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: Today, the extermination of Jewish communities by the Nazi regime and its collaborators, namely the Holocaust, forms an integral part of the international political agenda. Although this dealing with the Holocaust appears normal for us today, this was not always the case, but is the result of extensive social and political processes. In the course of this development the awareness of the special relevance of the extermination of about 6 million Jews has increased. Since the 1990s a process has emerged, that can be characterized as the universalization of Holocaust remembrance. The commemoration of the extermination of the European Jews is no longer an exclusive part of the different national cultures of remembrance, but has become an integral part of international memorial policy. An important event in this context has been the “Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust” in the year 2000 where mainly European leaders as well as other high-ranking politicians, historians and teachers engaged with Holocaust education, Holocaust remembrance and Holocaust research. The idea was to establish an international organization that would expand Holocaust education worldwide. The aim of the present dissertation is to show how the Luxembourgian school system deals with this traumatic event that is the Holocaust and how it reacts as a system to expectations towards Holocaust and schooling, to find out how the school system works. The dissertation does not address questions as to show how the Holocaust should be taught in schools nor whether or not the Holocaust should be taught in schools at all. The dissertation analyses the particularities of teaching the Holocaust, as well as its role in the curriculum in a broader understanding of an analysis of parliamentary debates, syllabi, teaching material and the school practice. The latter includes the classroom settings and the so-called alternative teaching material like scholarly resources on the Holocaust like films, visits to museums, to concentration and extermination camps or the use of testimony from Holocaust survivors.
Abstract: This dissertation is an ethnography of children and young people growing up Jewish in Luxembourg. It focuses on the students of a Talmud Torah class in a Liberal synagogue that, in recent years, has drawn increasing numbers of highly mobile, multilingual families from around the world. As these students learn how to be Jewish and carry on Jewish tradition, they simultaneously explore what it means to be modern and to be modern Jews. This process pushes them to confront a series of ambiguities and apparent paradoxes across the contexts of their everyday lives – in Talmud Torah, at home, and at school. Based on 31 months of fieldwork, this dissertation reveals the nuanced semiotic ideologies and competing visions of modernity that become visible through the lens of the students' Talmud Torah learning, including learning to read Hebrew, engaging with religious texts, and participating in ritual performance, and their school experiences. The students grapple with, navigate, and position themselves in relation to these different 'projects of modernity' as they work to make sense of and bring together the aims of Jewish continuity and liberal modernity and all that these entail. By exploring these processes, this dissertation aims to participate in the anthropological conversation about 'modernities' and 'the modern' as a project that is both embracing of the liberal, the secular, and inclusivity and can be powerfully normative, constraining, and exclusionary, and to encourage us as anthropologists and teachers to think about how we might leave open the possibility for nuance and alternative attachments, desires, goals, mobilities, and ways of being in the classroom and beyond.
Abstract: Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the economic uncertainties and anxieties around the virus have been weaponised by a broad range of extremists, conspiracy theorists and disinformation actors, who have sought to propagandise, radicalise and mobilise captive online audiences during global lockdowns. Antisemitic hate speech is often a common feature of these diverse threats, with dangerous implications for public safety, social cohesion and democracy. But the Covid-19 crisis has only served to exacerbate a worrying trend in terms of online antisemitism. A 2018 Fundamental Rights Agency survey on Experiences and Perceptions of Antisemitism among Jews in the EU found nearly nine in ten respondents considered online antisemitism a problem. Eight in ten encountered antisemitic abuse online. This report, conducted by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), presents a data-driven snapshot of the proliferation of Covid-19 related online antisemitic content in French and German on Twitter, Facebook and Telegram. The study provides insight into the nature and volume of antisemitic content across selected accounts in France and Germany, analysing the platforms where such content is found, as well as the most prominent antisemitic narratives – comparing key similarities and differences between these different language contexts. The findings of this report draw on data analysis using social listening tools and natural language processing software, combined with qualitative analysis. Covering the period from January 2020 until March 2021 to build insights around the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on online antisemitism, the Executive Summary International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism was used to identify channels containing antisemitic content, before developing keyword lists to identify antisemitic expressions widely used on these channels.
Abstract: This report presents the main findings of FRA’s second survey on Jewish people’s experiences and perceptions of hate crime, discrimination and antisemitism. It analyses data from the responses of 16,395 selfidentified Jewish people (aged 16 or over) in 12 EU Member States – Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. These Member States are home to over 96 % of the EU’s estimated Jewish population. In addition to the 12 EU Member States mentioned above, FRA also carried out the survey in Latvia. Due to the low response level to the online dissemination campaign in Latvia, changes in recruitment methodology and data collection were applied. While the survey was able to reach more respondents in this way, the changes in the respondent recruitment and data collection methods limit the scope for comparisons between Latvia and the other survey countries.
Topics: Jewish Future, Strategic Planning, Globalisation, Israel-Diaspora Relations, Diaspora, Antisemitism, Main Topic: Other, Demography, Jewish Identity, Jewish Community, Jewish Status, Jewish Education, Religious Observance and Practice
