http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-goldhagen30apr30,1,6064139.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions"The average annual number of anti-Semitic incidents in France was 10 during the 1990s; from 2000 to 2002, it was 120. Many Jews today avoid outward manifestations of their Jewishness in public, such as wearing kippas or Stars of David, lest they or their children be attacked for no other reason than that they are Jews. Without continuous police protection for their institutions and leaders, Jews would be intolerably vulnerable. It is no wonder that 33% to 45% of French Jewry, the largest Jewish community in Europe outside of Russia, say they would consider emigrating.
The causes of the resurgence of anti-Semitism are many and vary from country to country. They include the lifting of political and social taboos on anti-Semitic expression, which has unleashed simmering anti-Semitism; the existence of large Islamic populations in Europe that have defined Jews as their enemies; the resurgence of the political right and, in Germany in particular, the resentment of continued discussion of the Holocaust; the availability of the Middle East conflict as a tool for anti-Semites to incite prejudice against Jews; and the permissive atmosphere in Europe, where political and intellectual leaders fail to speak out forcefully against anti-Semitism and where governments conceal the magnitude and danger of anti-Semitism and fail to vigorously combat it.
With the Berlin conference, politicians are finally formally acknowledging the problem. This is in itself progress. It mirrors Jacques Chirac's recent concession that anti-Semitism is an acute problem in France, which repudiated his ludicrous claim of just a year earlier that it didn't exist."
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