B’nai B’rith Director of Latin American Affairs Eduardo Kohn spoke with El País about the sharp rise in anti-Semitism in Uruguay – especially online – since Oct. 7, and the growing concern in the Uruguayan and larger Latin American Jewish community.
Read more in El País in Spanish. Read below in English.
The Jewish community in Uruguay is concerned and on high alert about the increase in anti-Semitic situations that incite hatred and that can lead to violent acts against its members, while a study proves that among several countries of the continent Uruguay has a very high percentage of anti-Semitic content online.
Eduardo Kohn, director of B´nai B´rith International for Latin America, told El País that the situation is worrying and Uruguay should be very aware of the case of the murder of Eduardo Fremd, committed in 2016 in Paysandú by a primary school teacher who said he had received a call to kill Jews and was then declared unimpemputable. At that time the Jewish community was the target of all kinds of criticism for the military conflict that was developing between the government of Israel and Hamas.
The Royal Spanish Academy defines that you are facing an anti-Semitic act when something or someone “shows hostility or prejudice towards Jews, their culture or their influence,” while for the International Alliance for the Remembrance of the Holocaust it is “a certain perception of Jews that can be expressed as hatred of Jews.”
Anti-Semitism, a very old phenomenon that had its most cruel expression in World War II, differs from criticism of the acts of the Israeli government because it involves hostilizing the Jewish people or their members because of their status as such, giving them collective responsibility for what the State does, denying the Holocaust, their right to self-determination and generating conspiracy theories.
According to the fact that anti-Semitic behavior has increased worldwide after the attack on October 7, 2023, when the Hamas terrorist group attacked Israel with a total of 1,200 killed, 245 kidnappings and more than 3,000 wounded. And the situation worsened as criticism of the magnitude of Israel’s military response, whose detractors call it genocide, grows.
“In Latin America, anti-Semitism is state and that is very serious. They are incitements to hatred that start from the country’s own authorities. We see it in Colombia, Brazil and Chile, and they are democratically elected governments. When the president of Colombia compares Israel with Nazi Germany, he not only grotesquely trivializes the Holocaust, but also incites hatred in his own country. The anti-Semitic who is lining for the lik feels protected by that incitement that comes from the authorities,” Kohn said.
In Uruguay the Jewish community takes note of a series of anti-Semitic acts, among others, the performance that is prosecuted in Justice and that occurred during the International Women’s Day march, Nazi graffiti, the recent attempt to censor the presence of Professor Alberto Spektorowski in a course of the Faculty of Humanities, some pronouncements of political and union sectors, and the pro-Palestine march on May 15, the day they commemorate the Nakba or Catastrophe in Arabic and remembers when the State of Israel was created in 1948.
In the specific case of Uruguay, Kohn pointed out that “all the parties of the governing coalition have rejected the intense, repeated and endless demonstrations of anti-Semitism. But there are anti-Semitic expressions that come from political sectors such as the Communist Party, and also from unions, social organizations; and not to mention social networks.” “These situations are very dangerous, we have a unfortunate fact just eight years ago, Fremd was killed by a Jew, the murderer said he received a call. There was at that time a call to hatred when Israel had to face Hamas terrorism in 2014. In Uruguay it was said that it was a genocide. There was a very strong swell of anti-Semitism that ended with a dead man. That’s why what’s happening today is worrying,” he said.
A study released this week found that in 2023 the anti-Semitic content on social networks in Spanish tripled. The Web Observatory, which is the product of a joint program of the Latin American Jewish Congress, AMIA and DAIA, monitors online anti-Semitism, presented its sixth edition. For its elaboration, 20 million search content on Google and YouTube were analyzed; user comments on digital media websites and Facebook fan pages, and X posts.
In the case of Uruguay, it was verified that for the third consecutive year it has the highest percentage of anti-Semitic comments on digital media sites, followed by Panama and Chile.
The report expresses that “as for the digital media sites in the region, 15.02% of anti-Semitic user comments were collected with respect to the total. The figure experienced an increase compared to previous years and was above the historical average of anti-Semitism at 14.37%. Although the behavior by country is disparate, for the third year in a row Uruguay was the country with the highest percentage of discriminatory content.”
Comments were studied on news portals in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Panama, Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay. More than a quarter (27.35%) of the comments analyzed to Uruguayan users are anti-Semitic in nature.
The study also finds that anti-Semitic comments grew from October 7, 2023, when the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel took place. Before, anti-Semitic comments in Uruguay represented 22.7% of the total, but after the attack it grew to 29.7%; that is, one in three published. In the region, that percentage did not reach 17%.
The president of the Israeli Central Committee of Uruguay, Roby Schindler, told El País that since the attack of October 7, which he defines as the largest attack against the Jewish people after the Holocaust, there has been an “exponential” growth of events involving acts, hate speech and anti-Semitic graffiti.
“Our country has always been an example of citizen coexistence and that is precisely why, our surprise and pain. We have a record of more than 160 of these anti-Semitic events that often go unnoticed. The vast majority of aggressions occur on social networks, where often anonymity or false identities make it difficult to identify the aggressor,” he explained. He added that although there is anti-racist and anti-discrimination legislation in Uruguay, people are usually afraid to denounce. “From the Israeli Central Committee of Uruguay we urge people to denounce, always. Denouncing, it is when you take knowledge and you can act accordingly,” he added.
The Central Committee, the Honorary Commission against Racism, Xenophobia and all other forms of Discrimination and the Human Rights Institution receive complaints in the presence of acts with anti-Semitic views.
Hatred on social networks has been increasing since 2021
The 2023 report of the Web Observatory is responsible for monitoring social networks to understand and take action against anti-Semitism and hate speech on the Internet. In its chapter, Uruguay reflects a growth in hostile content towards the Jewish community on social networks.
From X’s analysis it emerges that anti-Semitic posts in Uruguay represent almost 11% of the total analyzed, just below the average of the region, but above 2022 when they represented 8% and 2021 when it was 5.6%.
On the other hand, on the social network Facebook, anti-Semitic comments made by Uruguayans are around 12% while in the region they do not reach 10%. There is also a growth of several “% compared to 2022.
On the other hand, in anti-Semitic comments published in digital media, Uruguay occupies the first place in the region.
And there some examples were collected: “The stories of the Holocaust have already gone out of fashion,” or in front of the news about the appearance of new documents about the Holocaust one of the messages that were sent was: “What a coincidence that new documents always appear, they don’t know what else to invent, that’s why no one wants them.”