2014 was a year of unprecedented explosions of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hatred. Our Top Ten this year shows how pervasive anti-Semitism has become around the world. The ten examples selected by the Simon Wiesenthal Center are tragically indicative of burgeoning threats and challenges to the Jewish people not encountered since the end of WWII.
2014 was the year of ISIS, of “Lone Wolf” terrorism, of targeted murder and rape of Jewish citizens in European democracies, of pro-Hamas sentiment reverberating on the streets of Europe and on American university campuses.
2014 was a year of increasing acceptance of Jew-hatred in the political and social fabrics of societies. It was a year of unending genocidal threats against the Jewish state from a nuclearizing Mullahocracy in Iran and continuing efforts in Europe to criminalize age-old Judaic practices of Shechita (Kosher slaughter) and Brit Milah (ritual circumcision).
2014 left Jews across Europe questioning if they have a future in their native lands. Danny Cohen, director of BBC television summed up the feelings of many: “I’ve never felt so uncomfortable being a Jew in the UK as I’ve felt in the last 12 months. And it’s made me think about, you know, is it our long- term home, actually. Because you feel it. I’ve felt it in a way I’ve never felt before actually.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center urges people of good faith everywhere to commit in 2015 to break the apathy and silence and to stand up and speak out against history’s oldest hate wherever it rears its ugly head.
HIPPOCRATIC OATH – TREAT EVERY- ONE BUT JEWS? A doctor in Belgium refused medical help to a 90-year-old Jewish woman with a fractured rib, telling her son who called the medical hotline on her behalf:
“Send her to Gaza for a few hours, then she will get rid of the pain.”
“I’m not coming,” he said and hung up.
Joods Actueel, a local Jewish newspaper reported that Hershy Taffel, Bertha Klein’s grandson, had filed a discrimination complaint with the police.
“It reminds me of what happened in Europe 70 years ago,” Taffel told Joods Actueel. “I never thought those days would once again be repeated.”
The paper’s editor-in-chief Michael Freilich lamented, “This is yet another incident in a short period of time. A shop in Antwerp refused to serve a woman because she was Jewish, a café in Liège has a sign hung with the message ‘Dogs welcome, Jews not,’ and in Brussels slogans like, “Death to the Jews” were chanted during a demonstration and on Facebook, we see calls every day of hatred against the Jewish people.”
The deadliest attack targeting the Jewish community in 2014 was the gunning down of three innocent people outside Brussels’ Jewish museum by an ISIS-trained French Islamist terrorist. 
A SAVAGE ATTACK IN A JERUSALEM SYNAGOGUE; A MONSTROUS MOMENT OF SILENCE IN JORDANIAN PARLIAMENT On November 18th, two terrorists from East Jerusalem entered the Kehilat Bnai Torah Synagogue in West Jerusalem. Armed with guns,axes and cleavers and shouting, “Allahu Akbar,” they savagely attacked worshippers, as they stood wrapped in their prayer shawls, leaving four rabbis – three of them U.S. citizens – dead in a pool of blood.
Seven others were injured. A heroic Israeli Druze policeman who ran to aid the victims was gunned down before the terrorists themselves were killed. The shocking savagery plunged the Jewish world into mourning and grief.
But not everyone grieved for the victims. The very next day, Jordanian parliamentarians held a moment of silence for the murderers and read Koran verses aloud, “To glorify their pure souls and the souls of all the martyrs in the Arab and Muslim nations.” The Jordanian Prime Minister, Abdullah Ensour, sent this condolence letter to the families of the terrorists; “I ask God to envelope them with mercy and to grant you with patience, comfort and recovery from your grief…” The Jordanian government, however, issued a statement condemning the attack, adding that all acts of violence against civilians in Jerusalem must be denounced.
