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Newsletter Combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life

Newsletter Combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life

Latest EU evaluation shows worrying trend: platforms review less flagged hate speech

The European Commission released the results of its seventh evaluation of the Code of Conduct on countering illegal hate speech online. This year's results unfortunately show a decrease in companies' notice-and-action results: the number of notifications reviewed by the companies within 24 hours dropped as compared to the last two monitoring exercises, from 90.4% in 2020, to 81% in 2021, and 64.4% in 2022.

 
EU Antisemitism Strategy presented during Working Group meeting on Equality and Values

9 June 2022 - Under the European Education Area Strategic Framework, the European Commission organised its fifth meeting of the Working Group on Equality and Values. Pascale Falek, Policy Officer in the office of the Coordinator on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life, presented the EU Antisemitism Strategy during the panel discussion on 'EU non-discrimination policy instruments'.

 
Vice-President Schinas met with American Jewish Committee CEO

06 June 2022 - Vice-President for Promoting our European Way of Life, Margaritis Schinas, met with American Jewish Committee CEO, David Harris, during his visit to New York. They reinforced their commitment to work together in order to win the war against antisemitism in Europe and internationally.

 
Second Working Group Meeting on the implementation of the EU Strategy on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life

1-2 June 2022 - The second meeting of the Working Group on the implementation of the EU Strategy on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life, that took place in Brussels, opened with a video message from Vice-President for Promoting our European Way of Life, Margaritis Schinas. The Working Group was chaired by Katharina von Schnurbein, European Commission Coordinator on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life.

 
Commission attends OSCE-ODIHR conference on raising awareness of antisemitism among police

19 May 2022 - In order to raise awareness and facilitate communication between law enforcement agencies and the Jewish communities in Berlin to improve the response to antisemitic hate crimes and address the communities’ security needs, OSCE-ODIHR organised a conference in Berlin, attended by Wester Meijdam, Policy Officer in the office of the European Commission Coordinator on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life.

 
European Commission meets with 40 young Jewish activists of WJC Ronald S. Lauder Fellowship Diplomacy Summit

31 May 2022 - As part of the World Jewish Congress Ronald S. Lauder Fellowship Diplomacy Summit, Pascale Falek, Policy Officer, presented the EU Antisemitism Strategy and held exchange of views on various topics of interest for young Jews across the world, including fighting antisemitism online, ensuring Holocaust education, EU-Israel relation and preventing and fighting all forms of antisemitic manifestations globally. The 40 young activists were from the United States, Europe, South Africa, Canada and South America.

 
Making antisemitism visible: towards a common methodology to record antisemitic incidents in the EU

18 - 19 May 2022 - Given the rise of antisemitic incidents, Austria invited to the 'European Conference on Antisemitism' Member States to unite their forces to not only denounce the scourge of antisemitism, but also to aim at developing a standardized methodology for recording of antisemitic incidents. This is one of the actions featured in the EU Strategy on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life.

 
Four Holocaust survivors receive the Simon Wiesenthal Prize 2021 in Vienna

11 May 2022 - As Chairperson of the jury, Ms. von Schnurbein presented the main prize of the newly established Austrian Simon Wiesenthal Prize (15.000 Euro) to four contemporary witnesses: Lily Ebert, Zwi Nigal, Karl Pfeifer and Liliana Segre, to honour their life's work. All of them have engaged with young people in sharing their testimony, and contributed in an extraordinary way to education and remembrance of the Shoah.

 
Online Antisemitism: A Toolkit for Civil Society

A guide on 'Online Antisemitism: A Toolkit for Civil Society' was published by B’nai B’rith International and Institute for Strategic Dialogue in partnership with UNESCO, with the aim to build capacity among civil society to tackle the threat of online antisemitism. The guide provides an overview of the online antisemitism threat landscape, a summary of existing policy responses on international and national levels across a range of European contexts, and a broad set of recommendations for civil society engagement with governments, platforms and wider communities to address this challenge

 
Application open for Simon Wiesenthal Prize 2022

The National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism invites individuals and groups from civil society to submit an entry for the Simon Wiesenthal Prize 2022. Candidates’ work and activities must focus on and be characterised by outstanding civic engagement to combat antisemitism and/or promote Holocaust education.

 
Human Rights Talks with Canadian Taskforce to Combat Online Antisemitism

3 May 2022 - As part of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, the Canadian Taskforce to Combat Online Antisemitism held a Human Rights Talks with Katharina von Schnurbein. In the podcast, the Coordinator discussed about current trends in online and offline antisemitism, Holocaust denial and distortion, and looked into how best to tackle this at European and global level.