Abstract: The spread of hate speech and anti-Semitic content has become endemic to social media. Faced
with a torrent of violent and offensive content, nations in Europe have begun to take measures to
remove such content from social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. However, these
measures have failed to curtail the spread, and possible impact of anti-Semitic content. Notably,
violence breeds violence and calls for action against Jewish minorities soon lead to calls for
violence against other ethnic or racial minorities. Online anti-Semitism thus drives social tensions
and harms social cohesion. Yet the spread of online anti-Semitism also has international
ramifications as conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns now often focus on WWII and
the Holocaust.
On Nov 29, 2019, the Oxford Digital Diplomacy Research Group (DigDiploROx) held a one-day
symposium at the European Commission in Brussels. The symposium brought together diplomats,
EU officials, academics and civil society organizations in order to search for new ways to combat
the rise in online anti-Semitism. This policy brief offers an overview of the day’s discussions, the
challenges identified and a set of solutions that may aid nations looking to stem the flow of antiSemitic content online. Notably, these solutions, or recommendations, are not limited to the realm
of anti-Semitism and can to help combat all forms of discrimination, hate and bigotry online.
Chief among these recommendations is the need for a multi-stakeholder solution that brings
together governments, multilateral organisations, academic institutions, tech companies and
NGOs. For the EU itself, there is a need to increase collaborations between units dedicated to
fighting online crime, terrorism and anti-Semitism. This would enable the EU to share skills,
resources and working procedures. Moreover, the EU must adopt technological solutions, such as
automation, to identify, flag and remove hateful content in the quickest way possible. The EU
could also redefine its main activities - rather than combat incitement to violence online, it may
attempt to tackle incitement to hate, given that hate metastases online to calls for violence.
Finally, the EU should deepen its awareness to the potential harm of search engines. These offer
access to content that has already been removed by social media companies. Moreover, search
engines serve as a gateway to hateful content. The EU should thus deepen is collaborations with
companies such as Google and Yahoo, and not just Facebook or Twitter. It should be noted that
social media companies opted not to take part in the symposium demonstrating that the solution
to hate speech and rising anti-Semitism may be in legislation and not just in collaboration.
The rest of this brief consists of five parts. The first offers an up-to-date analysis of the prevalence
of anti-Semitic content online. The second, discuss the national and international implications of
this prevalence. The third part stresses the need for a multi-stakeholder solution while the fourth
offers an overview of the presentations made at the symposium. The final section includes a set
of policy recommendations that should be adopted by the EU and its members states.
Abstract: The recent Eurozone crisis and the outbreak of political and populist Euroscepticism pose an unprecedented challenge to advocates of the post-war ‘Idea of Europe’. In the United Kingdom and France, some of the most eloquent and impassioned defences of ‘Europe’ have been penned by Jewish intellectuals. The historian Walter Laqueur, the philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and journalists such as David Aaronovich, for example, have all rallied to the cause of ‘Europe’. This article will focus on the responses of Robert Menasse and Henryk Broder, two Jewish intellectuals from Austria and Germany, who have recently published powerful reflections on the European idea. Menasse’s polemic of 2012, Der Europäische Landbote (The European Courier), defends the idea of Europe as a ‘Friedensprojekt’, or ‘peace project’, and the European Union as an institutional antidote to the destructive power of nationalism and the self-interest of the nation-state. Broder’s bestselling book of 2013, Die letzten Tage Europas: Wie wir eine gute Idee versenken (The Last Days of Europe: How we are Scuppering a Good Idea), embraces ‘European values’ but launches a critique of a European Union which stifles pluralism and critical debate. This paper analyses how Menasse and Broder define the idea of ‘Europe’ and argues that, despite their differences, in form and content, the work of Menasse and Broder draws on a common tradition of enlightened cosmopolitanism as well as informs the renewed academic debate in the humanities and social sciences about the place of ‘cosmopolitanism’ in our global world.
Abstract: Antisemitism was on the rise after 9/11, yet, until 2015, there was weak policy to address it at the national and EU levels. The following examines why and how antisemitism policy emerged on the EU agenda culminating in the creation of the 2021 comprehensive strategy to combat antisemitism. Utilizing punctuated equilibrium theory, crisification literature and literature on Commission entrepreneurship, the article explores why, although other violent attacks had occurred against Jews, it would take the double attacks in 2015 to bring attention to antisemitism within the Commission. Leadership at the EU level, NGOs working with EU institutions, a working definition of antisemitism, along with pre-existent EU legal bases in antidiscrimination law, would help promote antisemitism policy to the EU level. The EU's adoption of antisemitism policy demonstrates both Commission agenda setting and prioritizing antisemitism due to its threat to EU fundamental ideals, thus promoting a ‘European polity’ based on values.
Abstract: The experience and perceptions of the Jewish community and wider European population, recorded antisemitic incidents, the increasing level of antisemitic content online and sociological research show the persisting presence of antisemitism in the European Union. A 2021 survey on the prevalence and intensity of anti-Jewish prejudices in 16 European countries found that on average, 20 % of the population in the countries under scrutiny can be regarded as (strongly or moderately) antisemitic, whereas the proportion of latent antisemites was 14 %, with six countries where the aggregate proportion of strongly, moderately and latently antisemitic people was above 50 %. Research has also shown – and it has also been reported from a number of Member States in the context of the current report – that the consecutive crises of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian aggression on Ukraine have intensified antisemitic sentiments across Europe. The cut-off date of the research on which the report is based was 7 July 2023, therefore, the study does not reflect the unprecedented spike in antisemitism and antisemitic incidents in Europe and across the world following the horrific terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023. Thus, the impact of the attacks and their aftermath could not be taken into account in this study. With a view to combating racial and/or religious hatred, including antisemitism, the European Union has not only adopted policies and commitments, but it has also put in place numerous legal instruments that can be used to counter different forms of antisemitism, including but not limited to the Framework Decision on combating certain forms of expressions of racism and xenophobia, the Racial Equality Directive, the Employment Equality Directive, and the Victims’ Rights Directive. The importance of effectively applying this legislation to fight antisemitism is emphasised in the EU Strategy on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life (2021-2030), in which the European Union pledged to ‘step up action to actively prevent and combat’ the phenomenon in all its forms. This thematic report provides a comparative overview of how these legal instruments have been complied with in the 27 EU Member States, and aims to establish how and to what extent the legal framework and its practical application in the different Member States provide protection against antisemitism in three main areas: (i) non-discrimination; (i) hate crimes; and (iii) hate speech. It identifies gaps in the existing legal protections and/or their enforcement across the EU Member States and makes recommendations on mechanisms for the provision of effective protection against acts motivated by antisemitism.
Abstract: The present report provides an overview of data on antisemitism as recorded by international organisations and by official and unofficial sources in the European Union (EU) Member States. Furthermore, the report includes data concerning the United Kingdom, which in 2019 was still a Member State of the EU. For the first time, the report also presents available statistics and other information with respect to North Macedonia and Serbia, as countries with an observer status to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). All data presented in the report are based on the respective countries’ own definitions and categorisations of antisemitic behaviour. At the same time, an increasing number of countries are using the working definition of antisemitism developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), and there are efforts to further improve hate crime data collection in the EU, including through the work of the Working Group on hate crime recording, data collection and encouraging reporting (2019–2021), which FRA facilitates. ‘Official data’ are understood in the context of this report as those collected by law enforcement agencies, other authorities that are part of criminal justice systems and relevant state ministries at national level. ‘Unofficial data’ refers to data collected by civil society organisations.
This annual overview provides an update on the most recent figures on antisemitic incidents, covering the period 1 January 2009 – 31 December 2019, across the EU Member States, where data are available. It includes a section that presents the legal framework and evidence from international organisations. The report also provides an overview of national action plans and other measures to prevent and combat antisemitism, as well as information on how countries have adopted or endorsed the non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) (2016) as well as how they use or intend to use it.
This is the 16th edition of FRA’s report on the situation of data collection on antisemitism in the EU (including reports published by FRA’s predecessor, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia).
Topics: Antisemitism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Law, Policy, European Union, Antisemitism: Education against, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Education, Hate crime, Jewish Heritage, Jewish Culture
Topics: Antisemitism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Law, Policy, European Union, Antisemitism: Education against, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Education, Hate crime, Jewish Heritage, Jewish Culture
Abstract: The NOA Hungarian Report Card showcases the current national policy landscape in 10 areas: culture, education, hate crime, hate speech, Holocaust remembrance, intercultural dialogue, media, religious freedom, security, and sport.
This research demonstrates that there is still much that the Hungarian government can and should do to combat antisemitism despite the goodwill expressed and measures already put in place. Also, it is important to keep in mind that the policy gaps highlighted in this report are not merely challenges but opportunities for the Hungarian government to manifest its commitment to eradicating antisemitism. This is especially important in the areas of education and intercultural dialogue, which arguably have the largest impact on prejudice, particularly regarding the younger generations.
Abstract: This article sets out to discuss the emergence of (anti) ‘new antisemitism’ as a transnational field of governance, and particularly as a field of racial governance. Romeyn’s interest is not so much in the ‘facts’ of antisemitism or ‘new’ antisemitism, but in the ways in which it functions as a ‘power-knowledge’ field in which a cast of actors—global governance actors, such as the United Nations, UNESCO, the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe, the European Commission, non-governmental organizations, experts and scholars, and politicians—set out to define, invent measuring tools and technologies, analyse, formulate policy statements and programmes, and develop ‘interventions’ to address and redress (‘fight’) the ‘problem’. Embedded in the new antisemitism as a field of governance are the assumptions that, ideologically, it is imbricated in the universalist anti-racism of the liberal left, and that, culturally, it emanates to a significant extent from within ethnocultural or ethno-religious attitudes peculiar to populations originating from Northern Africa, the Maghreb or, more specifically, from majority Islamic countries. With respect to the latter groups, global governance actors concerned with the fight against the ‘new antisemitism’ instate a ‘regime’ that performatively enacts boundaries of belonging. This regime erects an interior frontier around culture/religion that effectively externalizes and racializes antisemitism.
Abstract: How attached do European Jews feel to the countries in which they live? Or to the European Union? And are their loyalties ‘divided’ in some way – between their home country and Israel? Answering these types of questions helps us to see how integrated European Jews feel today, and brings some empiricism to the antisemitic claim that Jews don’t fully ‘belong.’
This mini-report, based on JPR's groundbreaking report ‘The Jewish identities of European Jews’, explores European Jews’ levels of attachment to the countries in which they live, to Israel, and to the European Union, and compares them with those of wider society and other minority groups across Europe. Some of the key findings in this study written by Professor Sergio DellaPergola and Dr Daniel Staetsky of JPR’s European Jewish Demography Unit include:
European Jews tend to feel somewhat less strongly attached to the countries in which they live than the general population of those countries, but more strongly attached than other minority groups and people of no religion.
That said, levels of strong attachment to country vary significantly from one country to another, both among Jews and others.
European Jews tend to feel somewhat more strongly attached to the European Union than the general populations of their countries, although in many cases, the distinctions are small.
Some European Jewish populations feel more strongly attached to Israel than to the countries in which they live, and some do not. The Jewish populations that tend to feel more attached to Israel than the countries in which they live often have high proportions of recent Jewish immigrants.
Having a strong attachment to Israel has no bearing on Jewish people's attachments to the EU or the countries in which they live, and vice versa: one attachment does not come at the expense of another. They are neither competitive nor complementary; they are rather completely unrelated.
Jews of different denominations show very similar levels of attachment to the countries in which they live, but rather different levels of attachment to Israel and the EU.
Abstract: The NOA-Networks Overcoming Antisemitism project, launched in 2019, is an innovative effort to develop new public-civil society partnerships and enhance collaboration within the nongovernmental sector to support the European Council’s Declarations on fighting antisemitism and fostering Jewish life on the continent. This
report showcases the current policy landscape in 10 areas: culture, education, hate crime, hate
speech, Holocaust remembrance, intercultural dialogue, media, religious freedom, security, and
sport. The research demonstrates that there is still much the Belgian government can and should
do to combat antisemitism. Moreover, there appears to be resistance amongst policymakers to
pass specific measures or to honour commitments made at the national or European Union level.
Abstract: Even though the self-critical dealing with the past has not been an official criteria for joining the European union, the founding of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research and the Holocaust-conference in Stockholm at the beginning of 2000 seem to have generatedinformal standards of confronting and exhibiting the Holocaust during the process called “Europeanization of the Holocaust”. This is indicated by the fact that the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest opened almost empty only weeks before Hungary joined the European Union although the permanent exhibition had not been ready yet. The Croatian case, especially the new exhibition that opened at the KZ-memorial Jasenovac in 2006, will serve in order to examine how the “Europeanization of the Holocaust” impacts on a candidate state. The memorial museum resembles Holocaust Memorial Museums in Washington, Budapest etc., but, although it is in situ, at the site of the former KZ, the focus clearly lies on individual victim stories and their belongings, while the perpetrators and the daily “routine” at the KZ are hardly mentioned. Another problem influenced by the international trend to focus on (Jewish) individuals and moral lessons rather than on the historical circumstances is that the focus on the Shoa blanks the fact that Serbs had been the foremost largest victim group. The third field, where the influence of “European standards” on the Croatian politics of the past will be examined, is the equalization of “red and black totalitarianism” at the annual commemorations in Jasenovac. While this was already done during the revisions era of President Franjo Tudman during the 1990, today it perfectly matches EU-politics, as the introduction of the 23rd of August, the anniversary of the Hitler-Stalin-pact, as a Memorial day for both victims of Nazism and Stalinism shows.
Abstract: Drawing upon developments in cultural and social memory studies and Europeanization theory, this article examines the Europeanization of Holocaust memory understood as the process of construction, institutionalization, and diffusion of beliefs regarding the Holocaust and norms and rules regarding Holocaust remembrance and education at a transnational, European level since the 1990s and their incorporation in the countries of post-communist Eastern Europe, which is also the area where the Holocaust largely took place. The article identifies the transnational agents of the Europeanization of Holocaust memory—the European Union’s parliament, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, as well as the United Nations. It analyzes chronologically the key Holocaust-related activities and documents of these agents, highlighting East European countries’ varied and changing position towards them. It examines synchronically the outcome of the Europeanization of Holocaust memory by these transnational agents—a European memory of the Holocaust—identifying its key components, discussing the main aspects, and illustrating the impact of this process and outcome upon the memory of the Holocaust in the East European countries. The article argues that the Europeanization of Holocaust memory has significantly contributed to the development of Holocaust memory in Eastern Europe, although other agents and processes were also involved.
Abstract: In a gesture of reconciliation, Spain and Portugal in 2015 passed bills inviting the descendants of Sephardic Jews – expelled 500 years earlier – to acquire citizenship. Applicants are to ascertain their Sephardic heritage through family trees, evidence of belonging to a religious community, language skills and/or retained links with the homeland. This article explores applicants’ motivations to request citizenship and the ways in which legal provisions, religious associations, and the migration industry become gatekeepers of and (re)shape what it means to be Sephardic. Based on interviews with applicants and other actors involved, the article discusses how states, religious associations, applicants themselves and businesses facilitate and define the process towards citizenship. It also points to how the repatriation laws have spurred identification with – but also alienation from – Spain and Portugal, by making it possible to gain an attractive EU passport, while encouraging the revisiting of a painful past.
Abstract: This detailed and thorough report is rapidly becoming the ‘must-read’ study on European Jews, taking the reader on an extraordinary journey through one thousand years of European Jewish history before arriving at the most comprehensive analysis of European Jewish demography today.
Written by leading Jewish demographers Professor Sergio DellaPergola and Dr Daniel Staetsky, the Chair and Director of JPR’s European Jewish Demography Unit respectively, it explores how the European Jewish population has ebbed and flowed over time. It begins as far back as the twelfth century, travelling through many years of population stability, until the tremendous growth of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, followed by the dramatic decline prompted by a combination of mass migration and the horrors of the Shoah. Extraordinarily, after all this time, the proportion of world Jewry living in Europe today is almost identical to the proportion living in Europe 900 years ago.
Using multiple definitions of Jewishness and a vast array of sources to determine the size of the contemporary population, the study proceeds to measure it in multiple ways, looking at the major blocs of the European Union and the European countries of the Former Soviet Union, as well as providing country-by-country analyses, ranging from major centres such as France, the UK, Germany and Hungary, to tiny territories such as Gibraltar, Monaco and even the Holy See.
The report also contains the most up-to-date analysis we have on the key mechanisms of demographic change in Europe, touching variously on patterns of migration in and out of Europe, fertility, intermarriage, conversion and age compositions. While the report itself is a fascinating and important read, the underlying data are essential tools for the JPR team to utilise as it supports Jewish organisations across the continent to plan for the future.
Abstract: This paper aims at providing a new systemic contribution to research about perceptions of antisemitism/Judeophobia by contemporary Jews in 12 European Union countries. The perspective – the viewpoint of the offended side – has been less prominent relatively in research literature on antisemitism. The data analysis demonstrates the potential power of Similarity Structure Analysis (SSA) as a better theoretical and empirical tool to describe and conceptualize the contents of chosen research issues. After a brief review of some methodological problems in the study of antisemitism, this paper will re-elaborate data first published in the report of the 2018 FRA study Experiences and Perceptions of Antisemitism – Second survey on Discrimination and Hate Crimes against Jews in the EU (FRA 2018a). Topics include the perceived importance of antisemitism as a societal issue, the contents of anti-Jewish prejudice and discrimination, channels of transmission, perpetrators of offenses, regional differences within Europe, and the role of antisemitism perceptions as a component of Jewish identification. Special attention is paid to the distinction between cognitive and experiential perceptions of antisemitism, and to the typology of practical, populist, political, and narrative antisemitism.
Topics: Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Education against, Antisemitism: Far right, Antisemitism: Left-Wing, Antisemitism: Muslim, Antisemitism: New Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Monitoring, Antisemitism: Discourse, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Terrorism, European Union, Integration
Abstract: Antisemitism can be expressed in the form of verbal and physical attacks, threats, harassment, discrimination and unequal treatment, property damage and graffiti or other forms of speech or text, including on the internet. Antisemitic incidents and hate crime violate fundamental rights, especially the right to human dignity, the right to equality of treatment and the freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
The present report provides an overview of data on antisemitism as recorded by international organisations and by official and unofficial sources in the 28 European Union (EU) Member States, based on their own definitions and categorisations. ‘Official data’ are understood here as those collected by law enforcement agencies, other authorities that are part of criminal justice systems and relevant state ministries at the national level. ‘Unofficial data’ refers to data collected by civil society organisations.
This is the 15th edition of FRA’s report on the situation of data collection on antisemitism in the EU (including reports published by FRA’s predecessor, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia).
