European Antisemitism: "The Watchword is Toulouse"

It's propoganda [sic], that's what it is', is the dismissive remark on social media by one of Australian Jewry's little clique of leftist Israel-bashers, referring to an excellent brief overview that the Executive Council of Australian Jewry's research officer, Julie Nathan has written regarding antisemitism in contemporary Europe.

In common with so many of his ilk (I'm not going to bother supplying him with oxygen by mentioning his name) this bloke seems much more interested in items that talk up "Islamophobia" in Europe, and indeed in rapping over the knuckles those who maintain that mass Muslim immigration to the West is not good for the Jews.

In her article, Julie Nathan reminds readers of the antipodean J-Wire site of the kinds of events that have made Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu remind the Jews of Europe that Israel offers them refuge.

As many Jews have been quick to point out, on social media and elsewhere, headlines such as that pictured in the London newspaper Metro (see right), which is given away free outside Tube stations,ironically place more emphasis on the furore Netanyahu's remarks have fomented than to the vicious,growing Jew-hatred which prompted his remarks.

Articles such as this one in the Financial Times, which argues that Bibi's call is alarmist, and that there is a false analogy between the situation in Europe today and Europe in the "Devil's Decade" might well be right, but they err if they take too complacent and sanguine a view, whether towards the extent of antisemitism in certain countries or towards the will and the capability of certain countries to protect their Jewish citizens.

The man who made the video below did not choose to make aliya.  He and his family headed across the Herring Pond instead. But his words, combined with the accompanying images, convey so very graphically the circumstances which have convinced a Jewish lover of the land of his birth to leave it, despite a heavy heart, for the sake of his family:

Observes Julie Nathan:

'Seventy years after the Holocaust, the antisemitic virus has re-emerged from the extreme margins of society to which it had been banished after the Holocaust. Not only is antisemitism out in the open, it is brazenly public and proud. The main difference between 1930s antisemitism and the 21st century strain is that in the 1930s it was governments and politicians which incited the hatred and perpetrated the murder. Today, the perpetrators are a combination of the far Right, the anti-Zionist Left, and major segments of Europe’s Muslim population....

Having been predominantly either bystanders or perpetrators during the Nazi attempt to murder every Jew in Europe, Europeans are again in a situation where their Jewish citizens are on the edge of another great abyss. The question remains: How will they respond this time? Will they acquire the backbone to defend and protect their Jewish citizens against murderous anti-Jewish ideologies? Or will they take the easy, but self-destructive, route and excuse the antisemites, appease the murderous ideology at work in Europe and elsewhere, and watch silently as the Jews are driven from Europe’s shores over the coming decade? '

 She writes, inter alia:

'The Danish Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, has condemned the attack on Jews as an attack on democracy. The French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, last month expressed concern at the growing numbers of Jews emigrating from France as they flee antisemitic violence. Even the British Home Secretary, Theresa May, expressed concern that Jews, no longer feeling safe in Britain, are preparing to leave. Other countries in Europe are also facing growing antisemitic violence and are having difficulty protecting their Jewish citizens against harassment, assault, bombings and murder.

In Belgium, the Jewish Museum in Brussels was attacked and four people murdered in May 2014. In 2013, the last remaining Jewish school in Brussels instructed its students to remove their kippot (Jewish religious head covering) on their way to and from school, and only wear it safely within the confines of the fortress-like school building, due to the threat of physical attack.

In Holland, in late 2010, Frits Bolkestein, a prominent Dutch politician, advised Jews to leave Holland as it is no longer safe for Jews to live there. Earlier that year, the police in Holland had instituted a system of décoy police, where Dutch policeman dressed up as Orthodox Jews and walked the streets, in a bid to arrest or deter those who would assault Jews.

In Denmark in 2009, a school refused to enrol Jewish students as it could not protect them from harassment and assault. Other Danish school principals supported the move. In Norway, a survey by the Oslo Municipality in 2011 found that 33% of Jewish students in the town were physically threatened or abused by other high school teens at least two to three times a month. The groups that suffered the next highest amount of bullying were Buddhists at 10%, “Others” at 7%, and Muslims at 5%.

In Sweden, the Mayor of Malmo, where many Swedish Jews live, blamed the Jews themselves for assaults on Jews and firebombings of synagogues. Last year, a planned city walk by Jews and non-Jews to protest antisemitism in Sweden had to be cancelled due to security threats and the inability of police to ensure their safety.

France has experienced the most egregious acts of antisemitic violence in Europe since World War Two. In 2006, a young French Jew, Ilan Halimi, of North African background was kidnapped and tortured for three weeks for being a Jew. He died of his injuries. His attackers were French Muslims, also of North African background. In Toulouse in 2012, a rabbi and three Jewish children, aged under nine, were shot dead at a Jewish school by Mohammed Merah, a French Muslim of North African background. Jews comprise only 1% of the French population, yet 50% of racist attacks in France are against Jews....

A study in Europe in 2013 found that “26% of Jews have suffered from antisemitic harassment at least once in the past year, 34% experienced such harassment in the past five years, 5% reported that their property was intentionally vandalized because they are Jewish, about 7% were physically hurt or threatened in the past five years.” These figures do not include the acts of violence and vandalism of synagogues and other Jewish communal institutions.

Despite the focus on Islamophobia by the media and in political discourse over the last fifteen years, the reality is that attacks against Muslims are significantly less frequent than attacks against Jews. The evidence produced through studies by anti-hate organizations, police reports on hate crimes, and monitors of internet hate, show that the major targets of abuse and violence in Europe are Jews....

In Britain, the Scottish government compiles extensive reports on hate crimes from police records. Hate crime statistics in the Religion category shows high levels of attacks on Catholics (57-58%) and Protestants (36-40%), and much lower levels against Muslims (2-2%) and Jews (1-2%) over the 2011 and 2012 periods. However, these overall percentages, in the 2012 statistics for example, translate into quite a different picture when the population numbers of each religious category in Scotland is taken into account.

 These figures show that there is one anti-Jewish hate incident for every 461 Jews, one anti-Muslim hate incident per 2,240 Muslims, one per 1,579 Catholics, and one for every 6,080 Protestants. Thus, Jews are subject to a much higher rate of attack. Jews are several times more likely than Muslims to suffer hate incidents, and are twenty times more likely than Christians to suffer hate incidents.

The International Network Against Cyber Hate (INACH) conducts a country by country review and report on racist and religious bigotry on the European internet. According to INACH’s studies, prior to 2002, antisemitism had been the largest single type of hate on the European internet. After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, there was an increase in anti-Muslim content; but there was a much larger increase in anti-Jewish content. From 2002, antisemitism became the absolute largest category of hate on the European internet. Incidents of anti-Jewish hate outweighed the combined aggregate of every other form of hate.

INACH’s study showed that up until the second half of 2000 virtually all antisemitism reported online was from ‘classical’ sources of antisemites and/or racists (eg neo-Nazis). By 2002, most antisemitism and Holocaust denial no longer came from ‘classic’ antisemites but from Muslim and left-wing web forums....'

And she maintains:

'The watchword is Toulouse. When three French soldiers (two of North African background and one of Caribbean background) and four Jews (three of them young children) were murdered in March 2012, the French people came out in their thousands to protest the murders. A massive anti-racist banner read: “In France, we kill Blacks, Jews, and Arabs”. However, when the murderer was found to be Mohammed Merah, a French Muslim of North African background, the protests and anti-racism banners disappeared. While ever the murderer was believed to be an indigenous French person, of Right-wing racist politics, the masses of France were eager to protest against murderous racism in France. However, once the murderer was identified as a Muslim jihadist, the protesting masses melted away unable or unwilling to condemn murder when committed by a Muslim jihadist.

In a perverse response to Merah’s murders, there was an exponential increase in physical assaults on French Jews, with several being hospitalized. Bashings with iron bars and other assaults were perpetrated against Jews. The initial shock and horror of the murder of little Jewish children were transformed into a mania by Islamist extremists to emulate Merah, to give him hero status and to glorify his murderous deeds.

After this latest murder in Copenhagen, and the murders in Paris only last month, it remains to be seen whether Europe makes a decision to defend and protect its Jewish citizens. Many Jews fear that European governments will instead cave in to threats and appeasement and watch their Jews pack their bags and leave.'

 Julie Nathan's entire article is here