Antisemitic Graffiti On Jewish Holy Sites And Memorials
The results of acts of vandalism against Jewish sites can be summarized as following: graffiti with religious symbols, swastikas, obscene symbols and desecration of Jewish graves and Holocaust memorials. These attacks take place not just in Athens and in Thessaloniki but all over Greece, which magnifies their implications, considering that only 5 000 Jews live in Greece within a total population of about 10 700 000 people.
Global Protests Against Israel
“The hour will come when the Muslims will fight and kill the Jews until the Jews hide behind stones and trees.” (Hamas Charter). Al-Quds Day was introduced in 1979 by the former Iranian religious leader Ruhollah Khomeini as a political day of struggle for “international Muslim solidarity” with the Palestinians. The declared goal: the “liberation” of Jerusalem (in Arabic, al-Quds) from the Jews and the annihilation of the State of Israel. Right on time for the end of the Muslim month of fasting, Ramadan, anti-Israeli demonstrations had been taking place in many countries around the world. In previous al-Quds marches there were numerous scandals. In 2014, several pro-Palestinian demonstrators are said to have chanted the slogans “Zionists into the gas chambers”, and “Gas Israel”. There were even reports of “Sieg Heil!” shouts. Again and again there were arrests by the police for anti-constitutional statements and symbols.
The 2019 Halle Synagogue Attack
The German far-right extremist Stephan Balliet (born in 1992) who perpetrated the terrorist attack on the synagogue in Halle (Saale) and murdered and injured several bystanders, believed in an antisemitic version of the narrative of the “Great Replacement”. For him the Jews are the driving force behind the mass-migration of Muslims and black people to Europe and North America that are allegedly replacing the white people and perpetrating a “genocide on the white race”.
The Corfu Pogrom 1891
The pogrom in Corfu in April 1891 is an infamous example of a blood libel accusation, which stirred ethnic antagonism, religious passion and existing anti-Jewish stereotypes and got out of control. Jews in Corfu were accused of having murdered a girl in order to use her blood for ritual purposes. The Jewish community came under siege. The extreme violence had a spillover effect on the neighboring islands of Zakynthos and Lefkada, and the news shocked the public in Great Britain, France, Spain and Austria.