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As Link Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism Becomes Clearer, Germany to Conduct Study

The Jerusalem Post reported Friday that the German government plans to conduct a study on the relationship between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

The Post obtained a copy of letter sent from an adviser of German’s President Joachim Gauck to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The letter, by Gauck’s senior diplomatic and foreign policy adviser, Ambassador Heinz-Peter Behr, came in response to a request sent last month by Wiesenthal Center associate dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper, who has been demanding such studies in correspondence with several European leaders.

In his request to Gauck, Cooper cited a study by the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation that found that nearly half of Germans, and 40 percent of Europeans overall believe that “Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians.”

Another study cited by the Post found that over half of all Germans believed that “Israel behaves toward the Palestinians the way the Nazis behaved toward the Jews.” Cooper asserted that it was up to officials in Europe to “trace how such an utterly false and insidious image of Israel was created.”

Europe’s “increasingly marked diplomatic hostility” was identified last year as a cause of anti-Semitism. In January, when he addressed the Knesset, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper identified criticism that “targets the Jewish people by targeting Israel” as “the mutation of the old disease of anti-Semitism.” In March, then French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said, “anti-Zionism is an invitation to anti-Semitism.” After last month’s deadly shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “This act of murder is the result of constant incitement against Jews and their state.”

The effects of anti-Semitism in Europe has been especially noticeable in France, which has experienced a spike in the number of French Jews who consider leaving and those who move to Israel. Europe’s growing anti-Semitism has prompted European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor to declare earlier this year, ““Normative Jewish life in Europe is unsustainable.”

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