New forms of anti-Semitism are emerging around the world, promoting prejudice against Jews by attacking Israeli policy and Zionism, a US State Department study concludes. New anti-Semitism was not confined to the Middle East and Muslim communities says the report by the Office of the Special Envoy for Monitoring Anti-Semitism. It cites frequent requests to the United Nations to commission investigations of reports of alleged atrocities and other human rights violations by Israel whose policy was sometimes likened to the Nazis. At the same time, the report to the US Congress notes a failure to pay attention to regimes guilty of grave violations.
The report singles out Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a Holocaust denier whose government practices official anti-Semitism against its Jewish minority, and the Syrian government as routinely demonizing Jews.
In Belarus, state enterprises produced and distributed anti-Semitic material, and in Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez publicly demonized Israel and used stereotypes about Jewish financial influence and control, the report says. Government media in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Egypt had become "vehicles for anti-Semitic discourse."
The US report praises the work of the Stephen Roth Institute at Tel Aviv University, whose annual report cited as “the most comprehensive, global statistical analysis of anti-Semitic incidents” in the world. The Roth Institute is supported by the World Jewish Congress.
The full State Depsrtment can be viewed here (
3.dMb).
