Anti-Semitic incidents in Germany have increased sharply, especially with the new Middle East war. The numbers are also increasing in other countries. A new initiative is intended to provide an overview.
A new EU initiative is intended to record anti-Semitic incidents across Europe and thus provide a cross-national overview of the extent of anti-Semitism. For this purpose, the European Network for Monitoring Anti-Semitism (Enma) was founded in Berlin.
“You have to make anti-Semitism visible in order to be able to fight it,” said the European Commission’s anti-Semitism commissioner, Katharina von Schnurbein. Obtaining an adequate picture of anti-Semitism in society is a prerequisite for adequately informing politicians and decision-makers. Since Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7 last year, a “tsunami of anti-Semitism” has been seen.
According to the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), anti-Semitic incidents are under-reported: only eight out of ten people who experience anti-Semitism report it. It was too “inconvenient” to report this, said von Schnurbein. The Enma network, which brings together Jewish and non-Jewish civil society organizations from various European countries, aims to lower the threshold for reporting such incidents to the police.
The Federal Government’s anti-Semitism commissioner, Felix Klein, explained that all anti-Semitic incidents could be reported in the most direct, quick and uncomplicated way. This information would then be collected, verified, analyzed and published. The data collected in this way paints a picture that more realistically reflects the reality of anti-Semitism in the countries.
The managing director of the Federal Association of the Rias Anti-Semitism Reporting Center, Benjamin Steinitz, spoke of a milestone in anti-Semitism research and prevention. “Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe, but too little is known about its transnational dimension,” he emphasized.
Source: Stern
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