Anti-Semitism in Europe Today Comes Mostly from the Left

Fiamma Nirenstein

Against all odds, after only 70 years since the Holocaust’s massacre of six million Jews, including two million children on European soil, anti-Semitism is dramatically on the rise in thought, rhetoric, and deed. This time around, however, hatred for the Jews has taken a nationalistic, ethnic character that is supported by obsessive incitement, which uses classical styles of anti-Semitism – both religious and political – and transforms the latter into the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. Together, this has led to daily incitement against the state of the Jewish people, Israel, and also extends to Jewish communities in the Diaspora.

In 2016, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) reported 1,661 anti-Semitic attacks, 240 of which directly targeted individuals.1 Data from the Anti-Defamation League describes a situation in which one in four individuals in Western Europe harbors anti-Semitic attitudes.2 However, it is not only a matter of attitudes, but also of an uninterrupted trail of blood: in 2012, a teacher and three children were gunned down in front of a Jewish school by the French-Algerian Mohammed Merah; in 2014, four people were slaughtered at the Jewish Museum in Brussels by Mehdi Nemmouche, an ISIS terrorist; in 2015, four more were left dead at the Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Paris, again at the hands of an Islamic extremist linked to the Kouachi brothers, who perpetuated the Charlie Hebdo massacre two days earlier. Many cruel murders have, with heinous determination, been carried out against individuals solely because they were Jews: Ilan Halimi, Sarah Halimi, Mireille Knoll, etc.

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