Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said today anti-Semitism was creeping back into Europe and he would propose setting up a joint ministerial council with the European Union to fight it off.
"Unfortunately, recently we...noticed that some signals of anti-Semitism are back in Europe," Mr Shalom said before meeting European Union foreign ministers.
"I would like to ask all of them tonight to form a ministerial council of Europe and Israel that will fight together against this phenomenon of anti-Semitism. I believe that we should do it immediately."
Charges of anti-Semitism were fuelled this month when a controversial opinion poll carried out by the EU's executive, the European Commission, found that more Europeans see Israel as a threat to world peace than any other country.
While Mr Shalom met his EU counterparts in Brussels, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon flew to Rome to enlist the bloc's current president, Italy, in stemming what he calls a rise in European anti-Semitism.
Mr Sharon's spokesman Mr Raanan Gissin described Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as "a staunch fighter against anti-Semitism, and therefore I think he will be open to our complaints and also to action that can be taken in Europe to stop this".
Mr Berlusconi met the head of the European Jewish Congress, Mr Cobi Benatoff, in Milan ahead of his talks with Mr Sharon. The prime minister said the Italian EU presidency would work to further raise awareness among its European partners over anti-Semitism.
Mr Shalom told Jewish leaders last week that foreign criticism of Israel's "right to use force to defend itself" in its conflict with the Palestinians stemmed from a new type of anti-Semitism that effectively denied Israel's "birthright to exist". He said that for many years it appeared to Israel that Europe "had a very pro-Palestinian attitude".
In Paris, President Jacques Chirac chaired urgent top-level ministerial talks on fighting anti-Semitism in France after the firebombing of a Jewish school in a Paris suburb. Synagogues and Jewish schools have been attacked repeatedly in recent years, violence authorities link to poor Muslim youths enraged by Israel's tough policies against Palestinian unrest.
"Whoever attacks a Jew in France must understand they are attacking the whole of France," Mr Chirac told reporters after calling the emergency meeting.