European Union Mends Rift With Jewish Groups

New York Times ^ | January 9, 2004 | RICHARD BERNSTEIN

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ERLIN, Jan. 8 — The European Commission agreed Thursday to revive planning for a conference on anti-Semitism that it suspended two days ago after accusations from European and American Jewish figures that some of its recent decisions were anti-Semitic themselves.

The announcement seemed to put an end to an unusually public display of animosity involving charges of anti-Semitism made by leaders of Jewish organizations and an angry reaction by the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi.

The dispute involving Mr. Prodi, a high-profile European generally seen as friendly to Jewish interests, had threatened relations between Jewish organizations and the European Union. It had also opened up rifts among Jews, some of whom found the accusations of anti-Semitism to be reckless and inaccurate.

The decision to put the conference back on the schedule was announced in Brussels after a meeting there between Mr. Prodi and Israel Singer, the chairman of the World Jewish Congress, one of the groups that leveled the anti-Semitism charge.

"The cooperation between our institutions is fully restored on the basis of a complete mutual trust," Mr. Prodi said at a news conference with Mr. Singer. "And thus I'm in a position to tell you that we are resuming our preparations for the seminar.

"We are closing an episode and opening a deeply felt cooperation that is of utmost importance for European society."

In the background of the open quarrel between the top representative of the European Union and active and visible Jewish figures was another issue, namely the debate among Jews and non-Jews alike about whether some expressions of rage against Israel are really disguises for old-fashioned anti-Semitism.

That, at any rate, seemed to be the implicit argument of an op-ed article published Monday in The Financial Times, which fed the dispute that was quelled by Mr. Prodi and Mr. Singer on Thursday.

Written by Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, and Cobi Benatoff, president of the European Jewish Congress, the article characterized as anti-Semitic two recent decisions by the European Commission, which is the administrative arm of the European Union.

One was the refusal of an institute of the European Union, the Vienna-based Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia, to release a study whose conclusion was that Arab and Muslim groups in Europe were in large part responsible for the increase in attacks on Jewish institutions and individuals widely noted in several European countries, most notably France.

The second decision was to release what the letter writers called "a flawed and dangerously inflammatory poll" taken late last year indicating that 59 percent of the European public believed that Israel was a threat to world peace, the highest percentage of any country asked about.

"Anti-Semitism can be expressed in two ways, by action and inaction," the letter read. "Remarkably, the European Commission is guilty of both."

Mr. Prodi made no secret of his anger at the letter, or his feeling that it made an accusation of anti-Semitism of both types against the European Commission, which includes representatives from all members of the European Union plus representatives of the 10 countries that are scheduled to become members of the union in May.

In a statement released on the European Commission Web site, Mr. Prodi called the letter a "defamatory accusation of being anti-Semitic," and on Tuesday he canceled planning for the anti-Semitism seminar, which was to have been sponsored by himself and the World Jewish Congress. It was this decision that he reversed after his meeting with Mr. Singer on Thursday.

The seminar, which is expected to be attended by European officials and civic leaders, is to be held early next month.

The article in The Financial Times not only touched off a dispute with Mr. Prodi, but also raised concerns among other leaders of Jewish groups about the appropriateness of Mr. Bronfman's and Mr. Benatoff's use of the word anti-Semitism.

"We were disturbed by the attempted attacks against you and we assure you of our sympathy," the Conference of European Rabbis said in a letter to Mr. Prodi.

A Dutch Jewish figure, Ronny Naftanial, director of the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel in The Hague, said, "Blaming the commission for anti-Semitism is an unwise thing to do, especially when the accusation is false and when your arguments fail," The Associated Press reported Thursday.

But Mr. Singer, speaking in a telephone interview on Thursday, said Mr. Bronfman and Mr. Benatoff had not intended to accuse the European Commission of anti-Semitism but to complain of its failure to generate a sense of urgency about the increase in European anti-Semitism.

"What Bronfman and Benatoff were saying is that the environment of anti-Semitism is alive and it needs to be addressed, and until now the fact that it hasn't been addressed in Europe perpetrates anti-Semitism," Mr. Singer said. "But when synagogues are blown up and the chief rabbi of France says don't wear a skullcap to protect your security, there's something rotten.

"This is an issue that has created fear in the hearts and minds of Jews, especially in small countries where they don't have the critical mass to have much influence, and that fear has got to be eradicated."

The decision not to release the report by the European Monitoring Group was made by the group itself, which is based in Vienna.

Its chairwoman, Beate Winkler, said at the time that her organization was deeply concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism but felt that the evidence was not sufficiently conclusive to justify the conclusion that Arab and Palestinian groups were primarily responsible for the anti-Jewish attacks. Ms. Winkler said that further research was needed, and that the group planned to issue its report in the spring of this year.

The poll showing a large majority of Europeans identifying Israel as a threat to peace was widely criticized on methodological grounds, in particular that it gave respondents no way to distinguish between concern about the Arab-Israel conflict in general and Israel itself specifically.

In the view of many people, the decisions of the European Commission to release one report and to withhold the other were made independently of each other and, even if they were wrong, were not motivated by animosity toward Jews.

But in their letter to The Financial Times, Mr. Bronfman and Mr. Benatoff said, "Both of these actions were politically motivated, demonstrating a failure of will and decency."