Since the beginning of the second Intifada in 2000, American journalists and government officials have regularity raised the alarm about the disturbing rise of anti-Semitism across Western Europe. Incidents between 2000 to 2006 - ranging from verbal insults ("Heil Hitler") at soccer matches in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain, to the bombing of synagogues, Jewish community centers, and schools in Toulon and Gagny, France and from physical attacks on Jewish youths in Belgium and France to symbolic aggression (anti-Semitic graffiti) in Jewish graveyards across Europe - have prompted American public figures to label entire countries as anti-Semitic and to condemn their governments and citizens because of the violent actions of a few.
As worrying as these incidents are, many commentators have leapt to facile comparisons between historical European anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitism of today rather than acknowledging and addressing the multiple causes behind this latest rise of violence. As a result, the average American is left with a poor grasp of the socio-political turmoil that has fueled the latest demonstration of hatred against Jews within Western Europe and is less equipped to respond to its consequences.
Remarks that compare the situation of Western Europe's Jews today and the situation of Western Europe's Jews in the 1930s serve only to heighten fears of Jews around the world rather than to disseminate contemporary realities. It must be stressed that the Europe of today is not the Europe of 1933. No contemporary European government condones these acts of anti-Semitism. There are no state-sponsored mobs chasing Jews through the streets shouting anti-Semitic slurs or inflicting brutal beatings. It is, in fact, because of the work of European watchdog groups that a more thorough understanding of the current situation is possible.
The recent wave of anti-Semitic acts in Europe has instead been primarily perpetrated by groups of young men of Arabic-Islamic origins whose ties to their larger immigrant communities vary in degree. (There are exceptions to this pattern in certain countries, including Sweden and Austria where anti-Semitic violence is carried out primarily by those on the extreme right, but those examples are incidental to the general trend.) Often marginalised within general society, lacking a sense of ethnic or cultural identity, and heavily influenced by the images of Israeli-Palestinian conflict on their television screens, these young men take to the streets committing violent acts against Jews and Jewish property in the name of the Palestinian struggle. Rather than using their deep-seated frustration as an impetus to push for equal rights on their own soil, these men chose instead to publicly vent their misapprehension of their own situation by striking out against their Jewish neighbours, who they mistakenly view to be at the root of their problems.
Unfortunately, the complexities of the situation have been too often ignored or reduced to a facile black and white narrative by the Bush White House and other influential figures in American public life. In 2006, the Bush Administration appointed Gregg Rickman as Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism in response to the recent rise of anti-Semitic acts world-wide.
Coming on the heels of the sharp rise in anti-Semitic acts and rhetoric throughout Europe, this move was seen as a significant step forward towards clamping down on anti-Jewish violence and demonstrating support for European governments who were attempting to deal with reoccurring problem of anti-Semitism within their borders. Despite dramatic condemnations of anti-Semitism by American officials, however, support for American-European initiatives aimed at reducing the levels of anti-Jewish hatred and rhetoric has weakened and there have been few large-scale efforts to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the current issues at play.
To be sure, a rise in anti-Semitic acts is serious and distressing but if the media and American government officials continue to raise the spectre of the anti-Semitism of the 1930s when addressing the Western European anti-Semitism of today and insist on reflexively accusing Western European governments and all of their citizens of anti-Semitism, our efforts to combat this complex hatred will be, at the very least, ineffective. Deeper dynamics are at work here.
As the United States prepares to welcome a new president to the White House, it is essential that the Obama administration not only renews support for organisations that are committed to the eradication of anti-Semitism, but that it also places great emphasis on the importance of understanding the inherent complexities of contemporary European anti-Semitism. It is my hope that the President, along with other influential figures, will realise that it is only with a more complete and nuanced understanding of today's reality, in all its complexities, that the anti-Semitism we so abhor has a chance of being relegated to the history books.
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