adminJohannesburg — The growth of anti-Jewish hate crimes in Europe is a concern for local Jewish authorities, the SA Zionist Federation (Cape Council) said yesterday. “The SA Zionist Federation strongly condemns the death of four people at the Jewish museum in Brussels,” it said.
The federation said its complacency had been shaken by two incidents in Europe. The incidents followed the release of an Anti-Defamation League international survey of anti-Semitism, which confirmed that a quarter of the world’s people harboured clear and classic anti-Jewish views.
“The first event occurred in Spain, reputedly Europe’s third most anti-Jewish country, following the victory of Maccabi Tel Aviv over Real Madrid in the Basketball Euro League,” read the statement.
The council said within days over 25,000 anti-Semitic messages were posted on Facebook and Twitter.
“Spanish supporters created an expletive anti-Semitic hash tag in their messages after the match, which briefly became one of the most popular keywords on Twitter in Spain.”
Some messages allegedly referred to Nazi death camps and the mass murder of Jews in the Holocaust, such as “Jews to the oven” or “Jews to the showers”. — Sapa
derick.khumalo