E/CN.4/1999/15 page 20 Falashas' protests, but he has received no information to date. Nevertheless, he was pleased to learn that, for the first time, a member of the Falasha community, Mr. Addisu Messele, had been elected to the Israeli parliament, which is an indication of progress in the integration of the Falashas into Israeli society. C. Racism and racial discrimination against Arabs 77. The Special Rapporteur has received communications from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in which the members of this organization expressed the concerns of the Arab-American community about a film, “The siege”, due to be released by 20th Century Fox in November 1998. Members of this community state that they have experienced high rates of discrimination since the Gulf war and in the immediate aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. They fear that this film will only promote further negative stereotypes of their ethnicity in the United States and lead to more hate crimes and discrimination directed against them. The Arab-American community requests that 20th Century Fox work with it to eliminate these negative stereotypes. The Special Rapporteur draws the attention of the Government of the United States to this request and asks it to bring the matter to the attention of the film’s producers in order that they may do everything possible to eliminate any sequences which might cast a negative light on Arabs in general and Arab-Americans in particular. D. Anti-Semitism 78. According to a report published by Tel Aviv University, 3 while major attacks on Jewish communities worldwide (i.e. arson, bombings, killings) have risen since 1996, they are still at much lower levels than in 1994. The section of the report which delineates the situation in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union paints a bleak picture of the situation with regard to anti-Semitism. In this area, there is a vigorous resurgence in the post-Communist years of ultra-right-wing groups which thrive on revived nationalist feelings and the recreation of past victories of Nazi or Fascist groups, such as the Arrow Cross in Hungary, the Ustascha in Croatia, and the State of Tiso in Slovakia. The report alleges that in the Baltic States, police and other law enforcement agencies do very little to uphold the laws designed to curb anti-Semitism. 79. Allegedly, anti-Semitism is worst in Belarus and the Russian Federation. In May 1997, in Belarus, a cemetery was desecrated in Viterbsk and there was an arson attack on a Jewish community centre in Minsk on 10 May. In Russia, there are strong ties between political elites and the ultra-nationalist movements, which often leads to discrimination against Jews in the public economic sector. More direct attacks on the Jewish community receive little attention, either from the press or the judicial system. Violence directed against the Jewish population in the past year includes a physical assault in June on Valentin Osotski, a literary critic and researcher of anti-Semitic movements, and a similar assault in May on three Moscow yeshiva students. There were also several bombings of synagogues at Buinaksk in February 1998 and at Pernin in July 1998, and a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Jewish school in Nalchick in January 1998.