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The European Jewish Congress (EJC) was founded in 1986. It is based in Brussels, with offices in Paris, Strasbourg, Berlin and Budapest. It is a representative body of democratically elected European Jewish communities throughout Europe.
Affiliated to the World Jewish Congress, the EJC works with national governments, European Union institutions and the Council of Europe. The European Jewish Congress is one of the most influential international public associations and a large secular organisation representing more than 2.5 million of Jews in Europe. It is an umbrella organisation for 42 national Jewish communities on this continent. The primary mission of the EJC is to promote European democracy based on good relations between neighbours, mutual understanding and tolerance. The EJC maintains co-operation with European governments, leading international institutions and European integration associations, including the United Nations, European Union, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It has a participatory status with the Council of Europe.
The EJC intends to protect human rights, fight xenophobia and anti-Semitism, promote interfaith dialogue, implement cultural and educational programmes, and remember the Holocaust and other events that killed millions of people.
To meet these goals, the EJC has initiated and organised several large international projects, in particular the Let My People Live! international forums. The First Forum of the series was held in Kraków, Poland in January 2005 to commemorate 60 years since liberation of Auschwitz; the Second Forum took place in Kyiv in September 2006 to mark 65 years since the Babi Yar tragedy. The forums were widely supported by leading international organisations, including the Council of Europe and the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, as well as senior politicians from countries including Russia, the United States, Germany, Israel, Poland and Ukraine. The next Let My People Live! Forum, this one to commemorate 70 years since die Kristallnacht, has been held in Kraków.
On 25 January 2011 at the European Parliament in Brussels on the eve of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day there took place a commemoration meeting devoted to the memory of the Holocaust. It was timed to the 66th anniversary of the liberation of concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Soviet Army. The European Jewish Congress was one of the principal organizers of this event.
Another important issue on the EJC's agenda is preventing nuclear terrorism. The EJC was a co-organiser of the International Conference on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe, which took place in Luxembourg this May and brought together a unique team of more than 50 experts in nuclear non-proliferation from 14 countries, led by Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohammed ElBaradei. Taking into account the level of participants, the conference was the largest and most authoritative gathering to discuss issues of nuclear safety within the past decade.
The EJC's head office is located in Brussels, with branches operating in Berlin, Paris, Budapest and Strasburg.
The President of the European Jewish Congress is elected every two years renewable by a "General Assembly" of Jewish community representatives and works in consortium with an elected "Executive" of community presidents.
Dr Ariel Muzicant, who has served as Vice-President of the EJC since 2012, was unanimously appointed Interim President of the European Jewish Congress on 11 April 2022.
The EJC lists as its primary objectives the following on its website: [1]
- To combat the resurgence of anti-Semitism through education, justice and security, in co-operation with governments and European institutions.
- To promote a balanced European policy towards Israel and the Middle East, and to assist in the construction of a healthy dialogue between Europeans and Israelis.
- To foster inter-religious dialogue and understanding.
- To ensure memory and education of the Holocaust.
- To contribute to a democratic European society based on peace, understanding and tolerance.
- To assist in the revitalisation of the once rich Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe.
- To counteract assimilation of the European Jewish population
In 2006 the congress released a report detailing a new wave of anti-semitic incidents in most of Western Europe in the wake of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, in contrast to neutral or pro-Israel sentiment in the former Eastern bloc as well as in Denmark.
The report cited:
Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against, Jews. This sentiment is a form of racism, and a person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Primarily, antisemitic tendencies may be motivated by negative sentiment towards Jews as a people or by negative sentiment towards Jews with regard to Judaism. In the former case, usually presented as racial antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by the belief that Jews constitute a distinct race with inherent traits or characteristics that are repulsive or inferior to the preferred traits or characteristics within that person's society. In the latter case, known as religious antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by their religion's perception of Jews and Judaism, typically encompassing doctrines of supersession that expect or demand Jews to turn away from Judaism and submit to the religion presenting itself as Judaism's successor faith—this is a common theme within the other Abrahamic religions. The development of racial and religious antisemitism has historically been encouraged by anti-Judaism, which is distinct from antisemitism itself.
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) is an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations, founded in Geneva, Switzerland in August 1936. According to its mission statement, the World Jewish Congress's main purpose is to act as "the diplomatic arm of the Jewish people". Membership in the WJC is open to all representative Jewish groups or communities, irrespective of the social, political or economic ideology of the community's host country. The World Jewish Congress headquarters are in New York City, and the organization maintains international offices in Brussels, Belgium; Jerusalem; Paris, France; Moscow, Russia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Geneva, Switzerland. The WJC has special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance education, defending Israel, and its Museum of Tolerance.
New antisemitism is the concept that a new form of antisemitism developed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, typically manifesting itself as anti-Zionism. The concept is included in some definitions of antisemitism, such as the working definition of antisemitism and the 3D test of antisemitism. The concept dates to the early 1970s.
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is a civil rights group and Jewish advocacy group established on November 11, 1906. It is one of the oldest Jewish advocacy organizations and, according to the New York Times, is "widely regarded as the dean of American Jewish organizations".
The Austrian Service Abroad is a non-profit organization funded by the Austrian government which sends young Austrians to work in partner institutions worldwide serving Holocaust commemoration in form of the Austrian Memorial Service, supporting vulnerable social groups and sustainability initiatives in form of the Austrian Social Service and realizing projects of peace within the framework of the Austrian Peace Service. The Austrian Service Abroad is the issuer of the annually conferred Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award.
After the fall of Communism in Poland in 1989, Jewish cultural, social, and religious life has experienced a revival. Many historical issues related to the Holocaust and the period of Soviet domination (1945–1989) in the country – suppressed by Communist censorship – have been reevaluated and publicly discussed leading to better understanding and visible improvement in Polish–Jewish relations. In 1990, there were 3,800 Jews in Poland, 0.01% of Poland’s population, compared to 3,250,000 before 1939. The number had dropped to 3,200 in 2010.
The history of the Jews in Belgium goes back to the 1st century CE until today. The Jewish community numbered 66,000 on the eve of the Second World War but after the war and the Holocaust, now is less than half that number.
Antisemitism, the prejudice or discrimination against Jews, has had a long history since the ancient times. While antisemitism had already been prevalent in ancient Greece and Roman Empire, its institutionalization in European Christianity after the destruction of the ancient Jewish cultural center in Jerusalem caused two millennia of segregation, expulsions, persecutions, pogroms, genocides of Jews, which culminated in the 20th-century Holocaust in Nazi German-occupied European states, where 67% European Jews were murdered.
Antisemitic incidents escalated worldwide in frequency and intensity during the Gaza War, and were widely considered to be a wave of reprisal attacks in response to the conflict.
The World Holocaust Forum is a series of events aimed at preserving the memory of the Holocaust. It is also known as the "Let My People Live!" Forum.
Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor is an Israeli-British-Russian businessman and oligarch.
The European Jewish Fund (EJF) is an international non-governmental organisation that coordinates and supports programmes and events aimed at improving interreligious and interethnic relations, reinforcing Jewish identity, counteracting assimilation, promoting tolerance and reconciliation in Europe, fighting against xenophobia, extremism and antisemitism, and preserving the memory of the Holocaust.
Antony Lerman is a British writer who specialises in the study of antisemitism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, multiculturalism, and the place of religion in society. From 2006 to early 2009, he was Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, a think tank on issues affecting Jewish communities in Europe. From December 1999 to 2006, he was Chief Executive of the Hanadiv Charitable Foundation, renamed the Rothschild Foundation Europe in 2007. He is a founding member of the Jewish Forum for Justice and Human Rights, and a former editor of Patterns of Prejudice, a quarterly academic journal focusing on the sociology of race and ethnicity.
Hannah Rosenthal is an American Democratic Party political official and Jewish non-profit executive who served as the U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism from 2009 until 2012 during the Obama administration.
Criticism of Israel is a subject of journalistic and scholarly commentary and research within the scope of international relations theory, expressed in terms of political science. Israel has faced international criticism since its establishment in 1948 relating to a variety of issues, many of which are centered around human rights violations in its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Racism in Poland has been a subject of extensive studies. Ethnic minorities historically made up a substantial proportion of Poland's population, from the founding of the Polish state through the Second Polish Republic, than they did after World War II when government statistics showed that at least 94% of the population self-reported as ethnic Poles.
Belgium is a European country with a Jewish population of approximately 35,000 out of a total population of about 11.4 million. It is among the countries experiencing an increase in both antisemitic attitudes and in physical attacks on Jews.
The working definition of antisemitism, also called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism or IHRA definition, is a non-legally binding statement on what antisemitism is, that reads: "Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities." It was first published by European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) in 2005 and then by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in 2016. Accompanying the working definition, but of disputed status, are 11 illustrative examples whose purpose is described as guiding the IHRA in its work, seven of which relate to criticism of Israel.
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