Israeli Minister Praises EU Anti-Semitism Report

The Israeli Minister for Jerusalem and the Jewish Diaspora, Natan Sharansky, has praised the controversial EU study on anti-Semitism in Europe during his visit to Berlin. Sharansky said on Friday that the willingness of the European Union to actually carry out such a study shows that anti-Semitism and actual physical attacks on Jews is a real problem and is one that Europe takes very seriously. The extent of this problem, according to Sharansky, was evident in the reluctance of the EU’s Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) to publish the report immediately. The EUMC withheld the publication of the report for a number of weeks, prompting the Israeli minister to ask why an EU authority orders a study and then does not publish it. “The Europeans must seriously ask themselves this question. It is something someone really should look into,” Sharansky said.