Russia seeks to stem anti-Semitism wave
An attack three days ago in a synagogue in Moscow highlighted the problem of unimpeded nationwide circulation of extremist, xenophobic material which eggs young people on and has not spared even the political class. Already last year, some surveys revealed that Russia was the most anti-Semitic of Christian countries.
Moscow (AsiaNews) Russia is looking into ways to stem the wave of racism and anti-Semitism which emerged drastically in the wake of an incident a few days ago in a synagogue in Moscow. The phenomenon is on the rise and not even the leadership class is immune.
On 11 January, a 20-year-old attacked and injured nine people at the synagogue with a knife. The youth, Aleksander Koptsev, yesterday confessed that his actions were spurred by "racial hatred against Jews, because they are better off". The attacker said, under interrogation, that his decision had been "influenced by books and websites which dealt with the topic".
Aleksander is a fan of computer games. According to information leaked from his interrogation, the youth revealed that he had spent half the day playing Postal 2 a game where a virtual hitman shoots human targets before committing the crime.
The parliament committee for civil, criminal, arbitrage and procedural law is considering sanctions on Internet and computer games responsible for spreading extremist information. The committee's head, Pavel Krasheninnikov, said the deputies will undertake to ensure that no one will be able to find "a large amount of extremist material" in the Internet.
The head Rabbi in Russia, Berel Lazar, said the fault of the incident lies "not with the State but with all Russian society, too tolerant of anti-Semitism". Lazar proposed the setting up of a work group to monitor xenophobic propaganda of extremist groups. Yitzhak Kogan, the rabbi of the attacked synagogue, shares this view: "There is no longer anti-Semitism at state level, as was the case in the Soviet era, but we see there is plenty of freedom for anti-Semitic groups in Russia to act."
A survey conducted last year by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press on global attitudes towards Muslims, Jews, and Christians, highlighted Russia as the most anti-Semitic of countries with a Christian majority: more than 51% of those interviewed said they were against Jews. In its annual report, the Stephen Roth Institute of the University of Tel Aviv accused Russia, Ukraine and Belarus of not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism. The study said these countries tended to classify those responsible for physical attacks or acts of vandalism against Jews as mere "hooligans" or "terrorists" without citing anti-Semitism as one of the causes.
Last January, 19 Russian MPs, together with 500 scholars and intellectuals, signed an open letter calling on the government to shut down all Jewish organizations in the country. The letter described "Judaism as a satanic religion that calls upon its adherents to ritually murder Christian children and drink their blood".
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