TEL AVIV – Anti-Semitic incidents in which Jews are blamed for the spread of the coronavirus and the resultant economic crisis are on the rise around the world, Israeli researchers said in a report released Monday.
The annual report from Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry cited an 18 percent jump in 2019 over 2018 figures, with 456 attacks against synagogues, community centers and other Jewish targets globally. Seven Jews were killed in antisemitic attacks last year, and physical assaults against Jews rose 22 percent.
The researchers said the hatred resurfacing amid the global pandemic in 2020 reignited an ancient form of anti-Semitism that blames Jews when “things go wrong.”
Moshe Kantor, the founder of the center who currently serves as president of the European Jewish Congress, said he was concerned about the “the rise of populism and extremism that could result from the coronavirus pandemic.”
“Alongside trying to control the spread of the virus and taking care to lessen the effects of the financial downturn, the international community should not ignore the societal and political crisis that is already starting to emerge,” he said, pointing to the Great Depression and the subsequrent rise of Nazism as a past example.
“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in accusations that Jews, as individuals and as a collective, are behind the spread of the virus or are directly profiting from it,” Kantor noted.
“The language and imagery used clearly identifies a revival of the medieval ‘blood libels’ when Jews were accused of spreading disease, poisoning wells or controlling economies,” said Kantor, arguing this new phenomenon was “consistent rise of antisemitism over the last few years.”
The report, which is released every year on the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, gave examples of anti-Semitic incidents relating to COVID-19 including the conspiracy theory that the virus was the result of the Jews’ rejection of Christ and that Jews spread it in order to profit from vaccines.
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