The end of the year is the time to take stock and review, so those who keep track of the bad news come out with their reports: anti-Semitism is alive and adding its unhealthy influence around the world.
Planning ahead for anti-Jewish 2011 is the UN General Assembly's Durban III Conference commemorating the excesses of the first "Durban Conference on Racism" which turned into a "festival of racism against Israel and the Jewish people." That's a quote from Canadian Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff. Canada has already stated that it will not attend the 2011 Conference given the anti-Semitism that was on display at Durban I and II: "with groups distributing handouts praising Adolf Hitler and featuring caricatures reviving ancient stereotypes of hook-nosed Jews thirsting for gentile blood." We're not talking about subtle hints of anti-Semitism, here. Hopefully, the US will step up soon to announce that we're joining with Canada in not attending. It does seem like Canada speaks out more quickly than the US these days against Israel-bashing.
The Simon Weisenthal Center brought out a list of the Top 10 anti-Semitic slurs of 2010 and called it "AntiSemitism Goes Mainstream" since 9 of the 10 slurs come from famous and respected people--Helen Thomas, Oliver Stone, and Malaysia's former Premier, Matatir Mohammed -- whose words (and this is good news) at least caused a negative reaction. Many people do notice and object when anti-Semites come out and say what they have been thinking. The Center's Number 10 mainstream spot goes to all those non-famous, anonymous haters who post their creepy statements all over the Internet.
Hate speech is bad but of course hate action is worse. The FBI published its hate crimes data for 2009 this month. In the US, 71.9% of religion-based hate crimes were perpetrated against Jews. 8.4% were against Muslims and 6.2% against Christians (Catholics and Protestants combined). As many commentators have said, that Jews are by far the most likely to experience religion-hate crimes does not seem to be well documented by the media.
If you're looking for desecration of Jewish cemeteries and synagogues, or dangerous places for religious Jews to take a stroll, The Anti-Defamation League has this list of "selected anti-Semitic incidents" around the world. There's a lot of action in Europe -- France, Sweden, Belgium, Germany -- and the list doesn't even include the Netherlands whose former EU commissioner says that he can see "no future" for Jews in the Netherlands. The reason? "...anti-Semitism, in particular, of Dutch-Moroccans..."
All this anti-Jewish activity and we haven't even got to the Arab/Muslim world. Let's wait until 2011 to talk about that.
Happy New Year.
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