Poland: “how can you look at a swastika and not care?"

Poles form Facebook group to wipe away anti-Semitism - literally

To date some 80 pictures of racist daubing have been posted, mostly of anti-Semitic messages. One, for example, read “Auschwitz-Birkenau” and another, “Jews, out!” But there has also been anti-Islamic graffiti. Some of the slogans have been removed; others are still waiting for good people to come paint them over. 

One of the organizers is Kalina Lewandowska, 28, who was born and raised in Warsaw and works for a large advertising agency. She was disturbed by the indifference of many Poles to the offensive slogans scrawled on local buildings. 

“People have stopped seeing them. They become less aware and less sensitive,” she says. “But how can you look at a swastika and not care? It's terrible, and you find it in so many places – in cities, towns and villages across Poland,” she told Haaretz by telephone this week.

More: Haaretz

President of the CeR: Jews caught between Islam and intolerant Europe

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, President of the Conference of European Rabbis, spoke at the organization's conference, currently held in Berlin.  Rabbi Goldschmidt spoke on the topic "Is There a Future for Jewish Life in Europe?"

(translation from Kikar Hashabat, if anybody has the original, please post in comments)

I want to be very clear about what's happening in Europe today - the Muslim presence is only growing and is reaching unprecedented proportions. In France today more Muslims go to the mosque than Christians go to Church. 

(...) 

Everybody feels that there's a war between Christianity and Islam. They're wrong.  There's a war between Islam and an anti-religious, intolerant Europe.  We Jews are caught in the middle, we understand the war is not against us, but as a lesson of the past, you have to stop these serious phenomenon which are threatening the foundations of our existence.  These initiatives are not void of antisemitism, and you owe it first and foremost to yourselves.

Thorbjørn Jagland,  Secretary General of the Council of Europe, also spoke to the forum.  Rabbi Goldschmidt told him: "Thank you for coming and reminding us that Jews are still wanted in Europe, and that European institutions will act to preserve Jewish rights in the continent."

Update: JTA reports Rabbi Goldschmidt said:

European Jewry is “the collateral damage in this anti-Muslim offensive,” he said.

IJC chairman: "Anti-Israel propaganda... justifies anti-Semitism"

In an Israel Jewish Congress event at the Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Committee, IJC chairman Vladimir Sloutsker warned that anti-Semites try to hide behind anti-Israel sentiment. 

“Anti-Israel propaganda puts in the minds of Europeans that Israel is inhumane, repressive and denies the human rights of non-Jews, which justifies anti-Semitism and makes people believe Jews deserve to be attacked,” Sloutsker warned. 

Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Committee chairman Yoel Razbozov called for Jewish communities around the world to report anti-Semitism to the panel so it can “act aggressively” against the phenomenon; perhaps even physically.

More: Jerusalem Post

France: Opposition leader receives anti-Semitic comments on Facebook

The leader of France’s opposition UMP party said that he had been the victim of anti-Semitic comments from members of the far-Right National Front party.

More: European Jewish Congress

Germany: 80 synagogues attacked in recent years

Rabbi Avraham Cooper, writing in the Washington Post:

Is European hatred of Jews a thing of the past? 

In his latest book, “Demonizing Israel and the Jews,” Manfred Gerstenfeld, analyzes polls taken across the continent and estimates that at least 150 million Europeans still harbor extreme anti-Jewish and/or anti-Israel animus.
Do Europe’s Jews feel safe? 

According to Gerstenfeld, 25 percent are afraid to wear kippot or Star of David jewelry in public. While today armed police stand on guard across Europe protecting synagogues, 80 synagogues have been attacked in recent years in Germany alone. Jewish children have been targeted for bullying in Scandinavia and for insult, injury, even death on the campuses of day schools and Yeshivot in France.

More: Washington Post

Hungary: "Older Jews, Holocaust survivors and their children are afraid"

"Older Jews, Holocaust survivors and their children are afraid... Older people really don't feel at ease," Janos Gado, an editor with Hungarian Jewish newspaper Szombat, told AFP. 

Applications at the local branch of Israel's immigration agency have hit a record high, he added. 

"Most people won't emigrate unless the situation gets worse, but emigration does now get talked about," said Gado, whose name has been listed on far-right websites alongside other prominent Jews. 

Rahel Veisz, a Hungarian Jewish mother of two, told AFP: "I'm often sitting in a taxi or at a cafe and suddenly overhear how the Jews are running the country and so on."

More: Yahoo!News

France: "F*cking shitty Zionist free-masons"

Le Monde Juif reports:

During a 'red cap' demonstration against the new French ecotax at Quimper in Britanny, one of the protesters shouted at a TV crew "You f*cking shitty Zionist free-masons" and added "whores of the system".

Ukraine: Rabbi begs Israel for help against Antisemitism

Following the desecration of a synagogue under construction, Rabbi Binyomin Wolff, the Chabbad emissary in Sevastopol, in the Ukraine, told NRG news:

"This is a group of anti-semites who think there's no place for Jews in the Ukraine.  They do everything so our synagogue, which is in the last stages of construction, won't open.  They do everything, including holding their own 'prayers' outside our synagogue, which they think will bother us, but we won't give up."

"I don't feel safe here. I've been attacked more than once.  A few months ago I got a concussion from a beating I got to my head from the members of this group, and they constantly curse me on the streets.  I don't feel safe here, everyday we're in danger here.  If a priest can walk the streets of Israel without anybody beating and cursing him, why can't I do that in the Ukraine?"

"I don't understand why the Israeli government isn't protecting us.  Why don't they make the effort to ensure that we can live as Jews in various countries in peace and quiet?  I beg you, please, help us fight the increasing antisemitism in the Ukraine.  Help us live good, peaceful Jewish lives."

He says he's given up on other attempts to fight the phenomenon.

Poland: Synagogue Defaced With Swastikas on Kristallnacht Eve

More pictures: tvn24

Unidentified vandals painted several swastikas and other anti-Semitic symbols on a synagogue building in Gdansk, Poland.

More: The Jewish Daily Forward

Ukraine: Pig’s head found at synagogue construction site

A pig’s head was left on the doorstep of a synagogue being built in Sevastopol, the Ukrainian city’s Jewish community said. 

Amid intensifying opposition to the synagogue’s construction, the zarusskiy.org news site reported on Wednesday that the head was discovered Monday by members of the Jewish community.

More: Haaretz

Italy: Former PM compares legal troubles to Holocaust persecution

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi outraged Italian Jews after comparing his family’s legal issues to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust in an interview with Italian journalist Bruno Vespa.

More: JNS.org

Ireland: “Shatter has learned from his homeland how to crucify the little people"

Minister Alan Shatter is the only Jewish member of the Irish parliament.

COUNCILLORS in West Limerick have reacted with outrage to a series of anti-Semitic and hate posters which were attached to a bridge in the Sugar Hill area. 

...

But the posters which have given rise to concern have an anti-Semitic undertone. “Shatter has learned from his homeland how to crucify the little people,” says one. 

“Jewish influence in our dictatorship has brought Palestinian devastation to Ireland,” proclaims another while a third, under a picture of Minister Alan Shatter says: “Ye will all be as poor as the Palestinians when are are finished and be glad to have €5 a day.”

More: The Limerick Leader

Europe Has a Jewish Problem

A newly-released survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights–which we first reported on here–paints a harrowing picture of Jewish life in Europe. The most comprehensive such study of its kind, the report finds that 66 percent of European Jews consider anti-Semitism to be a problem across the EU member states surveyed, while 76 percent say that anti-Semitism has worsened over the last five years in their country. Some of the illustrations of this phenomenon are shocking.

29% of EU Jews have considered emigrating in the past five years “because they did not feel safe as a Jew in the country where they live.” 

More: Tablet Magazine