January 08, 2005

Anti-semitism report out

There was so much fanfare for the US State Department's proposed "Global anti-semitism report" that when it came out it was such a damp squib no-one (bar some real die hard specialists) seemed to notice. This appeared on The Arabist Network on Wednesday 5/1/2005. The Arabist is opposed to

[s]ingling out anti-Semitism as a special form of racism.......if only because it dissociates it from racism and makes it something "special" — something that will fuel the arguments of the anti-Semites. Highlighting anti-Semitism like this also exaggerates the phenomenon. In the case of the Arab world, where anti-Semitism is admittedly rife and occasionally gets violent, as it did in Morocco in 2003 or in Tunisia in 2002, it will compound a common misperception that anti-Semitism is the biggest form of discrimination taking place.


The same site then goes on to relate the various discriminations going on within Egypt that don't receive special attention from the US State Department.

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