Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 30 – In its annual
survey of anti-Semitism in the world, the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University
says that Komsomolskaya Pravda, the
Moscow paper with the largest print run, and the Russia Today TV channel (and
especially its English-language variant) “continue to be the main platforms for
noxious anti-Semitic and anti-Israel propaganda.”
The center notes that the number of
victims of anti-Semitic crimes around the world continued to decline in 2016
but says that with the help of the media, anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli ideas
have been spreading in groups both on the far-right and the far-left of the
political spectrum (profile.ru/obsch/item/117027-antisemity-poshli-v-massy).
Among the
developments in Russia last year that the Kantor Center sees as particularly
worrisome are anti-Semitic statements by senior politicians. In both cases,
they were force to apologize; but the center’s researchers point out, those who
spread vicious libels from the past – Petr Tolstoy and Vitaly Mironov – do not
appear to have suffered as a result.
More seriously, the report
continues, both Russian nationalists and some Russian media outlets now
identify opposition figures as Jewish, and they spread fabricated stories about
Jews and Israel in order to damage the reputations of both.
The Kantor study echoes the findings
of Moscow’s SOVA research center which reported that there were very few
violent attacks on Jews in Russia in 2016 but that “’anti-Semitic rhetoric was
extremely prominent” in the media and public life, a worrisome development
especially for the future.
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