[progchat_action] EU BODY SHELVES REPORT ON ANTISEMITISM

EU BODY SHELVES REPORT ON ANTISEMITISM

21/11/2003 The European Union's racism watchdog has shelved a report
on antisemitism because the study concluded Muslims and proPalestinian
groups were behind many of the incidents it examined. The Vienna
based European Monitoring Centre http://www.eumc.eu.int/eumc/index.php
on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) decided in February not to publish
the 112page study, a copy of which was obtained by the Financial
Times, after clashing with its authors over their conclusions. The
news comes amid growing fears that there is an upsurge of antisemitism
in European Union countries. Among many recent incidents, a Jewish
school near Paris was firebombed last Saturday, the same day two
Istanbul synagogues were devastated by suicide truck bombs that
killed 25 and wounded 300. Turkey, which hopes to join the EU,
suffered again at the hands of what are believed to be alQaeda
inspired terrorists on Thursday with truck bomb attacks on British
targets. Following a spate of incidents in early 2002, the EUMC
commissioned a report from the Centre for Research on Antisemitism
at Berlin's Technical University. When the researchers submitted
their work in October last year, however, the centre's senior staff
and management board objected to their definition of antisemitism,
which included some anti-Israel acts. The focus on Muslim and pro
Palestinian perpetrators, meanwhile, was judged inflammatory. "There
is a trend towards Muslim antisemitism, while on the left there is
mobilisation against Israel that is not always free of prejudice,"
said one person familiar with the report.

"Merely saying the perpetrators are French, Belgian or Dutch does
no justice to the full picture." Some EUMC board members had also
attacked part of the analysis ascribing antisemitic motives to
leftwing and anti-globalisation groups, this person said. "The
decision not to publish was a political decision."

The board includes 18 members  one for each member state, the
European Commission, Parliament, and the council of Europe  as well
as 18 deputies. One deputy, who declined to be named, confirmed the
directors had seen the study as biased. In July, Robert Wexler, a
US congressman, wrote to Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy
chief, demanding the release of the study. Ole Espersen, law professor
at Copenhagen University and board member for Denmark, said the
study was "unsatisfactory" and that some members had felt anti-Islamic
sentiment should be addressed too. The EUMC, which was set in 1998,
has published three reports on anti-Islamic attitudes in Europe
since the September 11 attacks in the US. Beate Winkler, a director,
said the report had been rejected because the initial time scale
included in the brief covering the period between May and June 2002
was later judged to be unrepresentative. "There was a problem with
the definition [of antisemitism] too. It was too complicated," she
said. This week, Silvan Shalom, Israel's foreign minister, proposed
a joint ministerial council to fight what Israel sees as a rise in
European antisemitism.

The Financial Times http://news.ft.com/home/europe