E/CN.4/2006/16 page 14 films. In London, eight young orthodox Jews, recognizable by their black suits and hats, were attacked by gangs of young blacks and Asians. The attacks were accompanied by anti-Semitic insults and Nazi salutes. Similar incidents have taken place at several other locations in Britain. Intellectual legitimatization is reflected by the number of publications increasingly distributed, in particular by the extreme right, on the Internet. Revisionist literature comes not only from extreme right-wing writers but also from university circles, as shown by several recent examples in France, in particular in Lyon. Political manipulation represents the most serious manifestation of the resurgence of anti-Semitism. The resurgence and electoral impact of racist and xenophobic political platforms testify to the vigour of a culture of racism and discrimination in general, in which context anti-Semitism has a long history, but also to a lowering of the political and moral guard and the cultural acceptance of anti-Semitism as normal. This ominous trend has recently been illustrated in Russia. A group of nationalist Russian deputies signed a pamphlet on the eve of the commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp which officially called for the prohibition of all Jewish organizations in the country. The parliamentary motion called upon the Procurator-General of Russia, in the name of “defence of the homeland”, to launch “an official judicial inquiry into the prohibition of all Jewish religious and community organizations”. The Special Rapporteur will draw attention to the significance and import of this step during his visit to the Russian Federation in the spring of 2006. The questioning of the right to exist of the State of Israel, in contravention of United Nations resolutions, constitutes a manifestation of anti-Semitism. The President of the Islamic Republic of Iran has recently provided an illustration of this in denying that the Holocaust took place and in advocating the removal of the State of Israel to Europe. This position undermines the position of the international community on the existence of two States, Israeli and Palestinian. The Special Rapporteur, informed of allegedly anti-Semitic remarks by the Iranian President, Ahmedinejad, formally brought the matter to the attention of the Iranian authorities in the context of a procedure for allegations of racism and discrimination. 36. As the Special Rapporteur emphasized in his 2005 report to the Commission on the defamation of religions (E/CN.4/2005/18/Add.4), Christianaphobia constitutes an old and recurrent manifestation of discrimination, the intensity of which varies with the religious and political context. Two significant factors explain its current intensity: assimilation and the waning of Christianity in the West and the developed world, and, in the context of prioritizing efforts to contain terrorism, its political use in the dynamic of the war of civilizations and religions engendered by the tragic events of 11 September 2001. These two factors generate a climate of hostility between Christianity and Islam. This climate, which is undoubtedly nourished by the reductionist interpretations of certain political leaders, is, in a particularly disquieting manner, undergoing intellectual and ideological legitimization. By asserting the inevitability of conflict between the West and the Arab-Islam world, Samuel Huntington, in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, portrays a confrontation between Islam and Christianity. This interpretation has been picked up by Christian preachers who provide him with biblical sources and Muslim preachers who reinterpret sharia. The historical sporadic, unrelated clashes between Christians and Muslims are thus placed in a general explanatory framework which provides a meaning and gives substance by systematizing them. The recurrent attacks on places of worship and culture in certain regions of the world, as in Nigeria and Pakistan, are thus legitimized, justified and exaggerated through an interpretation of a conflict of cultures and religions. This dynamic is at present undergoing a theological escalation and geographical expansion through the proselytizing of various evangelical movements in Africa,