Ping-pong and other blame games - Part 2


On the topic of Muslim anti-Semitism, the authors of the FRA report noted a change in how anti-Jewish people are portrayed in the media and seen by the public. "There has been a shift...from the 'extreme right skinhead' to the 'disaffected young Muslim', 'person of North African origin' or 'immigrant' and member of the 'anti-globalization' left," they said. But they added there was no research to suggest a link between anti-Semitism in politics and the media and actual crimes directed at Jews. "The motivation of perpetrators and the relationship between their acts and anti-Semitic attitudes and ideology remains under-researched and unclear," they said.
(For the full report, see http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/products/publications_reports/pub_cr_antisemitism_en.htm.)

Anti-Semitism, intolerance and Islamophobia

If there is a significant rise in Muslim feeling against Jews, it should definitely be seen in the context of the overall rise in anti-Semitism registered by a number of other surveys since 2001. For example, in February 2009 a survey for the US-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) conducted in Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Britain found that nearly a third of 3,500 Europeans questioned blame Jews for the global economic meltdown and that an even greater number think Jews have too much power in the business world.
(The ADL, founded in 1913, says its aim is "to stop the defamation of Jewish people and secure justice and fair treatment to all". You can download the survey at www.adl.org).

There's nothing new about any of this. Making scapegoats of the Jews is an ancient tradition that has been revived again and again over the centuries and is certainly not restricted to any particular group or religion. Sadly, the Holocaust did not put an end to anti-Semitism, and the continuing emphasis on Germany's terrible history in the media and school curricula may be counterproductive in some cases. As one representative of a Berlin memorial centre said at the Kreuzberg meeting, "For many young people who don't come from German families there is far too much emphasis on Nazi history — and since it's not their history, they feel excluded."

Two important points emerge from this discussion: first, the Jews are not alone as victims. Religious extremism and intolerance of other peoples' faith is rising worldwide, and this is connected not only with specific political events like 11 September or the Gaza war, but also with a global opposing trend towards secularism and the desire for greater democracy and personal freedom. The tug of war between fundamentalism and modernism can lead to shari'a law and girls being banned from schools in some countries, and liberalising of abortion laws or legalising gay marriage in others. All over the world, religion is once again being used as a pretext for persecution and exclusion of minorities, from Muslim hate campaigns against Christians in Egypt or Nigeria to China's suppression of Buddhists, or from anti-gay witch hunts by radical Christians in the USA and radical Islamists in Arab countries to anti-Semitic tendencies inside the Catholic church.

Secondly, as the influential 2008 Pew survey on racism and religious attitudes worldwide pointed out, the rise in anti-Semitism in Europe coincides with a big increase in anti-Muslim attitudes. Rampant Islamophobia and laws targeted against Muslims in the name of "national security" are becoming a threat to human rights and peaceful coexistence in several European countries. (See MUT's commentary on the Pew report, http://www.mut-gegen-rechte-gewalt.de/eng/news/europes-jews-and-muslims-scapegoats-together/. For reactions to the UK's planned anti-terrorist laws targeted at Muslims, see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/17/counterterrorism-strategy-muslims).

"Victim competition"

Statistics may be useful, but they're not decisive. What really matters is that each and every manifestation of anti-Semitism or any other kind of racism has to be tackled quickly and clearly. The only way to do this effectively is to confront it directly, wherever possible with the help of people from inside the groups concerned.

This means not accepting any excuses or a sliding scale of tolerance, and refusing to get involved in the "victim competition", the argument that some people have more right to be racist or abuse others because they're victims themselves. When it comes to human rights, everybody has to be treated as equal.

At the Kreuzberg meeting, a young woman, Leyla, spoke out from the floor, saying she had noticed a big increase in anti-Semitic feeling in her community over the past five years, but didn't understand why. Curious to find out more, I visited her a few days later in her jewellery shop in a trendy Berlin scene street. She told me that her own circle of mid-30s second-generation people from Turkish families wasn't anti-Semitic at all, but they were increasingly aware of anti-Jewish feeling in the wider Turkish community. She also mentioned anti-gay prejudice. "But that's tradition, she said firmly. "It's got nothing to do with religion." While anxious to dissociate herself from ignorant, backward attitudes, she was quick to point out that discrimination breeds disaffection. "If people like me who were born in Germany are still called migrants, and a teacher at my daughter's primary school told her she smelled like a Turk, how can anybody be surprised there are problems?" she asked. This is a common reaction to the frustration of living and working in a society and not having a voice. It's also an opportunity for communication. Leyla wants to tell her story. She wants to hear other people's stories as well. She talked about anti-Turkish stereotypes and I told her about anti-Jewish stereotypes. By the second cup of coffee we had moved on from there and were talking about young Turkish women's literature, and sharing experiences as working mothers trying to cope with the Berlin school system.

That's when I remembered the ping-pong game.

It happened at my stepson David's primary school, with its typical inner-city mix of children from mostly migrant backgrounds. Every day in that hot summer of 2006 he played ping-pong with the other boys after school. The first time we heard of the anti-Jewish curses was when he came home looking troubled. "The Turkish and Arab boys always shout 'Jew' when a ball goes out," he said. "But today Bobby said it as well, and we had a fight because I told him to stop. It's OK for the others to do it, but not Bobby." Why not? "Because Bobby comes from an English family," David explained. "They haven't suffered. The other kids say they're war victims, so they're allowed to curse Jews." Was that how his Turkish and Arab classmates described themselves – as war victims? In fact, most of the children in the class had been born in Germany, not the Middle East or Turkey, and most of them had never met any Jews — but some had family stories to tell that they claimed as justification for Jew-hating. The children were indeed victims — of cynical political manipulation that made them into proxy warriors in conflicts remote from their lives. It is the same cynicism that sends children out on demonstrations carrying placards of hate they can barely read, let alone understand.

My husband, a member of the school parents' committee, tried to talk to the teachers about tackling this inherited anti-Semitism. Most of them denied it existed. The few who admitted it asked him to keep it quiet. Did he want to give the school a bad name? The parents' committee — on which Muslim families were severely under-represented — refused to put it on the meeting agenda. It would only be divisive. We had no choice but to find another school for our child and publicise the issue in anti-racist media like MUT.

That was almost three years ago. How many teachers and parents have turned a blind eye since then to abuse of Jews and hate speech generally? Why are they so afraid of tackling the problem? How long will children have to spend their schooldays swamped in this everyday mire of racist insult and victim competition? These are key questions for anybody who wants a more tolerant future. Projects run by organizations like the Kreuzberg Initiative, the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and amira are a good starting-point. But the situation won't change fast enough unless governments throughout Europe prioritise training teachers, social workers, police, the judiciary and everybody else at the interface between the state and the individual to recognize and fight anti-Semitism and any other kind of racism the moment they occur. The deeper the recession bites, the more urgent this will become.

_______________________________

Recommended for German readers:
"Die Juden sind schuld" — Antisemitismus in der Einwanderungsgesellschaft am Beispiel muslimisch sozialisierter Milieus, Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, Berlin, 2008
Download: http://www.amadeu-antonio-stiftung.de/w/files/pdfs/diejuden.pdf (PDF document, 8.6 MB)

"Du Opfer – Du Jude!" — Antisemitismus und Jugendarbeit in Kreuzberg, amira, Berlin, 2008


© Karen Margolis for www.mut-gegen-rechte-gewalt.de.
8 March 2009

Printed with permission of the author. All rights reserved.

You want to make a change by supporting young and committed initiatives to stand against racism and neo-Nazism? Why not make a donation to the Amadeu Antonio Foundation?