The number of antisemitic incidents recorded in the French speaking part of Switzerland in 2011 has risen by 28% compared to 2010. In total there were 130 incidents recorded, out of which 119 were very severe, 6 severe and 5 serious (compared with 104 last year). Beside the fact that there is a rise in the number of incidents their severity is also worrisome. It consists mainly of physical attacks (one of them with a weapon), death threats and insults. 2011 is the year in which the most severe incidents took place since the start of data gathering in 2003.

 

The call to switch to actions and the words being used cause violence. These incidents have increased lately. These actions have new characteristics which Jews and sometimes a single Jew must confront.

 

A rise in the number of antisemitic incidents is a result of the new means of communication. More and more surfers have a blog. They react anonymously to articles and pour and express their antisemitic hatred. Under the pretext of freedom of speech the activists try to impose the right to “discrimination” to “slander” and to “racial harm”. This antisemitism is very worrying.

 

This situation is part of a special climate in which the banality of the racial discourse, the calls to attack the Jews (calls that repeat themselves abroad, but are not condemned here or someplace else), the lack of culture regarding questions of discrimination, lack of knowledge of historical facts and getting accustomed to the violent dialogue are happily mixed. A cross-generational phenomenon.

 

The global economic crisis which is well felt in Europe serves as an ideological basis for “conspiratorial” groups, by means of which they try to justify the most antisemitic theses and bring to the surface the Middle Ages cliché of Jews and money and the conspiracy theories like “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.

 

The use made of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict serves as an identifying feature of Jews and lately also of Judaism as the embodiment of evil. Jews are being accused of inventing the Holocaust and of using it to create guilt feelings in the non-Jewish population. There are organizations that use these arguments as a mystery… these activists present a unified front: the unification of the extremists.