COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Sixtieth session
Item 4, 6 and 17 of the provisional agenda
FOLLOW-UP
TO THE WORLD CONFERENCE ON HUMAN RIGHTS
RACISM, RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, XENOPHOBIA AND ALL FORMS OF DISCRIMINATION
PROMOTION AND PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS:
INFORMATION
AND EDUCATION
Written
statement* submitted by the World Union for Progressive Judaism,
a non-governmental organization on the Roster
The
Secretary-General has received the following written statement which is
circulated in accordance with Economic and Social Council resolution 1996/31.
[23 January 2004]
The
alarming growth of Judeophobia/antisemitism since the Vienna World Conference
on Human Rights [1993] during the UN Decade for Human Rights Education
[1995-2004]
1. The WUPJ
wishes to stress the appeal made last year by High Commissioner Sergio Vieira de
Mello – tragically assassinated six months later by terrorists in
“I call the Commission and, through it, the
international community at large to conscience…” “Actions,
not words, is what matters. Protection, not rhetoric
is needed. We cannot shield gross violations of human rights – wherever they
occur – behind the veneer of sovereignty or the chicanery of diplomatic
procedures.” (under item 4: E/CN.4/2003/14, §1, 4)
2. In his report
on ‘Information and Education: Study on the follow-up to the UN Decade for Human
Rights Education (1995-2004)’, the High Commissioner suggested: “A second decade would need to be properly
structured, also through the organization of regular periodical events to
create momentum and continuity.” (under item 17:
E/CN.4/2003/101, § II. A (a) 10)
3. A preamble to
last year’s Commission Resolution 2003/30, under agenda item 4, reads:
“Reaffirming the views of
the World Conference on Human Rights held in
4. In an address
to an OSCE symposium on Antisemitism in
5. Two days
later, a renowned historian and world expert on antisemitism, Professor Robert Wistrich, delivered his address, as an independent expert,
on ‘Antisemitism in Europe Today’ to the same symposium, hosted by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
6. Twenty years ago (October
1984), in the preface to his Hitler’s Apocalypse. Jews and the Nazi Legacy (Weidenfeld
& Nicolson, 1985), Wistrich predicted that: “the evidence I have been able to marshal
concerning the continuity of a radical and murderous antisemitism into the
post-war era convinced me that we are dealing with a highly dangerous and
fateful phenomenon which may possibly determine the future of our planet.”
Today this is a certainty.
7.
Again, concluding his global remarks at the opening meeting of the 60th
session of the Commission on
8. At the close of the United Nations Decade for
Human Rights Education (1995-2004), the World Union for Progressive Judaism is
reprinting in full, with his permission, Prof. Robert Wistrich’s
important text delivered at a very special event which should create
momentum.(1)
9. ‘Antisemitism
in Europe Today’. Address by Prof. Robert Wistrich at a symposium in Vienna on
19 June 2003 to the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe.
“Speaking to you this afternoon from the
majestic setting of the Hofburg in Vienna, I am very
mindful of certain historic events that can never be erased. Sixty-five years
ago, in the Heldenplatz, only a few hundred meters
from this building, hundreds of thousands of cheering Austrians greeted Adolf Hitler with a truly hysterical enthusiasm. In the
next three years following the 1938 Anschluss, the
Jews of Austria were subjected to indescribable humiliations and cruelties.
Over one-third of Austria’s Jews (over 60,000) were sent to the death camps in
Poland—a highly symbolic microcosm of the 6 million Jewish men, women, and
children across Europe who would suffer a similarly horrible fate. Today,
shocking to relate, the specter of antisemitism has once more returned to haunt
Europe, although it is assuming some radically new forms that require a
different approach if we are to deal effectively with the challenge. This
session is devoted to education, a subject of great importance. But let us not
delude ourselves that education or enlightenment in themselves offer any quick
fix or magic wand which will dissipate the dark clouds that are gathering
around us. What goes on in the school classrooms, in colleges, in the
universities, or in adult education is not divorced from standards of behavior
in the broader culture, from family and socialization patterns, from the media
and politics. Let us remember, before we assume that knowledge alone is the
answer, that the “educators” themselves must be educated (or reeducated!) to
quote that highly unfashionable 19th-century thinker, Karl Marx!
Let us also recall that
although this conference is devoted to Europe, thus far no speaker has
seriously addressed the burning issue of contemporary Muslim antisemitism,
something highly relevant to our topic. Today, we are witnessing a dangerous,
toxic, and potentially genocidal form of antisemitism in the Arab-speaking
Middle East. The scale and extremism of this literature and commentary—in
newspapers, journals, magazines, caricatures, on Arab and Islamic websites, on
the radio and TV news, in documentaries, films, and soap-operas like the
Egyptian-produced version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, “Rider
without a Horse,” is comparable only to Nazi Germany at its worst. The
educational materials of the Arab world are soaked in this poison, made even
more inflammatory by what is regularly preached in the mosques. The motifs and
symbols of this genocidal antisemitism combine the worst slanders of European
anti-Jewish bigotry (including the Christian blood-libel) with Nazi-style
caricatures, the myth of the world Jewish conspiracy, and the tendentious use
of Islamic sources, including the holy Qur’an. The
Islamists (but not only them) have hijacked Islam and are producing a new and
more deadly anti-Jewish cocktail, one which is now being re-exported back to
Europe. It has already infected part of the Muslim youth in France, Holland,
Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, and other European countries. This
rebound effect has brought Middle Eastern fanaticism and a violent new
antisemitism right back into the heart of Europe. No educational strategy that
turns a blind eye to the acuity of this problem can possibly succeed.
Educational methods also
need to be revised in the light of the highly mediatized
global village in which we now all live. This has made the transmission and
amplification of antisemitic images and ideas so much more mobile,
transnational, and globalized. Today’s educators have
to confront libels that whiz through cyberspace at the speed of light—malicious
disinformation of the kind that accuses not only the Israeli army but “the
Jews” per se of infanticide (cold-bloodedly murdering Palestinian children),
libels which blame dark “Jewish cabals” for pushing the Unites States into the
Iraq war; or accuse “neo-cons” (a codeword for East Coast Jewish intellectuals)
of seeking a “war of civilization” with Islam. Then, there are the grotesque
fantasies claiming that the Mossad or the Jews
orchestrated the September 11 attack on America. Millions of credulous people
out there believe these lies!
Contemporary antisemitic
conspiracy theories often hide under the mask of anti-Zionism, anti-Israel
prejudice and/or anti-Americanism. Their purveyors are far more likely to be
Islamists that Christians. They often come from the Left more than they do from
the Right; they are not outwardly racist and frequently adopt an “anti-racist”
disguise. They almost never call themselves “antisemitic,” unlike their
predecessors of 60 or 100 years ago. Indeed, the “new Judeophobes”
invariably wax indignant at the very suggestion that they are against the Jews.
Their main focus is on demonizing Israel, on dissolving the so-called “Zionist
entity” and making the world Judenstaatrein—cleansed
of the world’s only Jewish state.
We cannot deal educationally
with this “new look” antisemitism unless we tackle its changing dynamics
head-on and expose the pretensions of its new intellectual garb. This is not
the ethnic, nationalist, racist, or Nazi antisemitism of six decades ago, which
had its roots in late 19th-century Europe. All the delegates we have heard from
today appear united in their opposition to that type of brutal racist
antisemitism, in their rejection of Neo-Nazism, right-wing populism, and
xenophobia. That is, of course, gratifying and I welcome it. But we will
accomplish little if we think that this is the real problem confronting us in
2003.
Let me, then, share with you some heretical thoughts. Antisemitism at the dawn of the 21st century comes nicely wrapped in the radiant and beatific glow of Human Rights. It is an “antisemitism without antisemites,” an antisemitism with a good conscience! Not only that, but some of its most prominent spokesmen think of themselves as being in the forefront of the struggle against racism, fascism, and other related evils. In its “anti-Zionist” masquerade, this style of antisemitism is part of the new religion of Humanity—adapted to a post-national utopia without frontiers—which Israel’s existence is allegedly and bizarrely obstructing. Already, at the UN Conference against Racism in Durban (Autumn 2001) we witnessed the shameful spectacle of how such a worthy cause as “anti-racism” can be hijacked and turned into an ugly hatefest against Israel and the Jewish people.
We must also contend with
the twisted use of the Holocaust as a propaganda weapon against the Jewish
State and the Jewish people. I am not just talking about Holocaust denial. What
does an educator do when he or she is confronted with the numerous examples of
European intellectuals, artists, clerics, journalists, and caricaturists who
today twin the Nazi swastika with the Star of David? Here are just a few random
examples from an ever-expanding dossier: The Greek caricature in Ethnos
(7 April 2002) showing two Israeli soldiers somewhere in the disputed
territories. One says to the other: “Don’t feel guilty, my brother! We were not
in Auschwitz and Dachau to suffer but to learn!” Or
the Nobel prize winner for literature from Portugal, José Saramago, who last year compared what was happening in Ramallah to Auschwitz; or the well-known British poet Tom Paulin, who periodically offloads his venom against the
so-called “Zionist SS”; or Abbé Pierre, one of
France’s most revered Catholic priests, who informs us: “Les Juifs, de victimes sont devenus bourreaux.”
(“The Jews, once victims, have become executioners.”)
This is the surreal climate
of “democratic,” “humanistic,” bienpensant
stereotyping of Jews as Nazis and the libeling of the Jewish State as an
apartheid, racist monster engaged in the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians.
Worse still, it is the intellectual and political elites of
In the media, churches, universities, and in the mainstream politics of the European Union there is an elusive but unmistakable whiff of antisemitism, which we ignore at our peril. What kind of “Enlightenment” is it, for example, when the more “progressive” European media use archaic Christian motifs, to suggest that Ariel Sharon is a deicidal Jew and Yasser Arafat is Jesus Christ? At the end of December 2001, the French left-wing daily Libération ran a cartoon about the fact that Arafat, a Muslim, was not allowed by the Israeli government to go to Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas. Sharon was shown preparing a Cross for the Palestinian leader, with hammer and nails at the ready (an Israeli tank in the background) and a caption underneath stated that Arafat would be welcome for Easter—i.e., for the Crucifixion!
Then there is La Stampa (3 April 2002)—a liberal Italian paper which is
certainly not antisemitic—but which could nevertheless run a caricature showing
the baby Jesus, asking when “they” (i.e., the Israelis/Jews) are going “to
annihilate me once more”. Britain’s liberal newspaper, The
Independent, depicts Ariel
The problem, ladies and
gentlemen, is not to engage in well-meaning, ritualized indictments of racism
and antisemitism. We have to address the fact that even some highly educated
people do not recognize Jew-hatred except when it is dressed up for them in a
Nazi uniform. The problem is that a Heil Hitler
salute is no longer the main criteria for measuring antisemitism.
Of course, echoes of the
Nazi past are still with us in Europe, America, the Middle East, and beyond.
Indeed they must not be ignored. Jewish cabals and conspiracies are once again
the flavor of the month, as they were back in 1938. We hear a great deal about
warmongering Jews, about Sharon, Israel and the “Jewish lobby” who allegedly
control America and would like to control the whole world. Even the
much-respected BBC encourages documentaries about these “dangerous liaisons” in
tones uncomfortably reminiscent of darker times.
It is made even more
difficult where there is obstinate denial that the phenomenon even exists, as
happened in France, until about one year ago. I still remember the incredible
spectacle of the President of the French Republic, declaring that there was “no
antisemitism in France” and Mr. Shimon Peres, then Foreign Minister of Israel,
nodding in agreement. That was before the last French presidential elections,
at a time when synagogues and community centers were going up in flames,
schools and Jewish students were attacked, and individual Jews harassed on a
scale unknown since 1945.
There are ten times as many Muslims as there are Jews in France today. But since September 2000 there have been 3–4 times as many racist acts against Jews as compared to Muslims on French soil. That is an alarming statistic. I am the first to deplore and denounce Islamophobia, but the truth must be told. The majority of antisemitic attacks in France in the past three years have been carried out by North African Arab Muslims. There have been no comparable attacks by Jews on French Muslims!
In the “milieu scolaire” since 2000, things are especially serious, though
the French government has at least begun to deal with the problem. Let me
recommend that you read Les Territoires Perdus de la République
(Paris 2002) which gives outsiders a flavor of what Jewish pupils and teachers
have been experiencing, primarily at the hands of North African Arab students
in French schools. Any teacher trying to communicate materials on the Holocaust
in French lycées in the banlieux
or the so-called “quartiers difficiles”
is liable, especially since September 2000, to be subject to frightening abuse.
This last example brings me
squarely back to the educational sphere and contemporary antisemitism, which a
decade ago in my book on the subject I described as the “Longest Hatred.” But
it is not only its longevity and persistence that make it so difficult to
eradicate. Antisemitism is endlessly protean, adapting itself to the
Zeitgeist—like an extraordinarily cunning virus which flares up with renewed
force just when it is pronounced extinct.
The old slogans and tactics
employed against Nazism, racism, and xenophobia—some of which have been
repeated here—are not enough. Indeed, they may even be feeding the very
evil—antisemitism—which they are supposed to de-fang. To “Nazify” Israel and
the Jewish people is, for example, a contemporary form of Holocaust inversion
that palpably incites antisemitic feelings. The kind of mindless “anti-racism”
that pillories Israel as an apartheid state produces exactly the same effect.
Moreover, the constant effort to subsume antisemitism under the general
category of racism is not only untenable historically—it denies the specificity
of anti-Jewish bigotry just as it diminishes the distinctive features of other
forms of prejudice. The hostility to Jews predated the emergence of racism and
racial ideology by many centuries.
To successfully combat
antisemitism today—educationally, morally, legally, or politically—we must be
alive to its changing contours. We must go beyond conventional pieties about
tolerance, pluralism, and multiculturalism—important though it is to uphold
these values in practice. We must put an end to the disgraceful international
campaign to delegitimize, defame, demonize,
dismantle, or destroy the Jewish State. We must also condemn classic
antisemitic tools employed in the political war against Israel, such as
economic, academic, scientific, or cultural boycotts. For such boycotts are not
only intrinsically discriminatory but contradict the principles of free
scholarly exchange and of an open democratic society. In the matter of
antisemitism, as with terrorism and Human Rights, this impressive international
gathering must call things by their proper name. The very act of holding
this meeting here in Vienna is an important statement—that the time of denial
is over.”
_______
1. See also his “Anti-Zionism and Antiosionism,” reproduced in WUPJ’s written statement under items 5, 9, 18.
(*) Robert S.
Wistrich is Neuberger Professor of modern European and Jewish history at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He previously held the Chair for Jewish Studies
at