World seems to have forgotten Holocaust
Op-ed: Anti-Israel and anti-Jewish groups have created an equation in which every Jew identifies with Israel, and is therefore a legitimate target.
"One day this terrible war will end," Anne Frank wrote in her diary. "The time will come when we'll be people again and not just Jews."
Indeed, at the end of the war, Europe enacted laws against anti-Semitism and Nazism in order to guarantee that it would never happen again. But today – 70 years after the horrible tragedy – the world seems to have forgotten.
In my visits with delegations to Jewish schools in Europe, I listen to the young boys and girls who say that they are afraid to put a skullcap on their head or wear a Star of David, lest they may fall victim to violence. They talk about families which remove the mezuzah from the doors of their homes out of fear.
The media report about violent attacks, damage to property, harassment and threats against Jews across Europe on an almost daily basis. Inverted Nazi salutes receive hundreds of thousands of "likes" on social media; synagogues and Jewish cemeteries are vandalized; politicians make serious anti-Semitic comments; and the alarming presence of radical parties in the government institutions, including the European Parliament, is growing.
Anti-Semitism has become a plague in Europe. Granted, European leaders are speaking out against Holocaust denial and incitement against Jews, but that's not enough. The red line has been crossed, and there is a great fear that if the free world fails to deal with it immediately, it will soon be too late.
Operation Protective Edge exposed the truth: Under the pretence of criticism against Israel's policy and racism disguised as humanity, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish organizations are calling for the State of Israel's boycott, daring to challenge its existence and attempting to create an equation in which every Jew wherever he is identifies with Israel, and is therefore a legitimate target on the street, in school and at university. The writing is on the wall, in bold letters.
The world's leaders must initiate an uncompromising, immediate battle to eradicate this phenomenon by outlawing all websites and social networks which encourage or allow incitement and slander against Israel and Jews, implementing an educational program in all European countries on the Holocaust and its lessons, enforcing immediate laws against violent protests which support terrorist activity,
presenting a new universal definition to anti-Semitism by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, appointing a special EU commissioner to counter anti-Semitism and enacting laws against anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, which exist today in only 13 of the 28 European states.
"I know what I want," Anne Frank wrote in her diary, several days before being sent to her death. "I have a goal, an opinion, I have a religion and love." It is our duty and moral responsibility to protect our children's world, eradicate the threatening evil for their sake and teach them love for fellow man.
Yitzhak Eldan is a senior diplomatic advisor to the Israeli-Jewish Congress (IJC), head of the Young Ambassadors School and president of the Ambassadors' Club of Israel (ACI).
