2006: A Year of Anti-Semitism

By: Paula R. Stern

I do not believe that the world differentiates between Israelis and Jews. The hatred is the same, the anger, the intent to hurt and destroy. When it is not politically correct to attack Jews, much of the world couches its hatred in anti-Israel terms...but ultimately, time and time again, the proof is in the actions, the words they use, the slurs, the attacks.

The following information was compiled from many websites and can serve as only a partial report card on the state of anti-Semitism today. There are attacks that go unreported, those that are only publicized locally, and those that make all the headlines. What follows is part of a trend...as old as anti-Semitism and as new as each dawn. We cannot understand such hatred but we cannot ignore it.

The one overwhelming trend that was seen in 2006 was a rise in anti-Semitism world-wide. The only exception seems to be in the US, where anti-Semitic incidents actually declined.  Perhaps most distressing of all are the figures coming from Germany, where a record number of incidents occured. France and England were only slightly behind, with their own alarming figures.

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2006

Argentina: A Hitler poster displayed at a parking lot on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Anti-Semitic graffiti in a provincial public school. Swastika T-shirts sold at a national beer celebration. Anti-Jewish chants by fans at soccer stadiums. A threat to turn a schoolboy into soap. These were among the incidents detailed and analyzed in a comprehensive annual report on anti-Semitism in Argentina prepared by the Center for Social Studies, an investigative institute of the DAIA Jewish political umbrella group.

The 454-page report, which was presented May 2 at the National Book Fair here, showed a 36 percent rise in anti-Semitic incidents last year. In all, the center counted 586 anti-Semitic events, 213 more than in 2005. The total in 2006 represented a marked rise from 1998 to 2004, when fewer than 200 incidents were reported each year. Most of the incidents in the report – 67 percent – were graffiti. Media editorials and other public expressions also were highlighted. Marisa Braylan, the center's director and author of the study, said 2006 "might be remembered as the year of a relevant anti-Semitic reappearance in Argentina," much of it sparked by last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Australia: A Jewish youth centre in Sydney has been targeted in an attack that community leaders say is clearly linked to the war between Israel and Hezbollah. It is the second anti-Semitic attack in Sydney in four days. The month of July was one of the worst, in terms of anti-Semitism, in both England and Australia. In Canada, as well, Jewish leaders are concerned. TheAge.com in Australia reports that anti-Semitism is on the rise across university campuses in the country. Grahame Leonard, the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, says July had the most anti-Semitic incidents - no fewer than 141 - since records began in 1945. Never before had there been more than some 90. The July attacks included phone calls, hate e-mails and graffiti, as well as violent incidents - with the big jump being on campuses in Victoria. Recent incidents include:

• An enraged Monash University lecturer gushed expletives upon an Australasian Union of Jewish Students representative for his pro-Israel stance.
• A Young Liberal member in Monash staffing an Israel stall was grabbed by the throat and threatened, and the table was kicked over.
• Jewish students were pushed to the ground and spat upon in Sydney.
• Israel's Ambassador to Australia recently visited Melbourne University, but Socialist Alternative members disrupted the meeting and were asked to leave by, of all people, the Lebanese Students' society.
• Also at Melbourne University, security staff intervened to keep apart left-wing students and another group of students waving Israeli flags.
• Melbourne businessman Menachem Vorchheimer was punched and had his Shabbat hat and yarmulka stolen after he confronted a group of Grubbers players about a series of anti-Semitic remarks directed at him as he walked to his local synagogue in October.

Belgium:

Ten teenagers of Turkish origin were sentenced to 30 hours of community service for attacking a group of Jewish youths in Belgium, officials told the Associated Press on December 5. On November 30, the Muslim youths threw stones and shouted anti-Semitic slogans while confronting a group of Orthodox Jewish teenagers on a school trip to a former coalmine in the town of Beringen.

Canada:

In total, 935 incidents were reported in 2006, representing a 12.8% increase over incidents in 2005, and a four-fold increase over levels just ten years ago. This is the highest number ever reported to the League. Antisemitism was even injected into the Canadian political process, where in one particular case attempts were made to discredit a candidate on the sole basis that his wife was Jewish. The full text of the Audit can be accessed at http://www.bnaibrith.ca/audit2006.html.

• In Canada fear of increased anti-Semitism are on the rise. The Toldos Yakov Yosef-Skver Orthodox Boys School in Montreal was targeted with a Molotov cocktail this past Sabbath morning, causing 150,000 Canadian dollars' worth of damage. Local Jewish leaders said they are concerned that further violence will be directed at the community, in light of the recent war in Lebanon. Rabbi Reuben Poupko, a member of the city's Jewish community security council, told The Hamilton Spectator, "It's a fair question to wonder whether or not the [recent] gathering of 15,000 Quebecers under the flag of Hizbullah -unfortunately further legitimized by the presence of politicians - whether that creates an atmosphere where fanatics draw the conclusion that violence against Jews is somehow acceptable."
• On September 1, a Hassidic man was removed from an Air Canada Jazz flight from Montreal to New York when he began to pray. CBC Montreal reported that the plane was heading toward the runway for takeoff when he began to pray. Swaying back and forth, he attracted the attention of at least one flight attendant, who told him that his praying was making other passengers nervous. A witness later said, "The attendant actually recognized out loud that he wasn't a Muslim and that she was sorry for the situation, but they had to ask him to leave." Air Canada Jazz later said it received more than one complaint about the man's behavior, and that "the crew had to act in the interest of the majority of passengers." Jewish leaders in Montreal criticized the move as insensitive, saying the flight attendants should have explained to the other passengers that the man was simply praying and doing no harm. B'nai Brith Canada offered to help give Air Canada crews sensitivity training, CBC reported.

Incidents specifically in Manitoba, Canada during 2006:

• Windows and doors of Ashkenazi Synagogue on Burrows Avenue repeatedly smashed and broken over a seven-day period.
• A swastika drawn on a newspaper box in front of a seniors apartment building with tenants who are survivors of the Holocaust.
• Lit cigarette dropped in a mail box at a synagogue, along with burned mail and an envelope containing anti-Semitic inscriptions.
• Nazi/Hitler messaging and graffiti sprayed across more than 15 metres of a public walkway along Wellington Crescent.
• Members of a racist organization attempted to influence and indoctrinate a teenager into their group.
• A phone message left at B'nai Brith compared Jews with Nazis.
• Swastika carved into wall of an elevator in apartment block over a period of days, one line at a time.
• Anti-Semitic leaflets handed out at a Centennial Concert Hall event.
• "F---in' Jew" spray-painted on vehicle in parking lot of a Winnipeg mall. Owner was not Jewish.

England (U.K.):

Hate crimes, including death threats and physical attacks, increased to 600 for the year 2006 by more than 30 percent, according to the study quoted by the Reuters news service. Similarly, the Times of London reports that attacks on Jews have soared, and that even the national government has taken notice. (And apparently the frightening trend is continuing in 2007. Click here to read more about attacks in 2007). A recent all-party parliamentary inquiry will state that anti-Semitic violence has become endemic in Britain, both on the streets and university campuses. The report will call for urgent action from the Government, the police and educational establishments. The Times attributes the hate wave to the war in Lebanon. "Synagogues have been daubed with graffiti," the paper writes, "Jewish leaders have had hate-mail, and ordinary people have been subjected to insults and vandalism."

Mark Gardner, of the Community Security Trust, said, "In July, when the conflict in Lebanon began, we received reports of 92 incidents, which was the third-worst month since records began in 1984." In 2000,
the monthly average was between 10 and 30 incidents. He said the incidents in July were "more dispersed than usual" and "were very widespread across the country."

There have been several attacks in various Jewish neighborhoods in London of late. In one incident last month, a Jewish restaurant in Golders Green was targeted by two young men who threw chairs, punched workers and threatened to kill the owner, Ruth Cohen, with a knife. In Hampstead Garden Suburb, swastikas and the words "Allah" and "Kill all Jews" were daubed on the house and car of a local Jewish doctor. Other incidents include:

(And apparently the frightening trend is continuing in 2007. Click to read more about attacks in 2007). A recent all-party parliamentary inquiry will state that anti-Semitic violence has become endemic in Britain, both on the streets and university campuses. The report will call for urgent action from the Government, the police and educational establishments. The Times attributes the hate wave to the war in Lebanon. "Synagogues have been daubed with graffiti," the paper writes, "Jewish leaders have had hate-mail, and ordinary people have been subjected to insults and vandalism."Mark Gardner, of the Community Security Trust, said, "In July, when the conflict in Lebanon began, we received reports of 92 incidents, which was the third-worst month since records began in 1984." In 2000,the monthly average was between 10 and 30 incidents. He said the incidents in July were "more dispersed than usual" and "were very widespread across the country."There have been several attacks in various Jewish neighborhoods in London of late. In one incident last month, a Jewish restaurant in Golders Green was targeted by two young men who threw chairs, punched workers and threatened to kill the owner, Ruth Cohen, with a knife. In Hampstead Garden Suburb, swastikas and the words "Allah" and "Kill all Jews" were daubed on the house and car of a local Jewish doctor. Other incidents include:

• London (August): A Jewish girl was kicked unconscious on a public bus in London. The girl, 12, and a friend boarded the bus last week, followed by a group of four girls and three boys. One of the group approached the Jewish girl and asked if she was Jewish; she replied ‘I’m English.’ The four girls then pushed her to the floor, stomped on her face and repeatedly kicked her. The boys, who were not involved in the attack, stood guard while it was carried out. The Jewish girl’s friend, who was wearing rosary beads, was not harmed.
• The Royal Mail this week promised to launch an investigation after Totally Jewish discovered that donations sent from Jews in London to a charity in Israel were being daubed with swastikas en route to their destination.

• In July, the Community Security Trust, a UK-based organization that monitors the status of Jews in England reported 60 anti-Semitic incidents, as compared to 31 for the same month last year, including:

  • Last week, The Jewish Chronicle, the UK’s national Jewish weekly newspaper, reported that the London home of a Jewish doctor had been smeared with swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti.
  • A synagogue in Scotland was also targeted.

The pavement outside the main gates of Garnethill synagogue in Glasgow was daubed with the word ‘Hizbollah’.

France:

The Jewish Community Protection Service (SPCJ) published the figures for anti-Semitic acts committed in France in 2006. The trends observed in 2006 were not in line with the decline noted in 2005. More than mere threats, 2006 saw a majority of violent actions committed against the victims of anti-Semitism. 2006 was the year of Ilan Halimi’s assassination, in itself a paroxysm of violence and a trigger of repercussions. This is in line with what other Jewish organizations are reporting.

Anti-Semitic attacks in France rose 45 per cent in 2006, compared to the previous year, according to France's Jewish umbrella group, CRIF [the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions]. According to statistics release by CRIF, 112 cases of assault were reported to a telephone hotline for victims of anti-Semitism last year, compared with 77 the previous year. Anti-Semitic acts, both lesser physical violence and vandalism, rose by 40 per cent to 213 incidents, from 134 in 2005. ''In virtually all cases of assault, there is no doubt that anti-Semitism is a motive,'' CRIF said in a statement.

The rise in such incidents appears to have been fueled by the murder of Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old Jewish man whose death at the hands of a group of kidnappers in February 2006 shocked France. Halimi was found naked and tortured after three weeks in captivity and died shortly afterwards.

• A suspected homemade bomb was discovered in a Jewish cemetery there, the police reported, the same cemetery in which unknown arsonists set fire to a prayer pavilion this week.
• A French court ruled that a Web site features anti-Semitic content and must shut down within two days.
  This week's decision concerning the extremist group Tribu Ka comes after a lawsuit brought by several French Jewish groups. The group will be forced to pay a fine if it does not shut down its site by that deadline.
• In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish footbal team with sticks and metal bars.
• The bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months.  
• According to the Police, metropolitan Paris has seen 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents PER DAY in the past 30 days. (September, 2006)
• Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been defaced with slogans proclaiming "Jews to the gas chambers" and "Death to the Jews."  
• A gunman opened fire on a kosher butcher's shop (and, of course, the butcher) in Toulouse, France.
• A Jewish couple in their 20s were beaten up by five men in Villeurbanne, France. The woman was pregnant.
• A Jewish school was broken into and vandalized in Sarcelles, France.

Germany:

The German government reported 10,154 far-right crimes from January through the end of October 2006, the Tagesspiegel newspaper said. The number exceeds the intermediate results of previous years by 20 percent and is the highest since 2001, when the German government reformed criminal codes to include hate crimes. Following is only a partial list:

• Right-wing adolescents and young Muslims are displaying levels of anti-Semitism that were long considered unthinkable in Germany. At many German schools, the word "Jew" is becoming an insult again. German politicians don't seem to know how to respond.

• One high school student in Berlin's Steglitz-Zehlendorf district said in class: "All Jews must be gassed." Students in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district locked another student inside the chemistry lab and said: "Now we'll turn on the gas." A non-German child at an elementary school in Treptow-Köpenick insulted his teacher by calling her a "Jew," a "witch" and a "sea cow." When a teaching aid in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg tried to settle an argument between students, he was told: "Piss off, Jew!"

  In November, Berlin's public authorities had already registered more cases of anti-Semitism than during the entire previous year. A recent study by the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) also criticized cases of anti-Semitism, racism and right-wing extremism at German school.

  In the town of Grimmen in West Pomerania, right-wing adolescents mobilized against an exhibition on Anne Frank, disparaging her diary as a forgery.
• In October, several adolescents in Parey, a town in Germany's Saxony-Anhalt region, forced their 16-year-old classmate to walk across the school yard wearing a large sign during lunch break. The sign read: "In this town I'm the biggest swine / Because of the Jewish friends of mine." It's a phrase from the Nazi era, used to humiliate people with Jewish friends.
• A school class from the Jewish High School was exposed to massive anti-Semitic insults by another Berlin school class while riding the subway.

Holland:

Extreme right-wing violence in the Netherlands soared by 75 percent last year, according the annual Anne Frank Foundation report on extremism, which was released Wednesday.

In its joint report with Leiden University, the foundation counted 67 incidents of extreme right-wing violence in 2006, compared to 38 reported the previous year.

The report's co-author told Haaretz that anti-Semitic hate crimes - which constituted 13 percent of all cases - are often falsely represented as anti-Zionist.

According to Willem Wagenaar, 2006 saw 35 anti-Semitic instances out of a total of 265 hate crimes. The overall number of racial offenses dropped by 10 percent from the previous year, which saw

41 anti-Semitic attacks.

"The distinction between crimes that stem from anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is hard to make," says Wagenaar, who is an expert on the extreme right in the Netherlands. "We're seeing neo-Nazi criminals relabeling their anti-Semitic crimes as anti-Zionist.

The reason is that racial crimes mandate harsher sentences, so the criminals hide behind that false label of anti-Zionism.

"For example, one group of extreme-right youths, who were found guilty of torching both a synagogue and an Muslim school, claimed they had set the synagogue on fire to protest Israel's policy."

And, in another case, two organizers of a Jewish pro-Israel rally received death threats. Phone messages included comments such as “Zionism is murder” and “Death to you dirty fascists”.

The report lists two cases of arson of Jewish property and eight cases of threats throughout the country. Other offenses included vandalism, defamation and bullying and other forms of intimidation.

About a quarter (23 percent) of all hate crimes in 2006 were directed at Muslim immigrants.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=896439

Iran

• A conference on the Holocaust has opened in Tehran in the presence of numerous revisionists and Holocaust deniers as Iranian officials vehemently claimed that it would not be an attempt to deny the World War II genocide but merely to discuss it in an "unrestricted atmosphere"

Italy (Rome):

• On the night of August 1 a number of Jewish-owned stores had their doors sealed with glue and the shutters nailed down.
• The August issue of the monthly satirical magazine “Il Vernacoliere” included a headline asking if “Israel doesn’t spare bombs for Lebanon… what kind of Jews are they?”, in reference to the age-old anti-Semitic stereotype of Jewish thriftiness.

Norway:

• Norwegian police have charged four men in the shooting attack on an Oslo synagogue. The men were initially charged with vandalism, but the charge has now been upgraded to preparing an act of terrorism, an offense punishable by up to 12 years in jail. Police said one suspect was Norwegian, and the others had different backgrounds. They declined to provide more information about the suspects. However, Norwegian media have reported that one suspect was a 29-year-old Norwegian of Pakistani origin who had been held briefly in Germany in June on suspicion of planning an act of terrorism against the soccer World Cup. No-one was hurt in the attack on the Oslo synagogue, which happened on 17 September 2006.

Russia:

Racist attacks, often attributed to radical nationalists, have risen in Russia over recent years, with at least 520 people attacked and 54 killed in 2006 alone, the Moscow research institute Sova said.

• Five youths in the Sverdlovsk Region have been charged with murder motivated by ethnic hatred for beating a Jewish man to death with a metal cross, according to a September 15 report by the local Novy Region news service.  The previously unreported killing took place on October 1, 2005.
• TWO SYNAGOGUES AND A MOSQUE VANDALIZED. Two synagogues and a mosque were vandalized the weekend that began on Friday night, September 22, the start of the Jewish new year and continued with Ramadan. "Kommersant" newspaper carried a headline that read, "Skinheads mark Jewish new year and Ramadan." In one pre-dawn attack on the synagogue in Khabarovsk, a city of 580,000 on the border with China, vandals shattered windows in the building, empty at that hour, the regional department of the Interior Ministry said. A criminal investigation was launched. In another attack early Friday, unknown
  assailants threw a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue in the Volga River city of Astrakhan in southern Russia, setting its door ablaze. A guard at the building quickly put down the fire, the Itar-Tass news agency quoted District Prosecutor Sergei Knizhnikov as saying.
• TWO ANTISEMITIC ATTACKS IN ODESSA. Hooligans attacked fans of a Tel Aviv soccer team who traveled to Odessa, Ukraine to lend their support in a match against the local Chernomorets club, according to a September 15 report by the Russian Jewish web site Antisemitizmu.net. The attack came after the local team lost 1-0 to the Israelis. It is unclear how many people were injured. No arrests have been reported in connection with the incident.
• On September 20, the Russian Jewish web site Jewish.ru reported that a group of youths beat up a Jew in front of numerous witnesses in the city's downtown area. Chaim Veitsman was set upon during the evening of September 18 on a crowded street. A gang of youths who witnesses say often hang out on that street approached Veitsman. One screamed in his face, "I don't like kikes!" and attacked him. "The hooligans were not afraid of any witnesses or that anybody would stand up for him [the victim]," an eyewitness said.

Serbia:

• Two Israeli citizens were severely beaten by a group of skinheads in a Belgrade park in what Jewish leaders in Serbia described Tuesday as an anti-Semitic attack. The two - Jariv Avram, 27, and Bojana Petkovic, 23 - were attacked late Sunday during a rock music festival in a downtown park by several men wearing Nazi symbols, police said. Avram suffered serious head injuries, while Petkovic was bruised, the two Israelis told Belgrade media. "They were chanting 'Auschwitz, Auschwitz' and 'Go to Germany' as they attacked us," Avram said, adding that police did nothing to protect them. "This is not the first such anti-Jewish and racist attack by skinheads and other such groups" in Serbia, the Serbian Jewish Community said in a statement. It called for police to arrest the perpetrators. (August, 2006)

Spain:

• They say a picture speaks 1000 words - here's a picture of the  "Barcelona" - the headlines:
• "A Negro and a Jew Deciding the Fate of the World".

Turkey:

A sign refusing sales or entry to Israelis

• A sign reading “For Children killers Israelis No Sale, No Entry ” welcomed Israel tourists who passed by a clothing store in the city of Alanya in south Turkey. The city is frequented by many Israelis, who arrive mainly on cruse ships during the summer.

  

• Two Israeli families were attacked in a bazaar in the Turkish city of Absala, after peddlers discovered their nationality. Despite the massive altercation, the families were able to escape.

Ukraine:

• Ten anti-Semites last week attacked three orthodox Jews, one of them a teacher in Kiev, near the city's main synagogue. The attackers hit the victims and a passer-by who tried to intervene. Two other Jews escaped and called police. Russian media did not report the incident until a week after it happened.
  

• Anti-Semitic slogans have again appeared on a concrete wall at one of the busiest intersections of Dnepropetrovsk. The graffiti was left on the wall of “Salut” Works operated by Ukraine’s State Committee for State Material Reserves. In addition to “traditional” anti-Semitic slogans, which Babi Yar for Yids.”

  have been appearing lately in Dnepropetrovsk in relation with the current conflict in the Middle East, anti-Semites added a new “scrawl:” “Palestine for Arabs;
• A Ukrainian synagogue was recently vandalized. No one was hurt in the June 23 incident in which vandals threw stones at a synagogue in Kirovograd. Two windows were shattered. According to local Jewish leaders, the June incident marked the fifth time in 2006 that the synagogue has been attacked.
  
• A Holocaust monument was vandalized in Ukraine for the second time in less than three months. The memorial in Sevastopol was smeared last week with pink paint and swastikas.
• Vandals threw stones and stole a security camera Monday at the Ner Tamid shul in Simferopol, but no one was hurt. A video recording obtained with the shul’s other surveillance camera showed two young men who appeared to be in their late teens who committed the attack.
• A Holocaust memorial in Odessa was smeared with black paint, large swastikas and an anti-Semitic slogan. The incident took place on the night of April 19-20.
• A recent attack on a young Jew in Ukraine was an attempted murder, owing to authorities' lax attitude toward previous anti-Semitic incidents, one of the country's chief rabbis said. Chaim Gorbov, a 20-year-old rabbinical student, was attacked by a gang of skinheads in Dnepropetrovsk on April 20. He was stabbed in the chest and suffered head injuries. It appears a gang of skinheads in the city sought to mark Hitler's birthday, April 20, by attacking a Jew.

United States:

Yearly Summary: Anti-Semitic incidents in Massachusetts held steady in 2006, with a total of 96 incidents, up from 93 incidents in 2005, according to the Anti-Defamation League's annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents issued today. Massachusetts was the state with the fifth highest number of incidents in the country.  Rabbis, synagogues, and Jewish institutions (including religious schools) were the targets in about 14 percent of the 96 incidents.

Anti-Semitic incidents in Illinois nearly doubled in 2006, despite declining nationally for the second consecutive year, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL tracks incidents against Jewish individuals, synagogues and community institutions. The League’s annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, released this week, counted 56 incidents in Illinois, up from 30 a year earlier. Nationally, anti-Semitic incidents declined to 1,554 in 2006, a 12 percent decrease from the 1,757 recorded in 2005.

Individual Incidents

• Naveed Afzal Haq stormed into the Jewish Federation Centre in late July, he ended the life of one of the most vibrant souls in the Seattle community. He explained to the police that he was upset over the horrific carnage occurring as a result of the tragic war unfolding between Hezbollah and Israel. "I am a Muslim American, angry at Israel," he proclaimed during his rampage. Following the attack, newspaper and television accounts insisted the bloodshed from the Hezbollah-Israel War had reached North American soil.
• In Florida, two synagogues and a Jewish-owned business were vandalized.