the Night between 18 and 19 February this year, was vandalized jewish cemetery in the small Quatzenheim, a few miles outside Strasbourg. 94 gravestones spray painted with swastikas. Two stones skändades with the right-wing tributes.
One of them is the grave of Francis Bloch’s mom and dad.
” A woman who has been there and gone with the dog called in the morning and told her what had happened. I was of course shocked. It is hard when it’s about your parents, ” he says.
most of the time. But the letters of anas for examining the surface carefully. The older, porösare the stones, has been damaged during the clean-up.
” It has happened that young people who partied a lördagsnatt behaved idiotically and overturned jewish graves. But this was politically and professionally. They worked quietly and quickly. Not even the dogs around here woke up, ” says Francis Bloch.
the police investigation is still ongoing.
from the EU’s agency for fundamental rights experience of many jews that anti-semitism is rising in Europe. In the survey, which covered the twelve member states, found nearly 90 per cent of the 16.500 that said that anti-semitism had increased in the last five years.
for the EUROPEAN elections in may increasing right-wing populist and extreme parties in the opinion polls. If it leads to that anti-semitic views will have an impact in the election campaign is too early to say.
Francis Bloch at the parents ‘ grave that skändades in Quatzenheim.
anti-Semitism is found in varying degrees in the european far-right parties, according to professor R Daniel Kelemen, at the american Rutgersuniversitet in New Jersey where he is an expert in EU policy.
– Some are neo-fascist parties with leaders who explicitly use anti-semitic concepts, as Golden Dawn in Greece. Much more common is to use a more understood language addressed to the voters who are tempted by anti-semitism, ” he says.
it is above all not to make himself impossible as regeringsunderlag or in other political collaborations.
“He is an excellent example of it,” says R Daniel Kelemen.
Kelemen points out how the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, often talking about his friendship with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that he supports Israel.
– He connects it with his islamophobia and its islamfobi. He says that the biggest threat to jews are muslim immigrants and western european governments who allow them to come. At the same time, he uses anti-semitic imagery and language in their propaganda campaigns, ” says R Daniel Kelemen.
Now attracts Fidesz voters from Jobbik, with its anti-semitic undertones
mainly on how the financier and philanthropist George Soros was demonized in Hungary. Kelemen cites how the government talks about ”fighting against an enemy who is different than us, which is international and has great power”.
– In all this talk of an international conspiracy happens to be the symbolizing the plot to be a jewish banker, ” he says.
Michiel Luining, an associate professor in the Dutch Leidenuniversitet, follow the political developments in Hungary. He points out that the far-right Jobbik is the party that is usually linked with anti-semitism and that has been the Fidesz great competitor.
– Now attracts Fidesz voters from Jobbik, with its anti-semitic undertones, ” says Michiel Luining.
the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, on the way into the european Parliament in Brussels. Photo: Francisco Seco/AP
Fidesz can show up good arguments to claim that it is not anti-semitic.
– Fidesz can point to the one introduced laws for zero tolerance against anti-semitism and commemorates the Holocaust.
anti-Semitism is also on the left wing in Europe. Most attention is fracas in the british Labour party. Leading politicians have left the party in protest. They believe that the party leader Jeremy Corbyn does not deal with the currents.
” No, but ways to attack it is different. The two most common in european history was the cosmopolitan jew who ruthlessly wanted to push through socialism and to destroy the pure nation, and the international banker who controlled capitalism, ” says R Daniel Kelemen.
If it will be bad for muslims it will be bad for the jews, also
the last time openly flirted with jewish voters. For example, France’s Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National collection. Similar winds blow in the Netherlands.
William Eichson, the leader of a brussels-based organisation for progressive jews, sees this as a way for extremist to attract new groups of the electorate.
– IN the united states is trying to Donald Trump to attract jewish voters, he exemplifies.
Eichson do not believe that a tougher rhetoric against muslims, as these parties drives, favors the jews.
“If it will be bad for muslims it will be bad for jews as well,” he says.
