Sidestepping Lethal Antisemitism – The EU's Response in the Aftermath of Terror

Elman, R. Amy (2015) Sidestepping Lethal Antisemitism – The EU's Response in the Aftermath of Terror. [Conference Proceedings] (Submitted)

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Abstract

Introduction: In 2014, the European Commissioner's former president (José Manuel Barroso) refuted suggestions that Europe's Jewish communities had no future; he maintained that European values are incompatible with antisemitism and insisted Europe's integration is an antidote against it. His remarks were in tribute to the four people murdered by a French jihadist at the Brussels Jewish Museum, an attack he characterized as “a wound to the heart of the European Union.”1 Since the additional slayings of Jews in 2015, that wound has deepened. Barroso's faith in European values and the EU's ability to condemn antisemitism seems misplaced. For instance, shortly after the slaughters at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket, the EU's culture ministers issued a unanimous condemnation of the "intolerance and ignorance" that led to the "senseless barbarity" of the Charlie Hebdo murders and omitted mention of those Jews who were murdered for simply being Jews.

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