Antisemitism fairly constant across time and countries
This posting has these items:
1) JPost: UK Jewry experts cast doubt on rise in antisemitism, news of JPR report, see item 5;
2) JPost: Antisemitism and Jewish destiny Robert Wistrich’s last article;
3) Huff Post: Highlights from the 2015 Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism;
4) JPR: Could it happen here?, extract from report;
5) Notes and Links on GFCA and ARI;
A “new civic religion that could be termed ‘Palestinianism’”? Mass pro-Palestine march in Amsterdam, in protest against the assault on Gaza, 2014.
UK Jewry experts cast doubt on rise in antisemitism
While calling for more research into the levels of antisemitism, its causes and effects, respected demographers have made clear that the situation in the UK is not as bad as the reports suggest.
Despite several claims of a marked increase in the level of anti-Semitism in the UK in recent years, a new academic study points to a much less alarmist position when excluding last year’s record peak due to the Gaza conflict.
Dr. Jonathan Boyd, Jewish Policy Research’s executive director – whose specialty is the study of contemporary Jewry – has co-authored “Could it happen here? What existing data tell us about contemporary antisemitism in the UK” with JPR’s senior researcher Dr. Daniel Staetsky. While calling for more research into the levels of antisemitism, its causes and effects, the respected demographers have made clear that the situation in the UK is not as bad as some of the reports earlier this year suggested.
Antagonism against Jews, they concluded, is comparatively low and stable despite 2014 being recorded as seeing the highest levels yet. Acknowledging the “spike in antisemitic incidents during the Gaza war in summer 2014, and the Islamist attacks on Jews in Brussels, Paris and Copenhagen,” the writers said that existing data presented a “complex and multifaceted picture of reality.”
Referring to a Sunday Times poll in January 2015 which found that 7 percent of British adults were either very or fairly negative toward Jews, the JPR concluded that six months after the Gaza conflict, “we observe no discernible change overall in British people’s attitudes towards Jews in the UK as to the medium to long-term result of that conflict.”
The Annual Anti-Semitism Barometer report carried out by the recently established Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, which commissioned pollsters YouGov to survey 3,411 adults in the UK, led to media headlines suggesting that Britain was at a tipping point in its anti-Semitism levels. CAA’s chairman Gideon Falter said at the time that its survey was a “shocking wake-up call” and unless anti-Semitism was met with zero tolerance, it would grow with British Jews “increasingly questioning their place in their own country.”
The JPR researchers said they were “some way from being able to empirically and unequivocally determine the nature of the problem, its scale or its direction of travel in ways that cut through all of the hyperbole bias and conjecture that litter public discourse.”
In a clear rebuke to the CAA, they added that monitoring anti-Semitism “requires more than ‘being concerned’ or having good intentions.” Work needed to be done on the research side and the Jewish community needed to “steer away from knee-jerk reactions and ad hoc research enterprises,” they added.
The JPR researchers made clear this criticism did not apply to the Community Security Trust – which specializes in tackling antisemitism on behalf of the community and whose annual figures are regarded by government, its agencies and the Jewish community as the most reliable of sources.
They went on to warn that if communal leaders want to better understand the trends in anti-Semitism so as to deal with analysis and policy development issues, greater professionalism and more long-term investment was needed. “The alternative is deeply problematic with further wastage of resources, a continuing inflow of superfluous data and persistent uncertainty as to ‘what it all means,’” they said.
All this, they concluded, would be “at the expense of greater clarity and we believe [of] greater safety for Jews, professionalism, objectivity and expertise.”
Antisemitism and Jewish destiny
Today’s antisemitism is a product of a new civic religion that could be termed “Palestinianism.”
On Sunday [May 19th, 2015], Robert S. Wistrich – the director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – emailed the following column to ‘Jerusalem Post’ Editor-in-Chief Steve Linde, asking that it be published in the coming week. Wistrich died suddenly on Tuesday. We dedicate his last column to perpetuating his memory. May his words live on.
May 20, 2015
There are few topics of more pressing concern today to Jewish communities around the world than the current resurgence of antisemitism. Thus, there could have been no more appropriate time for the 5th Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism to meet than last week in Jerusalem. It was a large and impressive gathering of participants from all over the world, initiated by the Foreign Ministry, together with its Diaspora Affairs Department.
In my own remarks to the conference I emphasized the need to free ourselves from certain outdated myths. My first point was that even today, Jews in Israel and the Diaspora are fixated on the dangers of far-right traditional antisemitism – whether racist, religious or nationalist. While neo-fascism has not altogether disappeared, it is in most cases a secondary threat.
Aileen Sartor and Dominic Hartfree-Pearce, who attend Woodbridge High School in Woodford Green and who, like most state-school pupils, have studied the Holocaust as part of the history curriculum, present the Mayor of Redbridge with banners to mark 70 years since Auschwitz camps were liberated. What is the effect of such memorialisation, and identification of Jews with unique suffering through history? Photo from the Ilford Recorder, January 2015.
Second, there is an illusory belief that more Holocaust education and memorialization can serve as an effective antidote to contemporary antisemitism. This notion, shared by many governments and well-meaning liberal gentiles, is quite unfounded. On the contrary, today “Holocaust inversion” (the perverse transformation of Jews into Nazis and Muslims into victimized “Jews”) all-too-often becomes a weapon with which to pillory Israel and denigrate the Jewish people. Hence the approach to this entire subject requires considerable rethinking, updating and fine-tuning.
Third, we must recognize much more clearly than before that since 1975 (with the passing of the scandalous UN resolution condemning Zionism as racism) hatred of Israel has increasingly mutated into the chief vector for the “new” antisemitism.
By libelling the Jewish state as “racist,” “Nazi,” “apartheid” and founded from its inception on “ethnic cleansing,” its enemies have turned Zionism into a synonym for criminality and a term of pure opprobrium.
Hence, every Jew (or non- Jew) who supports the totally “illegitimate” or immoral “Zionist entity” is thereby complicit in a cosmic evil.
Fourth, today’s antisemitism is a product of a new civic religion that could be termed “Palestinianism.”
The official Palestinian narrative seeks to supplant Israel with a judenrein Palestine from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. In the case of Hamas, this intent is absolutely explicit. With Fatah, it is partly veiled for tactical reasons.
But when it comes to the Palestinian ideology and the millions around the world who support it, virtually all actions of self-defence by Israel are instantly classified as “genocide,” demonized and treated as part of a sinister Jewish-imperialist conspiracy. Not surprisingly, then, pro-Palestine demonstrations, beginning in the summer of 2014, were often accompanied by ugly chants of “Death to the Jews” and anti-Semitic incidents.
My fifth point is closely related to this reality. Since the turn of the 21st century, antisemitism has undergone a process of growing “Islamicization,” linked to the terrorist holy war against Jews and other non-Muslims with its truly lethal consequences.
Yet most debates skirt around the issues of Iran and radical Islam.
However, if we do not confront the prime danger posed by radical Islamist and genocidal antisemitism, how can our common struggle hope to succeed? One of the symptoms of this vain policy of appeasement pursued by America and Europe is the almost Pavlovian reflex after every terrorist, antisemitic outrage to immediately disconnect it from any link to Islam. Of course, Islamist is not identical with Islam, only a minority of Muslim believers support terrorism, and stigmatization is wrong. Equally, we must empower moderate Muslims wherever we can.
But denial does not work. Levels of antisemitism among Muslims clearly remain the highest in the world, and the horrific consequences of jihadi movements like Islamic State for all minorities are impossible to ignore. Nothing can be gained by sweeping this threat under the carpet.
The Islamists are the spearhead of current antisemitism, aided and abetted by the moral relativism of all-too-many naive Western liberals.
My sixth observation relates to the need for Israelis and Diaspora Jews to rediscover, redefine and reassess their Jewish identity, core Jewish values and the depth of their own connection to the Land of Israel as well as to their historic heritage. I was privileged to have authored two years ago the exhibition “People, Book, Land – The 3,500-Year Relationship of the Jewish People to the Holy Land” for the bold project initiated by the Simon Wiesenthal Center together with UNESCO. Against all the odds and in the face of predictable opposition, it opened at UNESCO headquarters in Paris in June 2014.
In April 2015, the exhibit was even shown at UN Headquarters in New York, and it will soon come to Israel. This is not merely a historical exercise, for it shows the extraordinary tenacity, cultural vitality, spirituality, and metaphysical as well as physical bonds of Jews and Judaism to the Land of Israel. None of this was intended, it should be emphasized, to negate the historical presence and significance of Christianity and Islam in this land.
But it sets the record straight.
My final reflection flows from this experience. I believe that in an age of Jewish empowerment, living in a sovereign and democratic Israeli state, we can and must first clarify for ourselves our vocation, raison d’être, moral priorities, and the deeper meaning of our near-miraculous return to the historic homeland.
This is the other side of the coin in our essential and relentless fight against anti-Semitism. As we celebrate Jerusalem Day let us be worthy of the scriptural promise that “the Torah will come forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”
Here, in the beating heart of the Jewish nation, where its body and soul come together in the City of Peace, we must be true to the national and universal vision of our biblical prophets. Antisemitism, the long shadow which has for so long accompanied our bi-millennial Diasporic tribulations, and nearly 70 years of renewed statehood, is neither “eternal” nor must it prevent Jews from fulfilling their ultimate destiny to one day become a “light unto the nations.”
Highlights from the 2015 Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism
Impressions of representatives of the ARI institute from the 2015 Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism.
By Dr. Michael Laitman, Huffington Post
May 19, 2015
The ARI Institute was happy to participate in this distinctly multinational forum with 1,200 participants from all over the world. Though dealing with an issue concerning the Jews, there were priests, Imams from Europe, and people of all colors and nationalities. With such a diverse audience going through an intense three-day event while processing the magnitude of the responsibility at hand, there was a tremendous atmosphere of human bonding.
As an organization focused on enhancing human relations at all levels of society, it never ceases to amaze us what can be achieved when people connect above their differences. Here are some of the most emotional moments of the conference:
– Addressing the attendees on Wednesday, Malcolm Hoenlein – executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations – spoke about the need for unity and how that is the single most important element for combating antisemitism.
– Professor Wistrich, Head of Hebrew University’s Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of antisemitism, spoke about how when the Jewish people truly fulfil their unique historical, metaphysical, and spiritual destiny, that is when they will finally become a light unto the nations.
– The most emotional point in the conference was the dinner where Abraham Foxman, of the ADL received a Life Achievement Award from the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. We heard how his nanny risked her life to raise him as her own child when his parents were taken to the concentration camps, and how that part of his life shaped his perspective of the world.
– His speech was followed by award winning filmmaker and social activist Edward James Olmos, who made a passionate appeal for us to come together as human beings, rather than races, under the theme: We are One: Humanity Must Stand United Against Antisemitism.
Memorable Quotes from the Fifth Global Forum on Antisemitism
Reuven Rivlin, Israel President
It is always significant when important guests from around the world gather in Jerusalem. Even more so, when the purpose of this gathering is to heal an illness which threatens all of humanity. Antisemitism is a bane on the entire world, and threatens not only Jews and their communities, but the fabric of civilization itself.
Naftali Bennett, Minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs
Our joint activity is vital in the struggle against the ever deepening threat posed by the rise of antisemitism. Together we can make a difference.
Ambassador, Gideon Behar, Conference Chair Director, Department for Combating Antisemitism and for Holocaust Remembrance
1,200 people from 80 countries and seven different religions are here. Muslims and Christians, Bahai’s and Druze, Hindu, Sikh, Jews and others. All are gathered here with us today because we share the same feeling, that antisemitism is not only a Jewish problem. It is a problem for the world and civilization.
Heiko Maas, Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection
We cannot allow racism or anti-Semitism to divide us. Because despite all our differences, we are all human beings; and as human beings, we have to live together – in peace, in tolerance and in mutual respect.
Tim Uppal, Canada’s Multiculturalism Minister
It comes first from the prime minister, who has a strong belief in supporting Israel, but also so many of us ministers in government who support Israel because it’s the right thing to do
As in all conferences there will be follow ups with emails, telephone calls and smaller meetings. But nothing can replace the feeling of so many dedicated people gathering in one place to overcome a clear challenge and achieve a common goal together.
Police patrol in Stamford Hill, north east London. Photo by Rob Stothard
Could it happen here? pdf file
What existing data tell us about contemporary antisemitism in the UK. JPR policy debate
Jonathan Boyd and L. Daniel Staetsky, Institute for Jewish Policy Research
May 2015
EXTRACT
Introduction
“After the murderous attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris on January 9th, British Jews are scared. Should they be?” (The Economist, 24 January 2015)
The quote from the January 24 edition of The Economist captures a central part of Jewish communal discourse in the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket in Paris. In the first few days following the attacks, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research was inundated with requests for data on antisemitism and analysis of contemporary reality. The Community Security Trust was similarly flooded with requests for comment and interviews, alongside demands for advice and support from community organisations concerned about their levels of security. The Jewish Chronicle issued a special edition on January 16, devoting thirty out of eighty of its pages exclusively to “After Paris” commentary from journalists, political leaders and prominent personalities in the Jewish community of the UK. And the conversation continued for several weeks and months afterwards, fuelled further by a new report published by the Community Security Trust in February showing a huge increase in antisemitic incidents in 2014,1 and the subsequent publication of the Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism later in the same month.2 The communal debate about the extent and intensity of antisemitism in the UK goes on and on, and is likely to continue for some time.
Providing commentary on the issue of antisemitism is not a simple task, particularly if it is meant to serve any practical purpose: i.e. to inform the personal choices of British or European Jews, or to develop policy around combating antisemitism. In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, if the rhetoric is to be believed, at least some British Jews are asking themselves whether they should stay in Britain in the long-term, or move instead to a safer place. And, certainly, Jewish organisations, as well as the police, the security services and government agencies all asked themselves in the weeks following the attacks in Paris whether new measures should be put in place to combat antisemitism or to provide greater security to Jews living in the UK. So the Jewish community is beset by a series of very practical questions and concerns that are crying out to be answered, and people want, and indeed, deserve, the types of answers that go beyond mere conjecture and opinion, and that are based on robust empirical evidence. Indeed, any errors of judgment on the part of leaders or analysts could have very serious consequences, as the potential costs of erroneous advice – in terms of finances, reputations or even lives – are high. Faced with this situation, it is incumbent upon those bearing responsibility for the security of Jews in this country to ask themselves whether or not they feel they possess enough confidence in the research tools and designs currently at their disposal in the monitoring of antisemitism to enable them to dispense sound advice and to participate effectively in the political debates that need to be held.
Confronted with these types of questions during interviews with the national media, JPR’s conclusion was that we remain at some distance from that position, in spite of the fact that the British Jewish community appears to have started to pay greater attention than ever before to the empirical basis of any statements about antisemitism. The recent flurry of surveys commissioned by various Jewish and non-Jewish organisations in an attempt to establish the prevalence of antisemitic attitudes testifies to this tendency. However, as a community, we are still far from understanding what constitutes high-quality evidence, where it is to be found and what can and should be done with it. We can examine the data that exist – as we do at length in this paper – in search of clues to understand contemporary reality. But as will become clear, in spite of the huge amounts of research that has been conducted on antisemitism and the issues around it, we remain some way from being able to empirically and unequivocally determine the nature of the problem, its scale, or its direction of travel in ways that cut through all of the hyperbole, bias and conjecture that litter public discourse. Whilst the problem of contemporary antisemitism is far from alone in this regard – many other social ills also suffer from a lack of empirical evidence – this issue needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. We need to know what is going on with a far greater degree of certainty than exists at present in order to define the problem, gain political and financial support to tackle it, provide security where it is most needed, and ensure that Jews in Britain have the evidence they need to make sound decisions about their families’ future.
The first step in this process is to explore the sources of data that currently exist, to investigate their meaning and their shortcomings, and to assess the extent to which they enable us to achieve these goals. This paper constitutes an initial attempt to do this and it argues that, under the current circumstances, a substantial leap in research and analytical quality has become an imperative. In the next chapters, we present research findings on levels and trends in antisemitism, and explore both the multitude of meanings that can be attributed to them, and the somewhat paradoxical increase in uncertainty that occurs with each additional piece of data that is revealed. Whilst that may be conducive to public debate (indeed, commentators from across the political spectrum use much of the data investigated below to make their points and promote their agendas), this rhetorical sophistication is rarely translated into greater clarity concerning the policies that should be adopted to combat antisemitism. Furthermore, in spite of the wealth of quantitative data that exists on antisemitism, insufficient work is currently being done to allow us to measure the phenomena under examination or to give unambiguous meaning to the results of that measurement. We will not progress in dealing with antisemitism without resolving this fundamental predicament.
Chasidic Jews in Hackney, East London. Photo by Kafka4prez/Flickr
1. Exploring the attitudes of non-Jews towards Jews
General attitudes towards Jews
The first port of call for anyone interested in the levels and trends of antisemitism should be the existing data of major polling organisations. This is for a number or reasons. First, these organisations employ professional teams and implement scientific designs in the development of survey samples; typically, these are random samples representative of the population whose attitudes are being assessed. Second, these organisations possess significant resources which allow them to reach large samples, and, importantly, run surveys at regular intervals, employing the same methods and asking exactly the same questions on each occasion, thereby allowing them to reliably track change over time. Third, their surveys often integrate various topics, rather than single-mindedly focusing on Jews or attitudes to minorities, thereby reducing the risk of attracting respondents with a special interest in a particular topic. This combination of professionalism, resources and context makes the findings reliable, valid and comparable – both across time and across different countries, making them a good starting point for any discussion about antisemitism.
One of the global leaders in this field is the Pew Research Center, an American non-profit research organisation that runs its highly insightful ‘Global Attitudes Project,’ a long-term data collection enterprise that, through the deployment of public opinion surveys throughout the world, seeks to document people’s views on contemporary issues and affairs.
Among other issues, Pew’s surveys regularly include a question using the following formulation: “I’d like you to rate some different groups of people in [survey country] according to how you feel about them. Please tell me whether your opinion is very favourable, mostly favourable, mostly unfavourable or very unfavourable. a. Jews; b. Roma; c. Muslims.” This question has been asked in various countries over several years, thereby allowing us to see changes in attitudes over time. The question about attitudes towards Jews has been included on all occasions, and the earliest data on this topic for the United Kingdom comes from 2004. The results for seven countries, including the UK, are set out in Figure 1.
In examining these data, two particular observations are worthy of mention. First, the levels of antipathy towards Jews that are observed in Britain and the USA are consistently the lowest in the comparison. In both countries, less than 10% of people hold unfavourable (combining the counts for ‘mostly unfavourable’ and ‘very unfavourable’) attitudes towards Jews. Similar levels were recorded by Pew in Canada and Australia, although these countries are not presented here to avoid cluttering the diagram. Thus, 10% appears to mark the approximate level of antipathy towards Jews in English-speaking countries.
Second, viewed over time, the countries shown on the diagram can be largely divided into three groups, based on their levels of antipathy towards Jews: (i) high level: in Spain, Poland and Russia, where levels are in the region of 25% to 45%; (ii) low level: in English-speaking countries where under 10% of the adult population holds unfavourable attitudes; and (iii) intermediate level: in Germany and France, where the levels have mostly been between about 10% and 25%. However, whilst this hierarchy has held over much of the period shown, the most recent data for Germany and France suggest that levels have declined to such an extent that they are beginning to converge with the UK and the USA.
Given recent events, the data on France are perhaps particularly puzzling. Levels of antipathy towards Jews remain only marginally higher there than in the UK, and in the last two points in time are at the lowest levels shown. Yet, this decline coincides with a period that has seen a series of particularly violent and murderous attacks on Jews in France. So are the findings correct? If so, what are we to make of them? And can they serve in any way as a guide to the seriousness of the threat facing the Jewish community? Technically, there is no reason to doubt the veracity of these findings – they do, indeed, reflect some sort of reality. At the same time, they clearly fail to capture something very important, and something that we need to understand to help explain what has changed in recent years to cause the upsurge in brutal violence against Jews in France.
One might also hypothesise that because the Pew data only go up to spring 2014, they fail to capture any change that occurred as a result of the war in Gaza in the summer of that year. As we will see later on in this paper, there is clear evidence to indicate that a significant spike in antisemitic incidents took place across Europe as a direct result of that conflict, so perhaps Pew’s data are simply insufficiently up-to-date to capture the changed reality? However, this does not appear to be the case. A YouGov survey commissioned by The Sunday Times in January 2015 – six months after the war – replicated a version of the Pew question, and found that 7% of British adults said they had either a ‘very negative’ or a ‘fairly negative’ opinion about Jews. This suggests that, when measured six months after the war in Gaza in summer 2014, we observe no discernible change overall in British people’s attitudes towards Jews in the UK as a medium to long-term result of that conflict. If this is correct – and again, there is no reason to doubt the veracity of the findings – we are still left feeling rather puzzled. Many Jews feel as if antisemitism is on the rise in the UK, yet on this measure, the data indicate no change. How should we make sense of this?
Notes and links
Antisemitism 2.0 is growing, Islamophobia is an invention, debate in Oxford with Robert Wistrich last April.
The Global Forum for Combatting Antisemitism is a product of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) which funds it and determines the programme and speakers.
Of its fifth convention, the MFA says:
The Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism (GFCA) is the premier biennial gathering for assessing the state of Antisemitism globally, and formulating effective forms of societal and governmental response. The GFCA is an active coalition of public figures, political leaders, heads of civil society, clergy, journalists, diplomats, educators and concerned citizens dedicated to the advance of tolerance towards the other in public life and the defeat of Antisemitism and other forms of racial and ethnic hatred. The Forum serves as an important meeting place for exchange of knowledge and for formulating the global work plan for combatting Antisemitism.
The 5th Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism will focus on two main themes:
• The Oldest Hatred in the Newest Vessels: Confronting Antisemitism and Hate Speech on the Internet and in Social Media
The information highway has proven an unprecedented tool for accessibility to knowledge, and the advance of free expression and global interconnectedness; but it also presents unique challenges to human dignity – in the form of unfiltered cyberhate, both antisemitic and other forms of severe hate speech, delivered ubiquitously to every multimedia device. How can we increase the decency of the web without harming its essential freedom?
• The Rise of Antisemitism in Europe’s Cities Today: Means of Response
The summer of 2014 saw an eruption of mass anti-Jewish protests and attacks in major European capitals not seen in decades. Many Jews today feel limited in their freedom to identify openly as Jews in their manner of dress or political expression. In parts of Europe, Jewish religious practice is under legislative attack, and the return of Jihadi fighters with EU citizenship marks a security crisis, for Jewish communities first and foremost. Why is this happening today in Europe? Is there a structural threat to Jewish life? What steps can be taken by European leadership to defeat the new wave of Antisemitism in Europe?
The concluding day is devoted to the work of the twelve working groups on the preparing and updating of the Action Plan for Combatting Antisemitism 2015 and Beyond. The working groups are organized around the following topics and can be joined by any of the Forum participants:
Antisemitism in the Muslim and Arab World
Antisemitism in Latin America
Antisemitism in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe Region
Antisemitism in the EU and Western Europe Region
Antisemitism in the Guise of Delegitimization and Anti-Zionism
Antisemitism on the Internet and in the Media
Law, Legislation and Enforcement in Combatting Antisemitism
Interfaith Dialogue as a Means for Mitigating Antisemitism
Protecting Jewish Religious Practice
Antisemitism on Campus and Education for Tolerance and Mutual Respect
The Role of International Organizations in Combating Antisemitism
Combatting Holocaust Denial and DistortionThe 5th Global Forum will take place in the International Convention Centre in Jerusalem, and will open at 6pm on May 12th with addresses by world leaders. For further information, please contact: global.forum@mfa.gov.il
About the ARI Institute
MissionThe ARI Institute is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote a globally aware humanity for meeting the challenges of today’s interdependent world. As an organization dedicated to solving the most pressing issues of our time, our goal is to generate a transformational shift in society through a new global education. Our vision for solving the global crisis at all levels, including education, hunger, and all social and economic problems, involves implementing a new, comprehensive global and integral education program.