Sweden: Members of far-right party caught making anti-Semitic statements online

Via JTA:

Regional politicians from the far-right Sweden Democrats party were caught making anti-Semitic statements online, including using a picture of Anne Frank to mock Holocaust victims.

Per Olsson, who represents the party on the city council of Oskarshamn, a coastal Swedish city, posted earlier this year a picture of Frank captioned “coolest Jew in the shower room” on the Russian social network VKontakt, the Expressen daily reported Friday.

The Expressen report was part of a project in which journalists for that daily and the Expo magazine looked into the digital footprint of many politicians from various parties ahead of the country’s September 9 general and local elections.

Sweden Democrats is currently in third place according to various polls, with 18.7 percent of the vote. Its share was just under 13 percent in the 2014 elections.

The journalists also found anti-Semitic material on the social media accounts of Raghu Jacobsen, who represents the party on the city council of Stenungsund, located in western Sweden.

“As long as Rothschild controls the economy and with the modern slavery on this planet, there will be anti-Semitism. #Jews #israel,” he wrote in English in February on Twitter.

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France: Politician calls Macron ‘President Rothschild’

Obviously Mr Di Filippo would not have called President Macron, the Société Générale or BNP President. The reference to Jewish bankers is clear.

Via JTA:

A top representative of French Jewry condemned harshly what he called anti-Semitic rhetoric of a Republican politician who called the republic’s leader “President Rothschild.”

Francis Kalifat, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, on Thursday wrote on Twitter that he considered “revolting” Fabien Di Filippo, The Republicans’ secretary general, message on the same platform about President Emmanuel Macron.

“Following the revolting tweet, featuring anti-Semitic language from the 1930s, of the secretary general of The Republicans,” Kalifat wrote, he has asked that party’s president, Laurent Wauquiez, to issue “a firm condemnation” and an “:exemplary sanction” of Di Filippo.

But Di Filippo on Twitter denied that he had made any anti-Semitic references in his tweet about Macron, who used to work for the Rothchild Bank after joining it in 2008.

“Naturally, the expression ‘President Rothschild’ was a reference to the past functions of banker Emmanuel Macron,” Di Filippo wrote, adding Macron was “disconnected from our realities.” His reference to the Jewish banker family “had no other connotation,” he added.

The same in the UK.  Via Guido Fawkes:

Black-t-shirted Corbyn outrider Aaron Bastani has been hitting out at former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks for calling Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite. His recent attack is nothing new, here are a selection of old tweets railing against Goldman Sachs, Rothschilds, Meyer Rothschild, Philip Green, Alain de Botton‏ and Peter Mandelson:

Greece: Anarchists raid Ministry in protest against Israel "genocide" of Palestinians

Via Greek City Times (H/T Watch Anti-Semitism in Europe):

Two anarchists of the anti-establishment group Rouvikonas stormed into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in downtown Athens on Tuesday early morning after scaling the buildings gates.

The anarchists left a bag containing a Palestinian flag as well as photographs depicting Palestinians killed during recent clashes with Israel’s armed forces.

The group was protesting Greece’s cooperation with Israel and a video of the raid was posted on the anti-authoritarian website.

The footage shows two members of Rouvikonas climbing the ministry’s metal gate and entering its courtyard unimpeded. “This time, we decided to take a symbolic action, depositing a bag that contained a Palestinian flag and a few pictures, in the courtyard of the foreign ministry. They were photographs of the dead from the last ‘episode’ in the genocide of a people, triggered by the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, by a diachronically of the Greek state, the US”, Rouvikonas highlighted in a post on the anti-authority website.

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UK: Corbyn's antisemitism isn't a scandal, it's a strategy

Via The Weekly Standard (Tamara Berens):

[…] an old video recently resurfaced of Jeremy Corbyn linking a terror attack in Egypt to “the hand of Israel.” The 2012 interview on Iranian-owned Press TV saw him pedal anti-Israel conspiracy theories in a discussion of a bombing where 16 Egyptian policemen were killed in the Sinai desert. His comments from 2012 were defended last week by a Labour party spokesperson, who asserted that his “speculation” had been factually based on previous Israeli actions in Egypt.  

Many focus on the question of whether Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite himself. He may or may not be. However, his deliberate actions to reject the Jewish community’s concerns, silence his moderate Labour detractors, and pedal anti-Zionism as central to his political image show that he is more than happy to utilize antisemitism for political purposes.

Anti-Zionism—and by extension, giving credence to antisemites—is fundamental to the worldview Corbyn has cultivated on his journey to political stardom. For most of his political career, Corbyn was a fringe socialist politician and supporter of the USSR, Syria’s Assad, the Iranian Ayatollahs and Maduro’s Venezuela. After becoming Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn toned down some of this support for radical anti-Western groups. Nonetheless, he has consistently maintained his support for anti-Zionist causes. What’s undoubtable is that throughout his career, his ultimate goal has remained the same; rejecting Western values and embracing the alliance between radical socialists and Islamists in a strategic bid to normalize and implement socialism in the UK.

Politically, Corbyn’s strategy is working: According to a recent YouGov poll, 61 percent of the party believes Corbyn is handling accusations of antisemitism well. And 80 percent of the party deems him a good leader overall. The events of the past few weeks indicate that the Labour leadership has been able to build on their apparent success to formally distance themselves from the overwhelmingly Zionist British-Jewish community. This perhaps became most apparent last Friday, when Jeremy Corbyn published another article in The Guardian disregarding his part in normalizing antisemitism in the party. The piece came out at 5pm, when the majority of Jews in the country were busy preparing for the Sabbath.

The reality is that support from the Jewish community is no longer an indispensable part of the Labour party. In fact, Corbyn’s foreign policy—a large aspect of his political differences to Blair’s Labour—rests on weakening UK-Israel relations. Corbyn has constructed a successful strategy for claiming the Labour party as his own socialist vehicle for disruption of the Western liberal order. Labeling recent events a “scandal” greatly underestimates the strategic nature of his leadership. 

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UK: The Labour Party has officially become institutionally antisemitic

Via Archbishop Cranmer blog:

It has long been suspected that Jeremy Corbyn has a problem with Jews (if not known that he is antipathetic to Judaism, defends antisemitic conspiracy theorists, and accommodates Jew-hatred), but to learn that the Labour Party itself now inclines to its leader’s worldview is somewhat disturbing.

Yesterday Labour’s NEC approved its organisational sub-committee decision not to endorse the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. So Labour does not accept:

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

The concern is that such a definition embraces the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, and would, for example, inhibit the expression or belief that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour. Labour doesn’t want to muddy the water between Jew-hatred (which is antisemitic and racist) and Israel-hatred (which is enlightened and progressive), so the IHRA definition has been rejected. Instead, Labour is going to consult on developing its own definition. […] 

You can’t imagine Labour adopting a definition of ‘Islamophobia‘ which Muslims could not accept, or a definition of ‘homophobia‘ which LGBT people could not accept. Jeremy Corbyn would be immensely concerned if Muslims and gays suddenly starting deserting his party of such an issue, and no doubt Labour MPs would act swiftly to stem the flow. So why single out the Jews for special treatment?

Unless…

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Iceland: What do Icelanders really think about Israel? (video)

Via Rudy Rochman:

On the way to Iceland, I was told that many Icelanders were against Israel and that their media had been feeding them lies for years. I was also told that they had recently started a petition to boycott the Eurovision competition in Israel next year. 

Rudy Rochman Facebook

UK: Bigoted columnist: Jews ‘Poisoning the wells’

Via Honest Reporting:

Update:

Shortly following our complaint, the Daily Mail has made a shocking edit to Peter Oborne’s article, adding the words “according to a number of respectable sources” to justify the blatantly antisemitic allegation promoted by Oborne. The Daily Mail’s reaction is almost as sickening as Oborne’s original offense.

Original article:

The official visit of future British monarch, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, to Israel has, so far, been a very positive event. It’s disappointing then to see British journalist and commentator Peter Oborne using this opportunity to write a nasty anti-Israel piece in the Daily Mail.

It’s disgusting, however to see Oborne spreading blatant antisemitism:

Yes, you read that correctly – Oborne is charging Israeli settlers with poisoning Palestinian wells, which he claims to have personally witnessed.

Jews poisoning the wells is a classic antisemitic canard that dates back to Medieval European times when Jews were accused of being responsible for spreading disease such as the Black Death. This in turn led to massacres of Jewish communities. (…)  

Oborne makes this antisemitic claim only a few years after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas retracted the very same charge made in a June 23, 2016 speech to the European Parliament.

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UK: Court forces apology from Israeli-born antisemitic activist for libeling of Jewish campaigner

Via The Algemeiner:

One of Britain’s most vocal antisemites was handed a humiliating court defeat in London on Monday.

Gilad Atzmon, an Israeli-born jazz musician and conspiracy theorist who refers to himself as a “former Jew,” was forced to deliver an apology in the High Court to Gideon Falter, the chairman of the UK’s Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA). Atzmon will also have to pay undisclosed costs in legal fees and damages that the CAA described as “substantial.”

The CAA sued Atzmon for libel over an article he published in July 2017 entitled “Antisemitism is a Business Plan.” In the piece, Atzmon falsely claimed that “Falter and the CAA obviously fabricate antisemitic incidents” and that “Falter and the CAA need the Jews to be hated so they can collect more and more British taxpayer money.”

Unable to substantiate these and other charges against the CAA as summarized by High Court Justice Matthew Nicklin, Atzmon capitulated. Falter said afterward in a statement that he was “delighted” to have “been able to set the record straight and expose one such antisemitic liar for what he truly is.”

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Ukraine: Jews want to drown Ukraine in blood, Ukraine's Military Prosecutor says

Via Newsweek:

In an extensive interview with the Ukrainian news outlet Insider, Anatoliy Matios, Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor, espoused anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in which he implied that Jews want to drown ethnic Slavs in blood.

Referring to Alexander Parvus, a Belarussian-born Marxist theoretician who was active in Germany’s Social Democratic Party in the late 19th century, and who also happened to be Jewish, Matios claimed that Jews can be found financing all great conflicts.

“In each war, there is always a Parvus, who brought Lenin money for a revolution which flooded Slavs with blood for decades. Parvus was also Jewish. In this case, they want to do the same to Ukraine,” Matios told the Insider.

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Germany: Himmler's daughter Gudrun has died (obituary)

Gudrun with her parents, Margarete and Heinrich Himmler

Via The Telegraph:

Gudrun Burwitz, who has died aged 88, was known in her youth as Gudrun Himmler and was the only legitimate child of the SS Reichsfuhrer, Heinrich Himmler, the sinister chief architect of the Holocaust.  

She was 16 when the war ended and her father cheated the hangman by crushing a cyanide pill between his teeth after being captured by British forces. She was by no means alone among “Nazikinder” in having to bear the consequences of crimes she did not commit, but unlike the sons of Hitler’s number two, Martin Bormann, and “Dr Death” Aribert Heim, who grew up to express horror at their parents’ crimes, Gudrun remained loyal to her father’s memory and spent her life supporting Stille Hilfe (“Silent Help”), a “charitable” organisation which aids former Nazis. (…)

Gudrun Burwitz had been politically active since soon after the end of the war, joining Stille Hilfe and supporting the founding of the “Wiking-Jugend”, an underground Neo-Nazi organisation modelled on the Hitlerjugend, in 1952.

In 1955, with Adolf von Ribbentrop, the son of the former Nazi Foreign Minister, she travelled to London at the invitation of Sir Oswald Mosley and addressed a meeting of his Union Movement party, telling her audience that her father was a great man who had been misunderstood and whose good name had been destroyed by the Jews.

Stille Hilfe operated covertly from 1946, initially aiding the escape of Nazi fugitives over Allied lines, particularly to South America. From 1951, when it went from being covert to overt, registering with the German authorities so that it could raise funds to help “prisoners of war and interned persons”, Gudrun became increasingly active in the organisation. Stille Hilfe is known to have aided some of the Third Reich’s most prominent officers, including the Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher Of Lyon”; Martin Sommer, the “Hangman From Buchenwald”; and Artur Axmann, head of the Hitler Youth.

As a central figure in the organisation Gudrun Burwitz arranged a comfortable retirement for Anton Malloth, or “Beautiful Tony” as he had been known in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechosolvakia where, after beating Jews to death, he was known to comb his dishevelled hair back with his swastika badge.

In 1948 Malloth had been sentenced to death in his absence by a Czech court, but Gudrun Burwitz later used Stille Hilfe funds to rent him a comfortable room in a old people’s home in Munich. In 2001, when he was finally prosecuted in Germany, she continued to visit him twice a month until his death from cancer in 2002. He is said to have bequeathed her all his personal possessions. Another beneficiary of her largesse was Martin Sandberger, the leader of an elite SS squad responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews, communists and Gypsies in the occupied Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and whom she cared for in a retirement home in Stuttgart until his death in 2010.

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Holland: Muslim city counselor tweeted "Oh Allah, destroy the Zionists"

Via Bad News from the Netherlands blog:

Arnoud van Doorn, a Muslim member of the Municipal Council in the Hague tweeted that he read an interesting article about whether the 'good people' won the second World War or were the Nazis the protectors of the European civilization against American Zionism and the communism of Stalin. He added that there is perhaps a distortion of history here.

A month ago he tweeted "Oh Allah, destroy the Zionists."

read more in Dutch @ AD.NL

Spain: 50 Spanish cities and regions have passed motions condemning Israel

Via Gatestone Institute (Soeren Kern):

Valencia, the third-largest city in Spain, has approved a motion to boycott Israel and slander it by declaring the city an "Israeli apartheid-free zone." The move comes days after Navarra, one of Spain's 17 autonomous communities, announced a similar measure. In all, more than 50 Spanish cities and regions have passed motions condemning Israel. The proliferating anti-Israel activism, driven by the rise to power of the political far-left, is establishing Spain as the EU member state most hostile towards the Jewish state.

The Valencian measure, introduced by the far-left party València en Comú, was approved during a plenary session of the city council on May 31. The motion, which commits the city to refrain from engaging in business contacts or cultural events with Israeli authorities or companies, aims at establishing Valencia as "a global reference for solidarity with the Palestinians."

The motion, which libelously describes Israel as an "apartheid regime," accuses the Jewish state of "colonialism," "racism," "ethnic cleansing," "tyranny," and "genocide." The measure, which claims to reflect the "dignity, solidarity and justness" of the Valencian people, was introduced by Neus Fábregas Santana, a city councilor whose Twitter feed reveals an obsession with demonizing and delegitimizing Israel.

Santana works closely with a group called BDS País Valencia, the local branch of a worldwide movement trying to delegitimize Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

BDS País Valencia is currently promoting a Spanish documentary about the Gaza Strip called "Gas the Arabs," a title that alleges, falsely, that the Jews in Israel are doing to the Arabs today what the Nazis in Germany did to the Jews during the Second World War. 

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UK: Parliamentary candidate posted about "Holocaust-mongers"

Via Guido Fawkes:

Earlier this week Labour’s parliamentary candidate in the marginal seat of North Swindon was forced to distance herself from a Twitter account which sent a string of shocking anti-Semitic tweets. Kate Linnegar denied all responsibility for the posts from a Swindon People’s Assembly account which used her face as the profile picture.  

Well, Guido has found some more posts on her personal Facebook page, which she definitely did post herself. The first link to an interview with Norman Finkelstein accuses moderate Labour MPs who criticised Naz Shah over her anti-Semitism scandal of being “Holocaust-mongers”, and defends Shah and Ken Livingstone.

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Germany/UK: Munich mayor accuses Rogers Waters of antisemitism

Via The Jerusalem Post (Benjamin Weinthal):

Mayor Dieter Reiter

Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter slammed Roger Waters, co-founder of the British band Pink Floyd, for his stoking of antisemitism against Israel, triggering an angry reaction from the singer on Friday.

Waters’s attorney demanded that Reiter delete his press statement accusing Waters of antisemitism. Reiter said Waters is responsible for “growing, intolerable antisemitic statements.”  

Reiters office said a city attorney will review Water's request.

Waters performed a concert on Wednesday in Munich’s Olympic Hall. Reiter said it was not possible to prevent the hall from being rented to Waters. However, Reiter said the Olympic Hall will not be rented to Waters in the future, due to his advocacy of the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) campaign against the Jewish state.

Reiter said it “is important for me to make it unmistakably clear ahead of the concert that antisemitic propaganda of Roger Waters is neither welcome in Munich nor will it remain unanswered.”

The Munich city council passed a resolution that the mayor supported last year barring space in public facilities and finances for pro-BDS activity. Munich was the first German city to pass anti-BDS legislation.

Waters’s lawyer said Reiter’s allegations resemble a call to boycott him.

Waters himself has previously said he was the victim of the “Jewish lobby” that was “extraordinarily powerful.”

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Europe: It’s no fun being a Rothschild in Europe these days

Via The Jerusalem Post:

Twenty years ago, few people in Europe thought of the Rothschilds as Jews. As far as the general public was concerned, they were French bankers and philanthropists. “Rothschild was a brand name,” Baroness Ariane de Rothschild told The Jerusalem Post this week.

The baroness – who heads the Edmond de Rothschild Caesarea Foundation and is a banking and finance expert in her own right – was in Israel for the inauguration of the Crusader Wall Promenade in Caesarea.

She was also receiving an Honorary Doctorate from the Haifa Technion, in recognition of her commitment to making higher education accessible to all young Israelis, especially those from minority groups – particularly their women – who for economic reasons seldom go beyond a Master’s in academia.

The baroness said that the Internet is now crawling with conspiracy theories and statements of outright hatred in connection with the Rothschilds. 

“Antisemitism in Europe is a big worry, and can be felt very strongly,” she said. “There’s a lot of pressure, and it’s a very big problem. The extreme Right is popping up everywhere.”

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French-Muslim activist denies tweet of famous Jews is ‘hit list’

Via The Times of Israel:

A French Muslim anti-colonialism activist on Thursday denied posting a “hit list” of Jewish groups and individuals while referencing a popular TV character.

Sihame Assbague last week posted a list of names of individuals and groups, accompanied by a GIF of a character from the series “Game of Thrones,” from a scene in which she lists the people she intends to kill.

It included the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities; the Socialist Jewish politician Julien Dray; former prime minister Manuel Valls — a supporter of Israel, whose ex-wife and children are Jews; and the radical left-wing politician Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is not Jewish.

But Assbague told the Times of Israel on Thursday that her post “was absolutely not a ‘hit list,'” and was a joking reference to a meme used by many online to denote “people or things that have upset them.” She said the names on her list were those of people or bodies who “distinguished themselves by their Islamophobia.” 

The tweet by Assbague — whom the LICRA civil rights watchdog has accused frequently of spreading racist views on Jews – prompted a reply from the official Twitter account of Al Kanz, which is one of France’s best-read Muslim news websites.

The Al Kanz staffer who wrote the reply added nine more names, including the Jewish philosophers Raphael Enthoven and Alain Finkielkraut; the French-Jewish historian Eric Zemmour; the French-Jewish journalist Elisabeth Levy; and several other writers with critical views on Islam and radical Islam.

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France: Posters show French president wearing Nazi uniform and Israeli flag

Via JTA:

Left-wing protesters against French President Emmanuel Macron paraded in Paris with a poster of him wearing a Nazi uniform and an Israeli flag — prompting legal action by a watchdog on anti-Semitism.

In the poster carried Friday by protesters against the centrist leader’s economic reform, he was wearing a black uniform emblazoned with his initials and two dollars signs instead of the SS symbol of the elite Nazi unit known by that acronym. The flag featured on the figure’s right-hand upper arm.

The National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, or BNVCA, complained to police that the poster was incitement to hatred and violence.

“We consider this an unacceptable outrage against the head of state, the republic and all the victims of the Holocaust as well as to the State of Israel,” BNVCA wrote in a statement Monday about the complaint. The protest was organized by the French General Confederation of Labour trade union

and the far-left party of Jean-Luc Melenchon, a communist politician who has been accused of inciting hatred toward Jews.

CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish communities, said it considers both Melenchon’s Insuppressible France party and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front “movement based on hatred” and has refused to meet with officials of either party.

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France: 53% believe Zionism = Jewish Conspiracy

Via Europe 1/JDD (in French):

A poll commissioned by the UEJF (Union of French Jewish Students) on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the creation of Israel has revealed that 53% of the French believe that Zionism is the product of a Jewish conspiracy.

For them "Zionism is an international organization that aims to influence the world and society in favour of the Jews". 50% believe that Zionism is a racist ideology. And an amazing 69% that Zionism is an ideology used to justify Israel’s policy of occupation and colonization of Palestinian territories

 

Holland: Antisemitic cabaret program on Dutch socialist television channel

Via Bad News from the Netherlands blog:

A cabaret program on the Dutch Socialist VARA television by Sanne Wallis de Vries has used Israel's Eurovision winning song as a parody.  

Her text contains antisemitic motifs such as jokes about Jews and money.  

It also accuses Israel of using Buk rockets which Israel does not have. These rockets were used to bring down a plane of mainly Dutch passengers in the Ukraine. They all died.

read more in Dutch here

Europe: Treatment of Jews is a “seismograph” for society says EU coordinator on combatting anti-Semitism

Via Politico:

Katharina von Schnurbein is firmly in the political spotlight. As the European Commission’s coordinator on combatting anti-Semitism, von Schnurbein finds herself in the middle of questionable, difficult and downright nasty behavior.

Multiple reports show that anti-Semitism is rising across Europe, and at times the rhetoric comes from leading politicians.

For every show of inclusion from Europeans — such as last week’s victory by Netta, Israel’s entry in the Eurovision Song Contest — discussion about anti-Semitism becomes complicated by political controversy, such as Israeli Defense Forces killing more than 50 people in Gaza during protests against the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

Von Schnurbein feels the debate should look at not just extreme behavior but all of society. “To some extent the floodgates are open and anti-Semitism is expressed more openly [today]. Conspiracy theories are found in the middle of society. Teachers who have lost a compass as to what is anti-Semitism and therefore do not react properly in school when Jewish students are being harassed. Judges who think that throwing Molotov cocktails into a synagogue is a legitimate expression of a political opinion.”

Citing growing harassment of staff at the Auschwitz concentration camp museum, von Schnurbein said “it is not for nothing that in most EU countries it is necessary to have security in front of Jewish institutions”

What can people do in their everyday lives to combat anti-Semitism? “Fighting anti-Semitism in the end is a question of civic courage. It’s not easy to fight it in your own environment but this is where it starts. In your own party, with your own parents, your own sports club, to react when you hear something at a dinner party. It’s that kind of civic courage that we need and that will in the end change the situation.”

Von Schnurbein said treatment of Jews is a “seismograph” for society, citing the number of terror attacks against Jewish targets in Europe that included attacks in Paris, Brussels and Nice. Rising anti-Semitism “is a sign that something’s going wrong in society and therefore it needs to be tackled also by society at large.”

There is also “imported anti-Semitism,” often from migrants from Muslim-majority countries. Von Schnurbein said it’s important not to stigmatize a whole community but to recognize there is a problem. Criticism of Israeli policies is not anti-Semitic, she said, but questioning the right of Israel to exist and the right of Jewish people to self-determination is.

The ultimate aim of her work: “Normality for Jews in Europe” so they do not have to second-guess their movements and life choices in order to enjoy their basic freedoms and rights.