Is this the future and fate of the Jews of Europe?
By David E. Kaplan
“What remains of Jewish life in Europe today works like this,” writes Giulio Meotti in Il Foglio, an Italian daily with nationwide circulation:
“…synagogues are protected fortresses; schools have no signs but they do have many private police and security guards; houses have removed the outside mezuzah; Jews do not wear a kippah in the street or a necklace with the Star of David; they do not give their Hebrew surname to taxis; they tell their children not to speak Hebrew in public, there are no Israeli flags in their windows.”
In less than a century after the Holocaust, signs of the worst in European history are barbarically repeating itself and that universal pledge of “Never Again” has been exposed as a façade for “Once Again”.
Were Jews delusional or naïve in thinking post-Holocaust that antisemitic attitudes had changed? I recall when attending in 1997, the 33rd conference of the World Zionist Organization in Jerusalem and one of the leaders of the French Jewish community taking to the podium and in a booming voice, boasted that “France today is the finest and safest country in the world for Jews,” and to emphasize his point, added with a raised finger, “even more so that the US.” Rattling off the names of kosher restaurants in Paris “that would rival New York,” he painted a picture of a new “Golden Age” for French Jews, a far cry from his county’s painful past of Dreyfus and the Shoah. Even if it was an astonishing statement then, far more so today as countries in present day Europe seem to be competing in how far they express their antipathy towards Jews.
Not only do they want their Jews to disappear from Europe but they also want the Jewish state to disappear from the face of the earth.
Following the Amsterdam pogrom with its roaming gangs violently accosting people in the street and demanding to see their passports to see if they were Jewish and thus eligible for a public beating, Europe is looking increasingly 1930s Hitlerian!
This horrific well-orchestrated mass attack in a European city center by pro-Palestinian hordes on the eve of the anniversary of Kristallnacht, was a chilling reminder of the dangers of resurfaced antisemitism on European soil.
Writes Meotti:
“Last week’s pogrom in Amsterdam should be the final wake-up call for Dutch Jews, but I doubt it will be.”
He strongly advocates that “Europe’s Jews should leave now before it’s too late.”
Agreeing with him is the Chief Rabbi of the Great Synagogue of Paris, Moshe Sebbag, who recently advocated departure for his community:
“There is no future for Jews in France. I tell all young people to go to Israel or to a safer country.”
While mostly rare for practicing community rabbis to encourage their congregants “to pack their bags,” it would appear this is precisely what is happening today in Europe. Another significant chief rabbi joining this trembling trend is the Chief Rabbi of Barcelona, Meir Bar Hen, who expressed:
“This place is lost. Better to leave sooner rather than later to Israel. Our community is condemned both because of radical Islam and the reluctance of the authorities to confront it. I encouraged them to buy a house in Israel.”
Echoing this petrifying perception is the chief rabbi of Brussels, Avraham Gigi, who asserts:
“The Jews have no future in Europe.”
Far less surprising is to hear Frederik Sieradzki, the spokesman for the Jewish community of Malmö, saying that Sweden’s third largest city “could lose all its Jews by 2029.” Following the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre, Swedish cities, especially Malmö, have experienced an avalanche of Jew-hatred at the hands of Islamist mobs and their far-left comrades-in-arms. Sweden, like countries elsewhere, has imported the contemporary global antisemitism where the word “Jew” has been replaced with the word “Zionist” and/or “Israel.” It is the traditional “same old, same old” antisemitism in transparent disguise.
There is “no solution” for Malmö’s Jews and is “beyond repair” is the view of the country’s Jewish leadership and affirms Sieradzki’s, assessment that by 2029, the “Jewish community could disappear entirely.”
Not by 2029, but no less pessimistic is the prediction for the UK.
British-Israeli businessman and philanthropist who has been chairman of JNF (Jewish National Fund)-UK since 2008,Samuel Hayek predicts:
“Jews have no future in the United Kingdom.”
How the unthinkable of yesterday has sadly shifted to the plausible of today.
In Germany, the European country thought the most favorably disposed to Jews and Israel since the Holocaust, there are tangible shifts. Editor-in-chief Philipp Peyman Engel of the Jüdische Allgemeine, said in an interview with Die Welt that “Jewish in Germany is becoming invisible.”
I understood his point. A year ago, I met with a young adult delegation from Germany where one of the participants from Berlin said he has had to change his route when driving to the center of the city. “It’s added over 30 minutes to my drive. What used to be perfectly safe, now as a Jew, I cannot anymore drive through my old route which is predominantly Muslim. It’s now unsafe for Jews!”
Last year, 1,100 Jews immigrated to Israel from France. This year, it is predicted there will be over 4,500. This is an impressive hike in only one year. Then if we compare that before 2012 only 500 Jews left France every year, these statistics are spine-chillingly revealing. Jews are clearly leaving France in ever-increasing numbers and they are doing so because they see themselves no longer living through a “Golden Age” but rather another “Dark Age”.
A blueprint to this “Dark Age” is to be found in the pages of Mein Kampf espousing the vision of a “judenrein” Europe – a continent cleansed of its Jews.
Is this acceptable to today and tomorrow’s Europeans?
For many who have read the signs, they will follow these developments from Israel.
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