[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 10]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 14859-14861]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               THE RISE OF ANTI-SEMITISM AROUND THE WORLD

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 16, 2014

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, it has been said that anti-Semitism is the 
longest hatred in the world. And some have likened the freedom and 
safety of the Jewish people to ``the canary in the coal mine'' of a 
nation's religious freedom and tolerance, meaning if the Jewish 
population comes under attack, so too will others in time.
  Speaking last December at the Ethics and Religious Liberty 
Commission's annual Leland Award Lecture on Religious Liberty, award 
recipient and religious liberty champion Dr. Robert George noted ``the 
persistence of anti-Semitism worldwide, including in the nations of 
Western Europe, where it again appears to be on the rise.''
  Dr. George cited the observations of Britain's former Chief Rabbi, 
Lord Jonathan Sacks, that one of the ways that hatred of the Jewish 
people has persisted through the ages is by ``expressing and justifying 
itself in terms of the dominant discourses of time and place.''
  In the Medieval period it was justified in warped theological terms--
much to my regret as a follower of Jesus. At the end of the 19th 
century and into the 20th century it was expressed in nationalist 
terms, culminating in the horror that was the Nazi-perpetrated 
Holocaust.
  And today, Dr. George observed, ``when the dominant mode of discourse 
is the language of human rights, anti-Semitism is expressed by accusing 
Jews of violating human rights in the name of national aspirations 
embodied in Zionism . . .'' In recent years, particularly in the months 
since Israel's operations in Gaza responding to Hamas' rockets, we have 
seen a disturbing rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the Middle East, 
Europe and even, I regret to say, here in the United States, 
particularly on college campuses.
  This trend has left many Jewish students feeling intimidated and 
threatened, as evidenced by the recent findings of the Anti-Defamation 
League's (ADL) annual ``Audit of anti-Semitic Incidents'' for 2013 
which notes that ``the ADL continues to receive complaints about anti-
Semitic behavior on our campuses. These incidents include threats as 
well as verbal and written taunts promoting anti-Semitic stereotypes or 
evoking disturbing Holocaust themes.''
  Consider the following: in a nationwide anti-Israel campaign, some 
pro-Palestinian student groups such as Students for Justice in 
Palestine (SJP) have distributed ``mock eviction notices'' in college 
dormitories timed to coincide with so-called Israeli Apartheid Week. 
Still others have set up mock ``check points.''
  According to Fox News, Boston's Northeastern University suspended SJP 
in March, 2014, ``after years of alleged anti-Semitism that included 
repeated calls for the destruction of Israel, a 2011 disruption at a 
Holocaust Awareness Week event and the defacing of a statue of a Jewish 
donor and trustee of the university.''
  In some cases Jewish students who openly express their support for 
Israel are subjected to an increasingly hostile and intimidating 
environment where professors seek to promote their personal anti-Israel 
agenda. The local CBS affiliate in Boston reported last year that a 
Jewish student at Northeastern University wrote a paper arguing that 
Hamas was not a legitimate organization in direct response to one 
professor's lecture praising the terrorist organization. According to 
the news account, the professor instructed her to rewrite the paper.
  In November 2012, two students vandalized a menorah on display in 
Northeastern's Krentzman Quad in Boston. On the same day, at Harvard 
College, fliers were distributed with phrases such as ``Jews need not 
apply.''
  In 2006, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released its report on 
Campus Anti-Semitism. A number of recommendations were included in the 
report, including that the Office of Civil Rights ``conduct a public 
education campaign to inform college students of the rights and 
protections afforded to them under federal civil rights laws, including 
the right of Jewish students to be free from anti-Semitic harassment.''
  Seeing as how anti-Semitism seems to be worse today, one has to 
wonder if the 2006 recommendations fell on deaf ears. That is why today 
I am asking the Civil Rights Commission to update its 2006 report. Not 
only should it look at incidents since 2006 but also examine which of 
recommendations were implemented and, if not, why?
  Perhaps we should not be surprised at the increasingly hostile campus 
environment given the actions taken by certain academic associations. 
For example, at the end of last year, the American Studies Association 
voted to boycott Israel's higher education institutions as part of the 
International Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Bear in mind 
this is not simply individual professors expressing their political 
views; rather it is the country's largest organization for the study of 
American culture and history that is doing so.
  Notably, discussion of boycotts, divestment and sanctions is largely 
limited to Israel, but not the world's most egregious state abusers of 
human rights and religious freedom, like China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, 
Bahrain, Vietnam and Pakistan, to name a few. To the contrary, many 
American universities are actually pursuing deeper relationships and 
funding from these countries--especially with China and the Gulf 
States.
  As Jeffrey Goldberg observed, writing in the New York Daily News last 
December, ``The American Studies Association has never before voted to 
boycott the academic institutions of another country. The 
organization's president, Curtis Marez, an associate professor of 
ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego, told The New 
York Times, when its reporter asked him why his group was singling out 
Israel, that `one has to start somewhere.'''
  Looking beyond academia we have seen other institutions and entities, 
including my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), 
singling out Israel in troubling ways. In June, I took to the House 
floor to express my disappointment at the PCUSA's action on Israel, 
namely its decision to divest the denomination's stock from three 
American companies that do business with Israel in the West Bank. The 
Wall Street Journal ran a piece following the PCUSA decision that noted 
that the denomination's ``Middle East Issues Committee sees only one 
Middle East issue. All 14 of the matters before it this year concerned 
Israel and Palestine. No Syria. No Iraq.''
  The obsession with Israel's alleged abuses seems almost farcical 
given the barbarism that has unfolded in recent months in Syria and

[[Page 14860]]

Iraq and which threatens the very existence of ancient Christian 
communities. The same year PCUSA adopted its divestment policy of 
companies that do business with Israel, it refused to join other 
prominent Christian churches in signing a pledge to stand with the 
persecuted church in the Middle East, for fear that speaking out for 
oppressed religious minorities might somehow be perceived as ``anti-
Muslim.'' How the church can take such an extreme position against 
Israel but not join others in the Christian community in speaking out 
against religious persecution in the Middle East is hard to reconcile.
  The situation in Europe is decidedly more troubling. While anti-
Semitism has been on the rise for some time now, it has been most 
acutely experienced by Europe's Jewish population during this summer of 
protests surrounding the escalation of the war in Gaza. In recent 
months, we have witnessed a degree of open and, at times, violent anti-
Semitism in Europe that hasn't been seen since World War II.
  An August 9 USA Today article described the phenomenon this way: 
``Four weeks of fighting between Hamas militants and Israel fueled a 
rise in anti-Semitism outbursts across Europe, ranging from violent 
attacks to chants of `Death to the Jews' at anti-Israel 
demonstrations.'' The article continued, ``In Germany and other 
European countries--especially France, which has a large Jewish and 
Muslim population--Jews have been attacked on the streets, synagogues 
have been bombed, Jewish groups have received hate mail and anti-
Semitic slogans have been sprayed on buildings.''
  In short, what should have started and ended as a free speech 
exercise--as is expected and encouraged in any healthy democracy--in 
many cases morphed into violent and destructive demonstrations aimed at 
harming or intimidating local Jewish populations.
  Commenting on the recent spate of violence and the incendiary 
language of the protests, the president of the Central Council of Jews 
in Germany Dieter Graumann aptly stated, ``When calls for Jews to be 
gassed, burned and murdered are bawled on the streets of Germany, which 
no longer has anything to do with Israel's politics and Gaza. It is the 
most abhorrent form of anti-Semitism.''
  The demonstrations and protests are certainly not the whole story.
  Consider this: On the afternoon of May 24, 2014, a young man casually 
approached the entrance of a Jewish museum in Brussels, Belgium. 
Pulling a Kalashnikov rifle from his bag he began to shoot. Within 
seconds, three people lay dead: a couple visiting from Israel and a 
museum volunteer. A fourth person, severely wounded, would die later. 
Weeks after the attack a suspect, who claimed responsibility for the 
deadly rampage, was arrested. The gunman reportedly spent over a year 
in Syria and, according to the BBC, ``had links with radical 
Islamists.''
  On July 25, CNN reported that what was to be a friendly preseason 
soccer match in Austria between two teams from Israel and Germany, 
respectively, had to ``be abandoned after pro-Palestinian protesters 
invaded the pitch and started attacking the players'' from the Israeli 
team.
  On August 1, The New York Times reported that police in the German 
city of Wuppertal ``detained two young men on suspicion of throwing 
firebombs at the city's new synagogue . . .'' The article continued, 
pointing to an incident of vandalism at the home of a prominent critic 
of anti-Semitism as well as a threatening anonymous phone call to a 
local rabbi who was told that 30 Frankfurt Jews would be killed if the 
caller's family in Gaza was harmed.
  The Times piece also reported on several troubling incidents in Rome 
where Jewish shop windows in multiple neighborhoods were defaced with 
swastikas and abhorrent threats including, ``Jews your end is near.''
  The British anti-Semitism watchdog, Community Security Trust reported 
240 anti-Semitic incidents in Britain in July alone compared with 304 
incidents in the first six months of the year combined.
  The current chief Rabbi of Britain, Ephraim Mirvis, recently wrote in 
the Telegraph that the Jewish people can be viewed as the ``canaries in 
the coal mine for Western civilization'' and pointed to the recent wave 
of attacks as indications of a ``new anti-Semitism'' in which passion 
about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is used to justify ``something 
more sinister.''
  Taking a step back from current events, it is important to view the 
phenomenon of anti-Semitism through the lens of history. From the Roman 
Empire's persecution of the Jews, to the burning of Jews during the 
Middle Ages, from the second-class codification of Jewish populations 
during the Inquisition, to the violent pogroms carried out against 
Jewish communities in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and finally 
through the worst genocide in human history, the Jewish people have 
experienced more persecution than any other minority group in the 
world. Jews have been the favored scapegoats of tyrants who knew that 
by persecuting Jews, they could silence the messengers of the great 
truth of the Jewish faith--a potent teaching which inspires fear in the 
hearts of dictators--the equality of all created in the image of God.
  Indeed, there is ample evidence that Jews truly are the canaries in 
the coal mine--not just in the West, but globally. Nowhere is this more 
evident than in the Middle East. In January, 2013, I sent a strongly 
worded letter to roughly 300 prominent Christian leaders in the United 
States urging them to utilize their spheres of influence to speak out 
on behalf of the persecuted church around the world, specifically in 
the Middle East. Even then, ancient Christian communities in countries 
like Iraq, Syria and Egypt were increasingly under siege. These 
troubling realities, of course, predated ISIS's murderous advance 
across large swaths of Iraq and Syria and the ensuing carnage it has 
left in its wake, particularly targeting religious minorities like 
Christians, and the previously little-known Yazidis, now a household 
name.
  A phrase not often heard outside the majority Muslim world is ``First 
the Saturday People, then the Sunday People.'' The ``Saturday people'' 
are, of course, the Jews. Their once-vibrant communities in countries 
throughout the region are now decimated. In 1948 there were roughly 
150,000 Jews in Iraq; today, fewer than 10 remain. In Egypt, there were 
once as many as 80,000 Jews; now, fewer than 50 remain. Of those, all 
are older than 60.
  It increasingly appears that a similar fate awaits the ancient 
Christian community in these same lands. Iraq's Christian population 
has fallen from as many as 1.5 million in 2003 to 300,000 today. And 
the remaining population is being further squeezed from its ancestral 
homeland in Nineveh and the surrounding areas. A July 18 New York Times 
article reporting on ISIS' edict that the remaining Christians must 
leave soberly noted, ``While a few scattered souls may find a way to 
stay in secret, the community will be gone.'' In Egypt, Coptic 
Christians, numbering roughly 8 million are leaving in droves. In Homs, 
Syria, almost the entire Christian population has reportedly fled.
  Over the span of a few decades, the Middle East, with the exception 
of Israel, was virtually emptied of Jews. The world was largely silent. 
The same thing will happen to the Christian community if the current 
trajectory holds true.
  Incredibly, this reality has been met with a stunning silence on the 
part of many Western policymakers and even Church leaders. There are 
notable exceptions, including the nearly 300 American Christian leaders 
and prominent lay people who signed a Pledge of Solidarity with their 
suffering brothers and sisters in the region, launched at a press 
conference on Capitol Hill in May.
  Washington, D.C.'s Cardinal Donald Wuerl was among the distinguished 
participants in the Capitol Hill event. Just recently, at a Mass 
marking the start of the academic year at Catholic University, he spoke 
of the current crisis facing these imperiled communities and wondered 
aloud at the silence in face of murderous efforts to ``eliminate'' 
these brothers and sisters in faith. He urgently concluded that what is 
happening to them is ``something that we really are not free to ignore 
. . .''
  I mention the horrific assault on Christians in Iraq, and other parts 
of the region, to put the rise of anti-Semitism in other parts of the 
world in context. We see here a region where anti-Semitism has long 
been tolerated and in some cases glorified. From Iranian mullahs, to 
Saudi textbooks, to the Hamas charter, hatred of the Saturday People 
has found fertile soil and taken root.
  In societies where one minority religion is demonized, is it any 
surprise that pluralism itself and religious freedom more specifically 
are in jeopardy? Is it any wonder that respect for ``the other'' is 
trumped by ``death to the infidel?''
  As Jews were driven from much of the Middle East, so too Christians--
the Sunday People--are finding an environment that is not simply 
inhospitable to the practice of their faith, but downright deadly.
  I was heartened by a recent New York Times op-ed penned by Ronald S. 
Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, titled ``Who Will Stand 
Up for the Christians?'' Mr. Lauder wonders at the seeming indifference 
of much of the world to what is currently happening in Iraq. He writes, 
``Historians may look back at this period and wonder if people had lost 
their bearings. Few reporters have traveled to Iraq to bear witness to 
the Nazi-like wave of terror that is rolling across that country. The 
United Nations has been mostly mum.

[[Page 14861]]

World leaders seem to be consumed with other matters in this strange 
summer of 2014. There are no flotillas traveling to Syria or Iraq. And 
the beautiful celebrities and aging rock stars--why doesn't the 
slaughter of Christians seem to activate their social antennas?''
  Mr. Lauder recalls a speech he gave in Budapest in June during which 
he ``made a solemn promise that just as I will not be silent in the 
face of the growing threat of anti-Semitism in Europe and in the Middle 
East, I will not be indifferent to Christian suffering.'' In talking of 
the historic Judeo-Christian commonalities, he notes that sadly now 
these two great Abrahamic traditions share ``a kind of suffering: 
Christians are dying because of their beliefs, because they are 
defenseless and because the world is indifferent to their suffering.''
  Lauder concluded: ``I will not be indifferent to Christian 
suffering.''
  Would that his conviction might be shared by faith leaders, the 
political elite and regular citizens the world over. Whether it is the 
expansion of an insidious anti-Semitism in Europe or the reality of 
deadly ethnic cleansing of Christians in Iraq, these expressions of 
hatred, these manifestations of evil, these violations of religious 
liberty must not go unaddressed and unanswered.
  I am reminded of the haunting words of German Pastor Martin 
Niemoller, which are etched in the walls of the Holocaust Museum just 
blocks from here. Speaking of the Nazis, he said, ``First they came for 
the Socialists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a Socialist 
. . . Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--because I 
was not a Jew. Then they came for me--and there was no one left to 
speak for me.''
  In order for the Nazi machinery of extermination to have been as 
ruthlessly successful as it was, hundreds of thousands of ordinary 
Germans had to simply turn a blind eye to what was happening around 
them.
  In the book ``When a Nation Forgets God,'' there is this unnerving 
account:

       ``I lived in Germany during the Nazi Holocaust. I 
     considered myself a Christian. We heard stories of what was 
     happening to the Jews, but we tried to distance ourselves 
     from it, because, what could anyone do to stop it?
       ``A railroad track ran behind our small church and each 
     Sunday morning we could hear the whistle in the distance and 
     then the wheels coming over the tracks. We became disturbed 
     when we heard the cries coming from the train as it passed 
     by. We realized that it was carrying Jews like cattle in the 
     cars!
       ``Week after week the whistle would blow. We dreaded to 
     hear the sound of those wheels because we knew that we would 
     hear the cries of the Jews en route to a death camp. Their 
     screams tormented us.
       ``We knew the time the train was coming and when we heard 
     the whistle blow we began singing hymns. By the time the 
     train came past our church we were singing at the top of our 
     voices. If we heard the screams, we sang more loudly and soon 
     we heard them no more.
       ``Years have passed and no one talks about it anymore. But 
     I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. God forgive me; 
     forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians and yet did 
     nothing to intervene.''

  Haunting words.
  Without question, today, once again, the canary is struggling. In far 
too many places the air is poisoned with hate. What remains to be seen 
is whether we, who recognize this to be true, will be silent in the 
face of it.

                          ____________________