A European Union study conducted amid an upsurge in anti-Semitic violence was blocked from publication because it concluded Muslims and pro-Palestinian groups were responsible for many of the incidents.
The EU’s racism watchdog, the Vienna-based European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia, or EUMC, commissioned the report from the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at Berlin’s Technical University, but its conclusion was judged inflammatory, reports the Financial Times of London.
The British paper obtained a copy of the 112-page study, launched in October 2002 after a spate of anti-Semitic attacks and completed in February. Just one week ago, a Jewish school near Paris was firebombed.
The EUMC has published three reports on anti-Islamic attitudes in Europe since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Financial Times said.
The anti-Semitism report’s focus on Muslim and pro-Palestinian perpetrators, however, raised objections with the Berlin center’s staff and management board.
The center also did not like the authors’ definition of anti-Semitism, which included anti-Israel acts.
“There is a trend towards Muslim anti-Semitism, while on the left there is mobilization against Israel that is not always free of prejudice,” a person familiar with the report told the Financial Times. “Merely saying the perpetrators are French, Belgian or Dutch does no justice to the full picture.”
Some of the EUMC board members also did not like left-leaning and anti-globalization groups portrayed as harboring anti-Semitic motivations.
“The decision not to publish was a political decision,” said the person familiar with the report.
The EUMC board has 18 members, representing each EU state, the European Commission, Parliament, and the Council of Europe.
U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., wrote the EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, demanding the study be released, the Financial Times said.
A board member, Beate Winkler, insisted the report was rejected because the time frame it used – between May and June 2002 – was too brief to be representative. She also said the definition of anti-Semitism was too complicated.
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