According to the 2005 U.S. State Department Report on Global Anti-Semitism, antisemitism in Europe has increased significantly in recent years (but see fn.31 below). Beginning in 2000, oral attacks directed against Jews increased while incidents of vandalism (e.g. graffiti, fire bombings of Jewish schools, desecration of synagogues and cemeteries) surged. Physical assaults including beatings, stabbings and other violence against Jews in Europe increased markedly, in a number of cases resulting in serious injury and even death.
On
January 1,
2006, Britain's chief
rabbi, Sir
Jonathan Sacks, warned that what he called a "
tsunami of antisemitism" was spreading globally. In an interview with BBC's
Radio Four, Sacks said that antisemitism was on the rise in Europe, and that a number of his rabbinical colleagues had been assaulted, synagogues desecrated, and Jewish schools burned to the ground in France. He also said that: "People are attempting to silence and even ban Jewish societies on campuses on the grounds that Jews must support the state of Israel, therefore they should be banned, which is quite extraordinary because ... British Jews see themselves as British citizens. So it's that kind of feeling that you don't know what's going to happen next that's making ... some European Jewish communities uncomfortable."
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Much of the new European antisemitic violence can actually be seen as a spill over from the long running Israeli-Arab conflict since the majority of the perpetrators are from the large immigrant Arab communities in European cities. According to
The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, most of the current antisemitism comes from militant Islamist and Muslim groups, and most Jews tend to be assaulted in countries where groups of young Muslim immigrants reside.
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Similarly, in the Middle East, anti-Zionist propaganda frequently adopts the terminology and symbols of the Holocaust to demonize Israel and its leaders — for instance, comparing Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews. At the same time, Holocaust denial and Holocaust minimization efforts find increasingly overt acceptance as sanctioned historical discourse in a number of Middle Eastern countries.
On
April 3,
2006, the
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announced its finding that incidents of antisemitism are a "serious problem" on college campuses throughout the United States. The Commission recommended that the
U.S. Department of Education's
Office for Civil Rights protect college students from antisemitism through vigorous enforcement of
Title VI of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and further recommended that
Congress clarify that Title VI applies to discrimination against Jewish students.
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On
September 19,
2006,
Yale University founded
The Yale Initiative for Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, the first North American university-based center for study of the subject, as part of its
Institution for Social and Policy Studies. Director
Charles Small of the Center cited the increase in antisemitism worldwide in recent years as generating a "need to understand the current manifestation of this disease".
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