Inflamed anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism's ugly flames were already flaring when Pope Benedict XVI extended his olive branch to a Holocaust-denier and three other right-wing bishops.

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

Since Dec. 27 some 60 cases of anti-Semitism – graffiti, four synagogues desecrated, and an attack on a Jewish youth – took place, according to Richard Prasquier of the Council of French Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF). Two Muslim youth were attacked by Jewish gangs.

In Germany Stephan J. Kramer, a leader of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, reported in Der Tagesspiegel:

The council, which represents Germany’s more than 100,000- member Jewish community, received about 40 percent more hate e- mail a week than usual during the recent conflict in Gaza . . . . A tenth of the 300 weekly messages were explicit death threats directed at council members, he was cited as saying.

In Turkey, according to Reuters:

Turkey's centuries-old Jewish community says it is alarmed by anti-Semitism that emerged during protests at Israel's Gaza assault, and is questioning how this reflects its status in the predominantly Muslim republic.

In Argentina, according to Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham H. Foxman:

An outburst of hateful rhetoric against Israel and in-your-face anti-Semitism has not been seen like this in Argentina for decades.

And on it goes, as David Rothkopf further documents in his blog at Foreign Policy magazine, citing both events abroad and personal experience.

These events involve various forms of harm to ordinary people, not high-level negotiations among variously outraged or apologetic faith leaders. People who should, we feel, have been more carefuly considered as "an internal affair" with such dramatic external effects was attended to by the Vatican.