E/CN.4/1997/71 page 13 world economic power to destroy Japan in a matter of years. In the United States, Black separatists accuse Jews of having been slave traders, and of deflecting attention from their crime by bringing to centre stage their fabrications about the Holocaust, thus obscuring their image through Jewish control of Hollywood and the media. These and other arguments were used this year, especially by Minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. “It seems that while violence is on the decline, public and national debates produced in 1995 continued to generate a vast variety of anti-Semitic literature and publications, not letting Jewish-related issues get off centre stage. “The obsessive usage of the Jews by those opposing progress and democracy has not diminished in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. During the electoral campaign in Russia in 1995 and the presidential campaign for the June 1996 elections, the 'Zionist threat' and Jewish and Masonic conspiracy theories abounded. Nationalists, or 'patriots', as all those who hate everything that is not Russian define themselves, used the Jews as a convenient means to explain everything that went wrong or was about to go wrong. Father Jankowski in Poland accused Jews of 'satanic greed' in a sermon in Gdansk in the presence of the former president, Lech Walesa; and in Romania a weekly magazine published an article by its owner, the leader of the Romanian Ecologist Movement, in which he practically accused Jews of 'ritual murder'. “3. Islamist and Arab anti-Semitism “The link between Middle Eastern events and activities perpetrated against Jews stems from the basic concept of Muslim extremists that Zionism is an integral part of Judaism and that Israel and the Jewish people are one entity. The distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is frequently blurred in statements and articles by political and spiritual leaders of Iran and Middle Eastern organizations that inspire and finance extremist Islamic groups in Western Europe. “However, violence in Western Europe against Jews and Jewish targets is not necessarily a response to dramatic events in the Middle East. Activists of extremist Islamic groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Algerian movements Front islamique du salut (Islamic Salvation Front - FIS) and Groupe islamique armé (Armed Islamic Group - GIS) operated in 1995 against Jewish communities in several countries in Western Europe, spreading hate propaganda and perpetrating violence without a clear linkage to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It must be stressed, however, that the absolute majority of the Muslim population in Western Europe is not affiliated with extremist groups. “Three points should be noted about Muslim extremists: (a) they have strengthened their international contacts, operating mainly under Iranian influence and both with and without connection to events in the Middle East; (b) outbursts of anti-Semitic violence have tended to accompany dramatic events in the Middle East - and none occurred in 1995; (c) the dispute over the peace process in the Middle East produces