Antisemism

Antisemism- A Current Problem Today

By: Samuel Tan

Barak Abravanel, a young Jew was cowering in an alley, surrounded by many tall young muslim adults. He had been chased for two days after his identity of being a Jew was revealed. Fortunately, a Times magazine reporter walked past and scared the muslims away.

Jews have been despised by people since ancient times. Anti-Jewish strikes and riots and persecution were a part of European societies, and were far from unknown in Muslim lands (as early as the Khaibar massacre of 628 AD). Many people feel that after the Holocaust, there is no more discrimination of the Jews. However, they are wrong.

Currently, in many parts of the world today, antisemitism is part of everyday life. The People are prejudice against or hostile towards Jews because of hatred of their ethnic background, culture, and/or religion. Records of antisemitic fights are recorded each month by monitoring groups, ranging from armed and other attacks on individuals and property attacks to the cemeteries and Holocaust memorials and the graffiti of antisemitic slogans on buildings, often those housing Jewish communities and churches. This shows that the prejudice against the Jews lives on even after the Holocaust.

The UN human rights commission formally disapproved antisemitism in a 1994 resolution (in the face of some bitter opposition, led by Syria), formally charging its special rapporteur(a person responsible for compiling reports and presenting them, as to a governing body.) on latest and new forms of racism with the responsibility of examining and reporting on antisemitic incidents worldwide.

Holocaust Denial

The Holocaust was genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II. The Holocaust denial movement today unites the racist groups with various Middle East groupings, media and even governments in their public campaigns against the Jewish people and Israel. Its aim is to present the holocaust as a lie, which only the Jews could invent, thereby shifting the blame and shame from perpetrator to victim. In recent Middle East media and propaganda, the Jews are refered as Nazis. Primo Levi recorded in the final work on his death camp experience, before his suicide, how SS storm troopers taunted the inmates: "However this war may end, we have won the war against you: none of you will be left to bear witness...because we will destroy the evidence together with you."

Despite the efforts of racists continuing to seek to "destroy the evidence" in the public mind, the Holocaust is overwhelmingly documented and recorded in contemporary history, and those people who deny about the Holocaust are scorned at, as illustrated in the verdict of the London crown court against holocaust denier, David Irving, last year.

The battle against antisemism is never over. However, the world is changing and people are getting more open-minded. Hopefully, there will be less people prejudiced against the Jews.