10 million population has perished or emigrated. In the related 1648-55 pogroms led by the Ukrainian uprising against Polish nobility (szlachta), during which approximately 100,000 Jews were slaughtered, Polish and Ruthenian peasants often participated in killing Jews (The Jews in Poland, Ken Spiro, 2001). The besieged szlachta, who were also decimated in the territories where the uprising happened, typically abandoned the loyal peasantry, townsfolk, and the Jews renting their land, in violation of "rental" contracts.
In the aftermath of the Deluge and Chmielnicki Uprising, many Jews fled to the less turbulent Netherlands, which had granted the Jews a protective charter in 1619. From then until the Nazi deportations in 1942, the Netherlands remained a remarkably tolerant haven for Jews in Europe, excedeeing the tolerance extant in all other European countries at the time, and becoming one of the few Jewish havens until nineteenth century social and political reforms throughout much of Europe. Many Jews also fled to England, open to Jews since the mid-seventeenth century, in which Jews were fundamentally ignored and not typically persecuted. Historian Berel Wein notes:
- "In a reversal of roles that is common in Jewish history, the victorious Poles now vented their wrath upon the hapless Jews of the area, accusing them of collaborating with the Cossack invader!... The Jews, reeling from almost five years of constant hell, abandoned their Polish communities and institutions..." (Triumph of Survival, 1990).
Throughout the sixteenth to eighteenth century, many of the szlachta mistreated peasantry, townsfolk and Jews. Threat of mob violence was a specter over the Jewish communities in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the time. On one occasion in 1696, a mob threatened to massacre the Jewish community of Posin, Vitebsk. The mob accused the Jews of murdering a Pole. At the last moment, a peasant woman emerged with the victim's clothes and confessed to the murder. One notable example of actualized riots against Polish Jews is the rioting of 1716, during which many Jews lost their lives. Later, in 1723, the Bishop of Gdańsk instigated the massacre of hundreds of Jews.
On the other hand, it should be noted that despite the mentioned incidents, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a relative haven for Jews when compared to the period of the partitions of Poland and the PLC's destruction in 1795 (see Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, below).
Anti-Jewish sentiments continued to be present in Poland, even after the country regained its independence. One notable manifestation of these attitudes includes numerus clausus rules imposed, by almost all Polish universities in the 1930's. William W. Hagen in his Before the "Final Solution": Toward a Comparative Analysis of Political Anti-Semitism in Interwar Germany and Poland article in Journal of Modern History (July, 1996): 1-31, details:
- "In Poland, the semidictatorial government of Piłsudski and his successors, pressured by an increasingly vocal opposition on the radical and fascist right, implemented many anti-Semitic policies tending in a similar direction, while still others were on the official and semiofficial agenda when war descended in 1939.... In the 1930s the realm of official and semiofficial discrimination expanded to encompass limits on Jewish export firms... and, increasingly, on university admission itself. In 1921-22 some 25 percent of Polish university students were Jewish, but in 1938-39 their proportion had fallen to 8 percent."
While there are many examples of Polish support and help for the Jews during World War II and the Holocaust, there are also numerous examples of anti-Semitic incidents, and the Jewish population was certain of the indifference towards their fate from the Christian Poles. The Polish Institute for National Memory identified twenty-four pogroms against Jews during World War II, the most notable occurring at the village of Jedwabne in 1941 (see massacre in Jedwabne).
After the end of World War II the remaining anti-Jewish sentiments were skillfully used at certain moments by Communist party or individual politicians in order to achieve their assumed political goals, which pinnacled in the March 1968 events. These sentiments started to diminish only with the collapse of the communist rule in Poland in 1989, which has resulted in a re-examination of events between Jewish and Christian Poles, with a number of incidents, like the massacre at Jedwabne, being discussed openly for the first time. Violent anti-semitism in Poland in 21st century is marginal[7] compared to elsewhere, but there are very few Jews remaining in Poland. Still, according to recent (June 7, 2005) results of research by B'nai Briths Anti-Defamation League, Poland remains among the European countries (with others being Italy, Spain and Germany) with the largest percentages of people holding anti-Semitic views.
[edit] Germany
- Further information: History of the Jews in Germany
- See also: Holocaust
From the early Middle Ages to the 18th century, the Jews in Germany were subject to many persecutions as well as brief times of tolerance. Though the 19th century began with a series of riots and pogroms against the Jews, emancipation followed in 1848, so that, by the early 20th century, the Jews of Germany were the most integrated in Europe. The situation changed in the early 1930's with the rise of the Nazis and their explicitly anti-Semitic program. Hate speech which referred to Jewish citizens as "dirty Jews" became common in anti-Semitic pamphlets and newspapers such as the Völkischer Beobachter and Der Stürmer. Additionally, blame was laid on German Jews for having caused Germany's defeat in World War I (see Dolchstosslegende).
Anti-Jewish propaganda expanded rapidly. Nazi cartoons depicting "dirty Jews" frequently portrayed a dirty, physically unattractive and badly dressed "talmudic" Jew in traditional religious garments similar to those worn by Hasidic Jews. Articles attacking Jewish Germans, while concentrating on commercial and political activities of prominent Jewish individuals, also frequently attacked them based on religious dogmas, such as blood libel.
The Nazi antisemitic program quickly expanded beyond mere speech. Starting in 1933, repressive laws were passed against Jews, culminating in the Nuremberg Laws which removed most of the rights of citizenship from Jews, using a racial definition based on descent, rather than any religious definition of who was a Jew. Sporadic violence against the Jews became widespread with the Kristallnacht riots, which targeted Jewish homes, businesses and places of worship, killing hundreds across Germany and Austria.
The antisemitic agenda culminated in the genocide of the Jews of Europe, known as the Holocaust.
[edit] Russia and the Soviet Union
- Further information: History of the Jews in Russia and Soviet Union
- See also: Pogrom
The Pale of Settlement was the Western region of Imperial Russia to which Jews were restricted by the Tsarist Ukase of 1792. It consisted of the territories of former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, annexed with the existing numerous Jewish population, and the Crimea (which was later cut out from the Pale).
During 1881-1884, 1903-1906 and 1914-1921, waves of antisemitic pogroms swept Russian Jewish communities. At least some pogroms are believed to have been organized or supported by the Russian okhranka. Although there is no hard evidence for this, the Russian police and army generally displayed indifference to the pogroms, for instance during the three-day First Kishinev pogrom of 1903.
During this period the May Laws policy was also put into effect, banning Jews from rural areas and towns, and placing strict quotas on the number of Jews allowed into higher education and many professions. The combination of the repressive legislation and pogroms propelled mass Jewish emigration, and by 1920 more than two million Russian Jews had emigrated, most to the United States while some made aliya to the Land of Israel.
One of the most infamous antisemitic tractates was the Russian okhranka literary hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, created in order to blame the Jews for Russia's problems during the period of revolutionary activity.
Even though many Old Bolsheviks were ethnically Jewish, they sought to uproot Judaism and Zionism and established the Yevsektsiya to achieve this goal. By the end of the 1940s the Communist leadership of the former USSR had liquidated almost all Jewish organizations, including Yevsektsiya.
Stalin's antisemitic campaign of 1948-1953 against so-called "rootless cosmopolitans," destruction of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, the fabrication of the "Doctors' plot," the rise of "Zionology" and subsequent activities of official organizations such as the Anti-Zionist committee of the Soviet public were officially carried out under the banner of "anti-Zionism," but the use of this term could not obscure the anti-Semitic content of these campaigns, and by the mid-1950s the state persecution of Soviet Jews emerged as a major human rights issue in the West and domestically. See also: Jackson-Vanik amendment, Refusenik, Pamyat.
[edit] Sweden
With relatively few Jews and a large immigrant population, Swedish right-wing groups are traditionally xenophobic and antisemitic. In January 2001, two Israeli Jews were beaten by two Palestinians in Stockholm. One of them required medical attention. On 19 September a Jewish youth was assaulted by a skinhead in the Stockholm subway. The attacker was arrested. At least 16 telephone threats were received by the Göteborg Jewish community. A Göteborg rabbi was also the target of several bomb threats, forcing the police to evacuate his building, and in March a fake bomb in a suitcase was planted at the entrance of the Göteborg Jewish Community Center. Also in March, a rabbi and his son were harassed in Stockholm by two men who shouted antisemitic slurs. In June the wall of the old Jewish cemetery in Malmö was smeared with antisemitic graffiti.
[edit] North America
[edit] United States
- Further information: History of the Jews in the United States
Jews were often condemned by populist politicians alternately for their left-wing politics, or their perceived wealth, at the turn of the century. [citation needed] Anti-semitism grew in the years leading up to America's entry into World War II, Father Charles Coughlin, a radio preacher, as well as many other prominent public figures, condemned "the Jews," and Henry Ford reprinted The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his newspaper.
In 1939 a Roper poll found that only thirty-nine percent of Americans felt that Jews should be treated like other people. Fifty-three percent believed that "Jews are different and should be restricted" and ten percent believed that Jews should be deported.[8] Several surveys taken from 1940 to 1946 found that Jews were seen as a greater threat to the welfare of the United States than any other national, religious, or racial group. [8] It has been estimated that 190,000 - 200,000 Jews could have been saved during the Second World War had it not been for bureaucratic obstacles to immigration deliberately created by Breckinridge Long and others.[9]
In a speech at an America First rally on September 11, 1941 in Des Moines, Iowa entitled "Who Are the War Agitators?", Charles Lindbergh claimed that three groups had been "pressing this country toward war": the Roosevelt Administration, the British, and the Jews - and complained about what he insisted was the Jews' "large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government." [citation needed]
Unofficial antisemitism was also widespread in the first half of the century. For example, to limit the growing number of Jewish students between 1919-1950s a number of private liberal arts universities and medical and dental schools employed Numerus clausus. These included Harvard University, Columbia University, Cornell University, and Boston University. In 1925 Yale University, which already had such admissions preferences as "character", "solidity", and "physical characteristics" added a program of legacy preference admission spots for children of Yale alumni, in an explicit attempt to put the brakes on the rising percentage of Jews in the student body. This was soon copied by other Ivy League and other schools, and admissions of Jews were kept down to 10% through the 1950s. Such policies were for the most part discarded during the early 1960s.
Some extreme cults also support conspiracy theories regarding Jews as dominating and taking over the world. These cults are often vitriolic and severely anti-semititic. For instance, the Necedah Shrine Cult from the 1950s on to the mid 1980's, has Mary Ann Van Hoof receiving anti-semitic "visions" from the Virgin Mary telling her that the Rothschilds, a prominent Jewish banking family, are "mongrel yids(Jews)" bent on dominating the entire world economy through international banking. Most of the worlds problems, from poverty to world wars, are the cause of International Banking jews and their "satanic secret society," according to Van Hoof.[9]
American antisemitism underwent a modest revival in the late twentieth century. The Nation of Islam under Louis Farrakhan claimed that Jews were responsible for slavery, economic exploitation of black labor, selling alcohol and drugs in their communities, and unfair domination of the economy. Jesse Jackson issued his infamous "Hymietown" remarks during the 1984 Presidential primary campaign.
According to ADL surveys begun in 1964, African-Americans are "significantly more likely" than white Americans to hold antisemitic beliefs, although there is a strong correlation between education level and the rejection of anti-Semitic stereotypes.[10]
Actor and director Mel Gibson has been accused of anti-semitism based upon the remarks of his father, Hutton Gibson, the release of his controversial film The Passion of the Christ and remarks allegedly made upon his arrest for drunken driving. [11]
[edit] Asia
[edit] Japan
Originally Japan, with no Jewish population, had no anti-Semitism, however, Nazi ideology and propaganda left its influence on Japan during World War II, and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were subsequently translated into Japanese. Today, anti-Semitism and belief in Jewish manipulation of Japan and the world remains despite the small size of the Jewish community in Japan. Books about Jewish conspiracies are best sellers. According to a 1988 survey, 8% of Japanese had read one of these books.[citation needed]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Litvinovich, Dmitri. "Explosion of anti-Semitism in Russia", Pravda July 30, 2002.
- ^ "L'antisémitisme en France", Association Française des Amis de l'Université de Tel Aviv, accessed March 12, 2006.
- ^ Thiolay, Boris. "Juif, et alors?", L'Express, June 6, 2005.
- ^ "Communiqués Officiels: Les actes antisémites", Ministère de l'Intérieur et de l'Aménagement du territoire, accessed March 12, 2006.
- ^ Islamic Extremism: Common Concern for Muslim and Western Publics. Pew Global Attitude Project (2005-07-14).
- ^ Jones, Derek. "Censorship in Poland: From the Beginnings to the Enlightenment", Censorship: A World Encyclopedia, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000.
- ^ "Major Violent Incidents in 2004: Breakdown by Country", The Steven Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University, accessed March 12, 2006.
- ^ Smitha, Frank E. "Roosevelt and Approaching War: The Economy, Politics and Questions of War, 1937-38", accessed March 12, 2006.
- ^ "Breckinridge Long (1881-1958)", Public Broadcasting System (PBS), accessed March 12, 2006.
- ^ "Anti-Semitism and Prejudice in America: Highlights from an ADL Survey - November 1998", Anti-Defamation League, accessed March 12, 2006.
- ^ http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-gibson30jul30,1,422264.story?track=rss&ctrack=1&cset=true http://www.tmz.com/2006/08/01/bulletin-gibson-im-not-an-anti-semite/ http://www.tmz.com/2006/07/28/gibsons-anti-semitic-tirade-alleged-cover-up/ http://cdn.digitalcity.com/tmz_documents/gibson_wm_docs_072806.pdf http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/07/29/gibson.statement/index.html http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/009243.php
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