>From a report on current Russian and FSU antisemitism (and official avaowals and disavowals) from Human Rights First:
http://www.humanrightsfirst.info/pdf/07601-discrim-hc-antisemitsm-web.pdf
This is who HRF is:
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/about_us/staff/board.htm
It was cofounded by Judge Marvin Frankl, who as a lawyer drafted the brief for The New York Times (the good guys) in the First Amendment case, New York Times v. Sullivan, which set limits on libel suits brought by public figures. He was a founder of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now renamed Human Rights First) and served as its chairman for many years.
But of course the HRF is full of and was founded by Jews, so you know what that means.
Jews in Russia are victims of especially pernicious discrimination that draws upon attitudes rooted in centuries of antisemitism. Antisemitic views today are an increasing feature of the public statements of a wide range of public figures, nationalist political parties, and extremist groups and can also be found in the mainstream media. Antisemitic literature is widely available, sold in Russia’s kiosks and bookstores, while antisemitism is a persistent feature of some mainstream television.83 These antisemitic screeds and energetic diatribes by political leaders, although disavowed by the Kremlin, are the backdrop to violent antisemitic attacks against 14 – Resurgent Antisemitism in Central and Eastern Europe A Human Rights First Report individuals and the targeted vandalism and desecration of Jewish cemeteries and property. Examples include an incident in Pskov in which an individual released an incapacitating gas to disrupt a Hanukkah celebration on December 15, 2006, sickening worshippers at the local Jewish community center.84 Similarly, on December 25, attackers in Ulyanovsk broke a window of the Jewish community’s office there, daubing the entrance with fascist symbols and leaving an antisemitic leaflet at the scene.85 Although extreme nationalist groups, including those composed of mostly young people known as “skinheads,” are best known for racist and religiously motivated attacks, organized Orthodox religious groups have also carried out attacks. On July 5, 2006, some ten Russian Orthodox extremists attacked a group of Jews who were attending an exhibition with religious themes at the All-Russian Exhibition Center. The “With Faith, Hope, and Love in the Third Millennium” exhibition featured displays from a variety of faith traditions. Screaming “Kikes killed our Tsar!” the group attacked the visitors in front of an exhibit on the Russian Orthodox Church before being stopped by security guards. The epithet reflected a belief popular in some nationalist circles that Jews ritually murdered Nicholas II.86 The incident at the exhibition center recalled an earlier attack, in January 2003, in which Orthodox religious extremists carried out a violent attack in the name of defending their faith. In that incident, young acolytes dressed in black from the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas in Pyzhi attacked the exhibition “Caution! Religion” at Moscow’s Sakharov Museum and Public Center, on the grounds that it was offensive to the Russian Orthodox Church. Although art work was destroyed and the organizers threatened, no charges were pressed against the attackers: in contrast, the organizers of the exhibition were tried and convicted of “inciting religious hatred.” 87 As extreme nationalists proclaim “Russia for the Russians,” slogans have been backed by political action to demand the supremacy of ethnic Russians and of the Russian Orthodox Church. Actions by mainstream and semi-clandestine political parties alike have taken up the banner of religious homogeneity, attacking minority religions including Protestant and other non-Orthodox Christian faiths. Even in protests and demonstrations at the presence of so-called “nontraditional” Christian faiths, antisemitism remains a unifying theme and rallying cry for violence and intolerance. In June 2005, members of the Rodina (Motherland) Party demonstrated in Moscow to oppose the construction of premises for the Russian-American Christian Institute, declaring it to be “a sower of ideas that are alien to our state.” Leaflets combined anti-Protestant rhetoric with antisemitism. Some called upon “fellow citizens and patriots” to stop the “American Protestant heresy,” while others declared: “God is not in strength but in truth! Live without fear of the Jews!”88 The so-called “Letter of 500,” issued by members of the Russian parliament, the Duma, and other public figures in 2005, continues to be one of the most widely circulated and influential vehicles for the incitement of antisemitism in Russia. The document was published in the form of an open letter on the website of the newspaper Orthodox Rus on January 14, 2005, signed by over 500 people, including 19 Members of the Russian State Duma (signatories within a year numbered over 15,000 people). The seven-page letter restated many of the most ancient and venomous of antisemitic slanders, including the “blood libel,” while including a call for action: the banning of all Jewish institutions from Russia. The document, issued on Duma stationary on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, denounced Judaism as “anti-Christian and inhumane, whose practices extend to ritual murders,” and called on Russia’s prosecutor general to “open a legal investigation into banning all Jewish religious and community groups” on the grounds of “defense of the homeland.” The publicity around the “letter of 500” provided a point of convergence for many extreme nationalist groups, with a number of Orthodox Christian and monarchist groups campaigning on its basis for the formation of a Movement for Living without Fear of the Jews.89 The public resonance of the letter also provided the backdrop to what Moscow’s SOVA Center called “the most notable organizing event of the year” in regard to resurgent antisemitism: the “restorative” congress of the Union of Russian People, described as the first large-scale effort to restore the pre-Communist “Black Hundred” nationalist group, The congress brought together more than 70 Orthodox Christian and monarchist groups, and speakers including the leader of the Rodina party, and the vice speaker of the State Duma.90 Notwithstanding the extremist posture of some Orthodox leaders, other senior religious figures have spoken out in condemnation of antisemitism and intolerance. On June 9, 2005, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II addressed the international conference of the OSCE in Cordoba, Spain, to declare that the Russian Orthodox Church shares concerns over “incidents of antisemitism, xenophobia and other forms Antisemitism – 2007 Hate Crime Survey — 15 A Human Rights First Report of racism.” He described antisemitism, as “one of the more radical expression of misanthropy and racism,” and a sin, and said its perpetrators included “public figures, publicists, and the leaders of radical organizations.” 91 A major concern of human rights monitors in Russia is the mainstreaming of antisemitism in political life. The incorporation of antisemitic discourse into the platforms and speeches of nationalist political movements in Russia has been reported by human rights monitors in Russia as well as in the press. Antisemitic slogans and rhetoric in public demonstrations are frequently reported, attributed to both nationalist and Communist parties and political groups. In a February 23, 2006 rally celebrating “Defenders of the Fatherland Day,” a yearly tribute to war veterans, according to the newspaper Kommersant, marchers flourished signs with messages including “Kikes! Stop drinking Russian blood!,” “White Power!,” and “A Russian government for Russia!”92 The resurgence of antisemitism as a political phenomenon in the Russian Federation has also been manifested through violent attacks against Jews, Jewish institutions and property, as well as in the desecration of cemeteries and synagogues. The SOVA Center documented 27 incidents of antisemitic attacks on people and on property in 2005, although this accounting can not be considered comprehensive.93 A January 2007 report by the Union of Councils for Jews in the former Soviet Union (UCSJ) chronicles incidents of antisemitism in Russia and Ukraine in 2005 and 2006, and identifies antisemitism as a serious problem in both countries. The report observes that “antisemitic attitudes among the general population are widespread” in both, to the extent that politicians in both countries “have been elected and re-elected while openly espousing antisemitic beliefs.” 94 The report further observes that in contrast to Russia, where national minorities from the Caucasus are the principal targets of racist violence, Jews are among the primary objects of violent extremist attacks in the Ukraine. These attacks are often hidden from public view, rarely reported on in the local news media, while human rights organizations have been less effective than in Russia in raising the profile of this type of violence.95 In May 2006, the government of Ukraine asserted that “all forms of discrimination based on race and nationality have been eliminated in Ukraine,” in its periodic submission in compliance with its obligations as a party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).96 Ukraine’s 41-page submission to the committee that monitors compliance with the treaty made just one reference to antisemitism, reporting the publication of a statement by a government committee in the mass media condemning xenophobic attitudes, “with the aim of bringing a halt to manifestations of xenophobia, anti-Semitism and racial and religious intolerance.97 When taken to task by members of the CERD committee, on the incidence of antisemitic publications and vandalism, the government responded that such problems were “rare and in no way systematic,” and were investigated on a case by case basis.98 Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko spoke out against racism and antisemitism on September 26, 2006, at a ceremony at the Babi Yar ravine, where some 33,000 people were killed between September 29 and 30, 1941.99 “The Holocaust and Babi Yar killings wounded our nations. Babi Yar should be that injection preventing aggressive bloody xenophobia,” he said on September 26 at the commemoration. Speaking at a conference the following day, he added: “I clearly and straightforwardly promise that there will never be ethnic intolerance and religious hatred in Ukraine. Like all Ukrainians, I refuse to accept and tolerate the slightest manifestation of xenophobia and antisemitism.” An estimated 100,000 were killed at Babi Yar in the course of the 1941-1943 Nazi occupation of Ukraine.100