"Jew, Jew! Cowardly pig," they said.
"We haven't had this dimension at all before," said Deiter Graumann, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. "When you imagine in German streets, people here chanting - a roaring mob chanting - Jews to be gassed, to be slaughtered, to be burned."
Sounds like something you could expect to hear in Berlin circa 1938, right? How about last week in Frankfort, Germany. On Yom Kippur last week armed guards were stationed outside all the major synagogues in Germany. This in a country very aware of it's history with Jews, and that makes it more chilling.
This problem is not confined to Germany though, as in nearly all EU countries have experienced a sharp increase in reported anti-Semitic incidents since the invasion of Gaza this summer. France especially has a major problem with a large Muslim population empathetic with the plight of the Palestinians, and marches there led to Jewish businesses and synagogues being attacked and burned in Paris.
Some people think this is a backlash from Israeli actions, other take a more sinister view.
Roger Cukierman, president of France's Crif, said French Jews were "anguished" about an anti-Jewish backlash that goes far beyond even strongly felt political and humanitarian opposition to the current fighting: "They are not screaming 'Death to the Israelis' on the streets of Paris," Cukierman said last month. "They are screaming 'Death to Jews'."
So, the question is, is the increase in anti- Semitic acts occurring in Europe now, a direct result of Israeli actions this summer, or is something worse, the re-emergence of a nasty form of evil called anti-Semitism using the Palestinian/Israeli conflict as an excuse.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/07/antisemitism-rise-europe-worst-since-nazis