Spain is one of the five most anti-Semitic countries in the European Union, when only 0.2% of the population is Jewish. Despite that fact the media ignore the phenomenon. This was argued by Isaac Koarov, President of the Jewish communities in Spain, during the fourth international workshop on anti-Semitism that has been taking place yesterday and today in Madrid at the seat of the institution Caja Navarra, where blasphemous inscriptions appeared on the walls early morning yesterday. The experts analyzed the development of new anti-Jewish sentiments, which are based on stereotypes, question the legitimacy of the State of Israel and have intensified due to the crisis, according to the accounts of the Israeli Ambassador to Spain, Alon Bar, and the Director of the “Pluralism and Mutual Life” institution, Jose Manuel Lopez. “In Spain insults, slanderous inscriptions and slogans against Jews are viewed as something normal, while the truth is that they reflect invisible deep-rooted antisemitism”, noted the University of Monaco Sociology Professor Alejandro Baer, according to whom “the negative stereotypes persist intensely and show symptoms of social pathology.” According to surveys mentioned by the writer and historian Jon Juaristi, the former Head of the Cervantes Institute, 58% of the adult Spaniards believe that Jews possess too much power and that they are all rich. In addition, 52% of school students would not want to have in their class a Jewish student. Juaristi reminded that during Franco’s forty-year regime, the Jews were pointed at as the people that killed Jesus, the founder of the Christian Church, and in the Catholic churches in every mass there was a prayer for the conversion or punishment of the “wicked Jews”, until the Second Vatican Council abolished that custom in 1965. “Franco himself”- the historian emphasized – “died in 1975, and at the background of every speech he gave was the ‘Jewish-Masonic’ conspiracy to which he pointed as the main national enemy.” The workshop was organized by the Federation of the Jewish Communities in Spain (FCJE) and it joins other endeavors of European bodies to uproot the alarming phenomenon
“The goal is to expose the transparency and the negation of the problem in Spain, and to concentrate for that purpose on cultural, legal and educational aspects” summarized Koarov.
