EJC President Moshe Kantor: We have to be prepared that pandemic-fed conspiracy theories could lead to greater physical attacks on Jews when lockdowns end.”
Worrying trends continued in Germany and the USA. In Germany, a rise was recorded in the total number of incidents, with the opposition to vaccines generating comparisons to the Holocaust, and continued desecration of Jewish memorials and cemeteries.
European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor warned that “we have to be prepared that pandemic-fed conspiracy theories could lead to greater physical attacks on Jews when lockdowns end.”
The significant rise in extremism and the widespread increase in antisemitic conspiracy over the last year could have profound effects on Jewish communities in a post-pandemic world, said Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, at the presentation of the Annual Report on Antisemitism Worldwide 2020, by the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University.
Applied to American Jews, the “white privilege” concept oversimplifies and misstates a complicated history.
Anzia Yezierska once romanticized by Hollywood.
Making the battle against antisemitism relevant to individual branches of government, or to educators, will help to monitor, identify, respond to, and counteract antisemitism in the open or in dark corners of society across the European continent and beyond.
In 2016, the IHRA, a consortium of countries committed to Holocaust education and remembrance, adopted a working definition of antisemitism. It was not intended to be a detailed, deep dive into the causes and manifestations of this millennia-old hatred. It was meant, rather, to speak to categories of Jew-hatred, both classic and contemporary.