A surspirsing fall from Grace?

Mar 1st, 2020
Konstanze Kriese

During a European Parliament (EP) Culture Committee hearing in September 2015 about intercultural dialogue, Barry van Driel spoke about the results of a study that revealed a sharp decline in young people’s knowledge of the Holocaust. This was followed, just a few weeks after the Paris terror attacks in November 2015, by the adoption of the Report on the role of intercultural dialogue, cultural diversity and education in promoting EU fundamental values.

However, this report makes no mention whatsoever of the fight against anti-
Semitism. Debates held in the wake of the Paris attacks focused mainly on hardening domestic policy and once again downplayed anti-Semitism as a non-European ideology imported from the Islamic world. As a corollary of this, it was decided that anti-Semitism was covered by the phrase “all forms of discrimination and racism” and therefore did not need to be mentioned specifically in the intercultural dialogue report.