The European Commission on Friday condemned “those who are importing” the war in Gaza to Europe and will “step up” its protection of Jewish citizens, a Commission spokesperson told Euronews.
The Commission reacted to a recent letter sent by more than 100 European rabbis to President Ursula von der Leyen, warning her that since the Hamas-led 7 October attack against Israel, Europe was encountering “visceral antisemitic hate” and “increased security provisions” were “urgently” needed.
The comments also come after Belgium witnessed unprecedented acts of antisemitic violence, and after a German shopkeeper posted a note banning Jews from entering his shop causing outrage.
“We see a troubling rise of antisemitism, a trend that is entirely unjustifiable,” the Commission spokesperson said, adding: “We stand firmly against all forms of antisemitism. Jewish people must feel safe across Europe.”
The spokesperson said strengthening security of Jewish people would be a “priority” for the Commission, “and we are ready to step up this support.”
Student demonstrations and vandalized graves
On Thursday night, a gathering of centre-right politicians in the city of Liège commemorating the death of Jean Gol, a leading Jewish politician, turned into a fiasco. Belgian media reported that 12 policemen were injured in demonstrations that involved 400 people, many of whom were students who threw firecrackers and rotten apples at the participants, and called them “complicit of genocide” in Gaza.
Meanwhile, a group of unidentified people tagged “Never Again”- a slogan that has long been associated with remembering the Holocaust – on Gol’s grave near Liège, prompting Belgium’s king Philippe to denounce “hatred and antisemitism” as “unacceptable”.
Earlier this week, in the German city of Flensburg, a shopkeeper caused widespread outrage after he placed a note in his shop window reading : “Jews are banned from here! Nothing personal. No antisemitism. Just can’t stand you.” The incident sparked outrage on social media, with users saying they felt like they had been transported back to the Nazi era.
Many institutions and anti-defamation NGOs have already sounded the alarm about the intensifying attacks on Jewish communities in Europe since Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, when its militants killed around 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
Fears of mass exodus of European Jews
According to UNIA, Belgium’s independent public institution that promotes equality and combats discrimination, 277 people signalled antisemitic acts and 79 investigations were opened in 2024, compared with 59 in 2023.
The Commission has a coordinator on combating antisemitism and adopted its first-ever “EU Strategy on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life” in 2021. But the security situation has worsened and many member states have national measures to combat antisemitism.
Among the urgent measures, the European Rabbis cite the need for “increased security provisions” in Jewish places of worship and neighbourhoods; an online reporting mechanism tracking incidents of antisemitism, as well as specific training for police officers “to raise awareness of how to correctly identify and deal with antisemitic and anti-Zionist incidents, and the offenders perpetrating them.”
“Without these actions, we fear that the sense of abandonment felt by Jewish communities towards their governments will reach a critical point and, thereafter, we can expect the beginnings of a mass exodus of European Jews from the communities they have lived in, contributed to and cherished for so long,” the signatories wrote.
“80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, such an exodus would be a damning indictment of failure,” they added.
Similar comments were made by Moshe Kantor, the President of the European Jewish Congress, who denounced “a new norm for Jews in Europe” in a recent op-ed for Euronews.
Antisemitism, Kantor said, has gone “far beyond the policies of a government”, and “holding Jews collectively responsible for a conflict thousands of kilometres away.”
“If Jews conclude that their future in Europe is unsafe, the loss will not only be theirs, it will be Europe’s,” he concluded.
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