Study shows a strong presence of “anti-Semitism that is linked with Israel and is hidden behind criticism of Israel” in Europe.
BERLIN – A think-tank affiliated with Germany’s Social Democratic Party issued a new report last week that revealed high levels of anti-Semitism in Germany, Poland and Hungary, as well as varying manifestations of racism, homophobia and prejudice in eight European countries.
Dr. Beate Küpper, a researcher from the University of Bielefeld who co-authored the Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s study along with her colleagues Andreas Zick and Andreas Hoevermann, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that the study showed a strong presence of “anti-Semitism that is linked with Israel and is hidden behind criticism of Israel, and is not neutral.”
She termed the outbreak of Jew-hatred in Germany “remarkable” because there were widespread Holocaust remembrance and education events in Germany.
The study – “Intolerance, Prejudice, Discrimination: A European Report” –questioned roughly 1,000 people in each of the selected EU countries.
The investigation was limited to Great Britain, Holland, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Hungary, Poland and France due to financial restrictions and requisite expertise in each country to track anti-democratic attitudes, according to Küpper.
Asked to respond to the statement that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians,” 47.7 percent of the study’s participants in Germany expressed agreement – the highest number in Western Europe.
The statement is a typical question used to probe attitudes about equating Israel with the Nazi campaign to exterminate European Jewry.
The US State Department defines the comparison as an expression of modern anti- Semitism, as does the European Union.
Given Poland’s lukewarm foreign policy toward Israel, the finding that 63.3% of the Poles questioned agree that Israel is seeking to obliterate Palestinians may be deeply alarming to some.
The statement “Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews” met with 35.6% affirmation in Germany, while 35.9% of British respondents were in agreement. In the Netherlands, 41.1% favored the assertion, as did 55.2% in Poland, 45.6% in Hungary and 48.8% in Portugal. France declined to participate.
The researchers also asked whether “Jews try to take advantage of having been victims during the Nazi era.”
Almost half the Germans questioned responded in the affirmative; the country’s 48.9% result was the highest among the Western European countries. The Netherlands provided the lowest percentage, with 17.2% affirming that Jews were trying to exploit the Nazi era. The number for Poland was 72.2%, and Hungary reached 68.1%. France reached 32.3%, England 21.8%, Portugal 52.2% and Italy 40.2%.
Küpper said that Poland and Hungary were also plagued by extraordinary levels of sexism and homophobia. In response to the statement that “there is nothing immoral about homosexuality,” 75.8 % of Poles and 67.7% of Hungarians disagreed. The Netherlands showed the greatest acceptance of homosexuality, as 16.5% disagreed with the statement. Asked whether “it is a good thing to allow marriages between two men or two women,” Poland (88.2%) and Hungary (69.3%) showed the highest negative response.
Here, too, The Netherlands had the highest acceptance of same-sex marriage rights, with a mere 17% disagreeing.
Asked about the reasons for anti-Semitism – particularly in Germany, where there has been intensive Holocaust education – Küpper said the factors explaining anti-Semitism were not analyzed in the study.
However, some academics in Germany frequently invoke the notion of “secondary anti- Semitism” – that Germans are filled with pathological guilt about the Holocaust and shift the blame to Jews and Israel to assuage their complexes – to explain the disconnect between Holocaust remembrance events and the rising hatred of Jews and Israel in the Federal Republic. The theory’s proponents say it would account for the disproportionate criticism of Israel in the German media and German parliamentary legislative action targeting the Jewish state over seizing the Mavi Marmara.
A handful of German scholars, including Dr. Lars Rensmann, Dr. Matthias Küntzel and Dr. Clemens Heni, have investigated the phenomenon of secondary anti-Semitism in their writings.
Heni told the Post on Monday that “the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation study is based on the so-called ‘group-oriented enmity.’ This is a mainstream concept in Germany, introduced by Wilhelm Heitmeyer, among others, some 10 years ago, to downplay anti-Semitism and to equate genocidal anti-Semitism with enmity against jobless people, homosexuals, women and foreigners.”
He said it was “a ridiculous concept” because, for example, “equating anti-Semitism with enmity toward Islam is an obfuscation of Islamic and Muslim anti-Semitism. We have a steadily increasing number of Muslims in Europe, while Jews – like in the Netherlands – are thinking of leaving this continent due to anti- Semitic incidents and a political culture based on hatred of Jews.”
According to Heni, “the study seems to be reluctant to deal honestly with new anti- Semitism, which is a component of political Islam as well as left-wing and mainstream anti-Zionism in the West.”
He used the term “lethal obsession” from the Hebrew University’s Prof. Robert Wistrich, an international authority on anti-Semitism, to describe what differentiated anti-Semitism from xenophobia and other forms of hatred.
“The new anti-Semitism is spread not just by neo-Nazis,” Heni said, but also “by mainstream left-wing members of parliament, left-wing activists, extremist Muslims and the European elites likewise.”
I’m sure that Yamit can come up with a much more elequent answer, but, it is written in the Koran
and the Hadith that is what all muslims are supposed to do. Ultimately not just hate….KILL.
Yamit…you wrote:”People hate only those whom they can oppress;”
So why do the Palestinians hate us?
Ira.
It does not make “an interesting reading” or an “interesting pole”, as one of my students said,
I couldn’t hold myself, “It is a PROPHECY you Idiot”
Ira.
This confirms the obvious. Lying works and possibly many Germans are antisemites (mainly the Lutherans that are well represented in Germany).
A Meaningful Fast to Everyone!
B”H
If it weren’t for the hidden hand of G-d and the hidden miracles that G-d provides us every day, we wouldn’t be here. This fast is as applicable today as it was in Esther’s time.
M
—–
Fast of Esther Observed on Thursday
by Elad Benari
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142952
Jews around the world will be observing the Fast of Esther (Ta’anit Esther) on Thursday.
The Maccabeats – Purim Song
Purim Same’ach
Raise Your Mask Purim – The Fountainheads
Purim Same’ach
Purim is holiday of joy
Shlock Rock This is classic Purim song
Purim Same’ach
#9 Eva Deutsch Costabel,
they also use to say:
“Wer zuletzt lacht lacht am besten”
we shall lough with GREAT JOY at the final judgment of Amelek.
PURIM SAMEAH
The best(greatest) joy is Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
People hate only those whom they can oppress; they envy and seek to join strong groups. Submissive, assimilating Muslims would likely be hated like the Jews.
I don’t excuse antisemitism but I can see why Jews and Israel are singled out. Every-time a Jew lowers themselves to explain even plead for understanding of the gentiles and every-time Jews seek to elicit sympathy even pity of the gentiles my stomach tightens up and my blood pressure goes up a notch. There is no nation whose national character is as vile and mercenary as the Swiss, but do they run all over the world trying to get other to love and accept them? They don’t care and neither should the Jews.
The Holocaust and Holocaust denial is a sensitive matter to Jews – not to anyone else. The only Lesson the Germans and the rest of the world learned from the Holocaust, is that it’s acceptable to kill Jews, with little or no fear of retribution. They can even steal the Jews property after they are murdered and get away with that too. Call it murder for profit.
The Stats in the article are well known and have been reported many times in the past few years, so it should be no shock to anyone. I don’t care about antisemites, what the Jews are doing to themselves is equal if not worse than what antisemites are capable of doing to Jews today.
As a Holocaust survivor I do not care what this hateful Europeans think of Jews. I have not visited Europe for over forty years.
I do not miss this miserable creatures at all. I heard a brilliant saying:”Europe died at Auschwitz”.
Did you know that 21 European countries killed their own Jews They still live in our homes they stole from us and live on the money the robbed from us.
Who cares what this lowlives think. I don’t. Any Jew who still live in Europe ought to have their head examined.
The poetic justice is that they are overrun by throat-cutters. Bravo, what a smart people Europeans are.
Let me quote for you a German saying.”Die beste Freude is die Schaden Freude”
Only a German can think of something like that, in this case it fits my purpose.
A Holocaust survivor
Herr Freud would’ve had a field day with these folks.
I wonder if anyone bothered to ask these fools in Germany, Portugal, England, and Holland if they thought that
muslims had a long range plan to immigrate into their countrys, outbreed the natives, eventually take over and install
Sharia Law for the masses? These Europeans are allowing islamic hordes to overrun their country, and create muslim
only areas where the police and fireman are afraid to enter. I visited Barcelona 3 years ago and took a cab around
town. The driver asked if I’d like to see the muslim section. I said yes and he took me through it. He said they
could only go there during the daylight hours as no Spaniard would dare go there at night. And they are worried about
Jews treating muslims unfairly?
How ironic is this poll result considering it is actually the “palestinians” who want to exterminate the Jews.
Perhaps they should take a poll asking the same question as to how they feel about muslims considering massive global islamic terrorism.
Europe will never change. I guess its poetic justice that they are now being overrun by the jihadists they have been backing against Israel.
Jewish Congress condemns Poland’s decision to halt property restitution
Polish government suspends work on a bill of compensation payments for nationalized property, explaining they cannot finance the proceedings in the current economic climate.
as i already posted with regard to another article here on israpundit, the germans never repented, they were only emberessed and waited until the storm would fly over in order to restart. since the reunification of germany in 1990 this moment has come finally: since then a big part of the germans liberated themselves of the guilt-complex, i.e. the emberessement, and are now seeking a double goal: distroy the notion of Jewish Nationhood (including of course the destruction of the Jewish National State) and revengence against the Jews who humilated them. all this can be seen very clearly in the Israel coverage in german media. it can be clearly observed that everything which implies sympathy for Israel is SYTEMATICALLY AND DELIBERATELY minimised or shut down at all, everything which demonises Israel is blown up to infinity with systematical choice of wording.
conclusion: the germans never repented and therefore nver changed. the moment of a final confontation between Israel and germany will eventually come.
I discovered a brilliant yet simple phrase for the state-of-mind of that 47% and other ideologically hidebound individuals (ie: leftists): invincible ignorance (or using the adjective – invincibly ignorant).
The Old Europe is
backstill here!