Panel: Anti-Semitism on rise around world, online

By Anthony Man, Sun Sentinel
9:46 PM EST, February 13, 2012
BOCA RATON


— A chilling rise in anti-Semitism is erupting around the world,
exacerbated by deniers who claim the Holocaust never happened and fueled
by the ease of spreading hate speech on the Internet.
The gloomy
assessment came Monday as close to 400 people — including about a dozen
Holocaust survivors and another dozen family members of survivors —
gathered to consider how to combat anti-Semitism as survivors age and
die.
It's a problem around the world, said Hannah Rosenthal,
theU.S. State Department's special envoy to monitor and combat
anti-Semitism.
"We are seeing old-fashioned anti-Semitism,
conspiracy theories, blood libel, age-old stereotypes continuing, like
the Holocaust never happened," she said. "We're seeing Holocaust
glorification, where people are calling for a new Holocaust to finish
the job."
It's especially prevalent on the Internet, said Arthur
Berger, senior adviser for external affairs at the Holocaust Memorial
Museum inWashington, D.C."You go on the Internet today and put in the
word 'Holocaust' and come up with not just a few, but with thousands and
thousands of websites that push hate against Jews," he said.
The Internet is "used to promulgate hate to an alarming degree," Rosenthal said.
Many
websites even deny basic Holocaust facts, that Nazi Germany
exterminated an estimated 6 million Jews and thousands of others Nazis
considered undesirable, such as gays and gypsies.
South Florida is
home to one of the nation's largest concentrations of Holocaust
survivors, along with Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, Berger said.
But with the youngest — who were children at the time of the Holocaust
and World War II — in their 70s, their numbers are declining.
As a
result, new ways must be found to educate people, even though Berger
said nothing comes close to hearing about the genocide from someone who
lived through it. "When you watch a survivor's testimony on film, it's
not the same as touching a human being and feeling what they went
through."
At the same time, experts and audience members who
gathered at Lynn University for the panel, sponsored by the Sun Sentinel
and the Jewish Journal, said there are some reasons for optimism.
"The
positive message is lots of people are interested," said Andrew
Rosenkranz, Florida regional director for the Anti-Defamation League,
the organization dedicated to combating anti-Semitism.
Rosenkranz
said polling done by the ADL shows anti-Semitic beliefs are strongly
held in about 15 percent of the U.S. population — a decrease from 25 to
30 percent decades ago. Yet, he said, while the number of anti-Semitic
incidents in Florida is steady, they are getting more serious.
Audience
members were troubled by the phenomenon. "There is definitely an
increase in anti-Semitism," said Buddy Hurley, a retiree who lives west
of Delray Beach.
"I think it's a real concern," said audience member Eleanor Lipman, a retired teacher who lives part time west of Boca Raton and part time in Montreal. "I'm energized by what I heard. Some people are trying to combat this plague."