Survey shows 29% of European Jews considered emigrating due to anti-Semitism.
A fifth of Jewish respondents in an EU survey said they had experienced an anti-Semitic incident in the past 12 months, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency said Friday.
The survey, to which 5,847 Jews from nine European Union member states responded, was released in full on Friday after parts were released last month.
Morten
Kjaerum, the director of the European Union Agency for Fundamental
Rights, presented the findings at a press conference in Vilnius.
Twenty-nine
percent of all respondents said they “seriously considered emigrating”
in recent years because they did “not feel safe” living in their
countries as Jews. The figure of Jews contemplating emigration was
particularly high in Hungary, France and Belgium with 48, 46 and 40
percent respectively.
The
Internet was seen as the biggest platform for spreading hate against
Jews, with three quarters of respondents saying they had experience
anti-Semitism on websites and social platforms. Some 42 per cent of
respondents said they had experience verbal abuse at demonstrations, and
14 per cent at sports events.
The survey was conducted in Belgium, Britain, Germany, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia and Sweden. These countries are home to 90 per cent of the Jewish population in the European Union.
On average, 76 percent said anti-Semitism has increased over the past five years.
Four
percent of respondents said they had experienced physical attack or
threats of violence in the past year because they were Jewish, and 64
percent of respondents who said they had experienced physical attacks
also said that they did not report the incidents to the authorities
because they considered doing so ineffective.
Asked
about their definition of an anti-Semite, 34 percent of all respondents
indicated that it applied to “a non-Jewish person if he or she
criticizes Israel.” In Sweden, only 21 percent of 703 respondents said
non-Jewish critics of Israel were anti-Semitic compared to 42 percent of
1,137 French respondents. Nearly 90 percent of respondents said that
people who did not consider Jewish citizens of their country as
compatriots were anti-Semitic.
Twenty
percent of respondents said they avoided wearing, carrying or
displaying things that might help people identify them as Jews in
public. That figure was 34 percent in Sweden; 29 percent in France; 20
percent in Hungary and eight percent in Britain.
European
Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor said the survey was “of great
importance,” adding that the fact that “Jews are not able to express
their Jewishness because of fear should be a watershed moment for
Europe. He called on EU governments to study the survey’s results.
"While
many EU governments have made great efforts to combat anti-Semitism,
more targeted measures are needed," FRA director Morten Kjaerum said.
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