German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said hatred of Jews was again on the rise in his country and across Europe.
"Bold and brutal anti-Semitism has shown its ugly face again," he said in an address to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Conference on Anti-Semitism in Berlin.
The conference marked the 10-year anniversary of the OSCE’s landmark 2004 Berlin Conference Against Anti-Semitism, where governments first publicly rejected anti-Semitism that is cloaked in and legitimized by animus toward the Jewish State of Israel.
Steinmeir stressed that anti-Semitim is fueled by the violence in the Middle East. Germany’s Jews, he said, were subjected to threats and attacks at pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and last summer conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza ‘’must not be used as justification for an anti-semitic behavior.’’
Slogans like "Gas the Jews!" were heard during rallies in July and petrol bombs were thrown at a synagogue in Wuppertal which had been burnt down on Kristallnacht – the Nazi pogroms against the Jews in 1938 - and rebuilt.
According to an EU survey, one in four Jews living in the EU reported having suffered an anti-semitic incident.
Among the speakers at the conference, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Samantha Power said anti-Semitic attacks "are not only a threat to the Jewish community, they are a threat to the larger project of European liberalism and pluralism".
Praising EU leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her firm stance, she asked why fewer countries were attending than at the first OSCE anti-Semitism conference ten years ago.
"Make no mistake - we have a problem," she said.
Pinchas Kornfeld, a Jewish community leader from Antwerp, Belgium, blamed the rise in hate crime on "people who want to import the Middle East conflict to Europe" and political extremists on the European extreme right and extreme left.
During the conference, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) urged the OSCE 57 member countries to take action and confront rising anti-Semitism on the continent.
“This is a moment of truth that challenges governments to decide whether Jews can be assured a future of safety and dignity in their countries. If governments do not meet the challenge, they will provide Hitler with a posthumous victory of a ‘Judenrein’ Europe,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.
“While meeting that challenge, governments must find a way to de-link the Middle East conflict from anti-Semitism and stop using it as a shield to do very little or nothing about anti-Semitism in their countries,” he added.
The 10th anniversary of the Berlin Declaration has galvanized an added sense of urgency because anti-Semitism has sharply escalated in the decade since those governments pledged to act.
The ADL’s recent Global 100 Survey found that anti-Semitic attitudes are still deeply entrenched on the continent, with 24 percent of the adult population in Western Europe and 34 percent in Eastern Europe holding deep-seated anti-Jewish views.
“The growth of anti-Semitism is not just an urgent human rights problem that affects Jews,” Foxman said. “It is a serious warning sign that the fundamental health of pluralism and democracy across the OSCE region is being threatened.”
ADL issues an annual scorecard to rate how the 57 participating states are doing in meeting their obligations to take action against anti-Semitism, discrimination and hate crime. The findings have consistently pointed to the failure of too many governments in fulfilling basic commitments.

by Maud Swinnen