As the Jewish leadership sucks up to those in power who ignore the anti-Jewish venom in their ranks, and the Jewish left remains unchallenged over its unholy alliance, the community’s collective head will remain buried in the sand while its rump is left horribly exposed for a kicking.
By Melanie Phillips, JEWISH CHRONICLE
The recent elections here and in Europe have left Jews and all who care about freedom and democracy with many reasons for unease.
In Greece, around two thirds of those who voted did so for extremist parties of left and right. Chillingly, the neo-Nazi “Golden Dawn”party won no fewer than 21 seats.
As I write, Greece is in chaos, with fresh elections a distinct possibility if no party can form a government.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the EU, whose founding credo was to prevent fascism from ever again taking root in Europe, is now looking at a member state with a significant fascist element in its ruling body.
Not only that, the EU itself precipitated this calamity. For the Greek debacle was a public spasm of fury against austerity measures imposed by Brussels and Berlin.
The convulsions in Europe are throwing up some curious and disturbing parallels and alliances. In France, the left-wing Francois Hollande won on the very same anti-austerity platform as the neo-Nazis in Greece.
Hollande says he is an “enemy of finance” – in effect making common cause with the far right – which identifies the Jews as controlling that financial world, which they agree with the left is a conspiracy against the interests of working people. Behind his victory, moreover, lies an alliance between Islamic radicals and the left. Writing before the election, French Jewish commentator Michel Gurfinkiel wrote that the French left had recast the proletariat as the “multitude”, the West as “Empire” – and Jews as Zionists, the spearhead of counter-revolution.
After the Toulouse atrocity, leftist and Muslim groups started organising rallies against racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia, on the basis that the killer was a white neo-Nazi – only to drop all protests when his Muslim identity was established.
A victory by Hollande, Gurfinkiel wrote, would accelerate the Islamisation of France and the destruction of its national identity.
In Britain, relief at the defeat of Ken Livingstone must be tempered by the fact that, given his troubling views about Jews and cynical alliances with jihadis, Labour fielded him at all. Nor does his defeat erase the disturbing fact that a number of Jews on the left still supported him despite such a record. And, although some prominent members of the community in the end disowned him, many Jews on the left are turning a blind eye to the roots of Islamic radicalism and even vilifying those sounding the alarm about Muslim antisemitism and the Islamist threat to life and liberty.
A few years ago, the French-Jewish leader Roger Cukierman identified an anti-Jewish “brown-red-green alliance” between ultra-nationalists, greens and communists. What these elections have revealed is an anti-Jewish brown-red-black continuum between the fascists, the left and the Islamists.
So what follows? If the Greeks default and exit the eurozone it is likely to break apart, even if Hollande reins in his own austerity-busting growth programme.
The results will not be pretty, the backwash will be extensive and as ever the Jews will be in peril from the instinct to lash out at convenient scapegoats. More French Jews will leave France. As the country went to the polls last Sunday, a staggering 5,000 attended a Jewish Agency aliyah fair in Paris.
In Britain, there will be no such clarity. As the Jewish leadership sucks up to those in power who ignore the anti-Jewish venom in their ranks, and the Jewish left remains unchallenged over its unholy alliance, the community’s collective head will remain buried in the sand while its rump is left horribly exposed for a kicking.
Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist
@ BlandOatmeal:
The Only problem with American Jews is that they choose to remain in America. Maybe at one time Jews wanted to become like their gentile neighbors now most gentiles would like to become like the Jews. As in most things they have left those like you in their dust. It sticks in your gut doesn’t it? 8)
@ Nate Patok:
I think raw statisics would prove you wrong. Violent crime in America claims far more victims then does terror in Israel but America is not free from terror either and is still a target. Israel is much saner, practical and effective in protecting her citizens than is America. Body searches in every air terminal…! I can’t recall a single instance in America where bystanders used their personal weapons to deter or end an act of terror. In Israel it’s a common occurrence because most of those with weapons in Israel have been trained to use them against another person due universal military service obligating most Israelis.
America is losing almost 100 Jews per day to low birthrate, assimilation and religious conversion to other religions, do the math. The American Exile will end, whether by Assimilation or Antisemitism — more likely, by a combination of both.
When the nation-state of Israel was resurrected in 1948, it was home to a mere 5% of World Jewry. Today, it constitutes the largest Jewish community in the World, and is home to almost 50% of World Jewry. Israel’s Jewish community is the only one in the World with a positive net birthrate and a positive net growth between emigration and immigration.
Due to ongoing terrorism and the enduring hostility of much of the World, Israel may not seem safe for the individual Jew. Yet, it is the only country in the World that is safe for the collective Jew(Jews remaining as Jews).
If the Jewish people are to have a Future, it will only be found in Israel. American Jews can either be a part of that Future, or they can simply disappear.
American Jewry will not vanish overnight. But its days are numbered.
@ Bert:
Judaism is a dynamic tension between Jews who like to live like everyone around them, and Jews who like to live like those who were around them in the last place they lived. 🙂
The USA is far safer than Israel.But, it will not be safe in Europe with a yarmulke. Hell, no.
If we bother to read the Torah we would learn that after the dispersal the Jews would finally be gathered back into Israel from all corners of the world. But Jews get comfortable living in the galut. Religion and ideology alone will never be sufficient to move them. This is where the Muslims and other anti-Semites come to the rescue. Jews will again be persecuted and have little choice but to move yet again. However this time their options will be very narrow and even the U.S. under Obama may not be welcoming. Their final choice will be Israel.
@ Laura:
Laura,
To me the real question at this point is not why they remain in Europe. The question is “Since they have remained in Europe, what can Israel do to defend them when the pogroms start?”
Israel could clandestinely send IDF troops ahead of an Iran attack (and the ensuing destruction of Lebanon with massive death once Hezbollah launches its missiles at Israel, with the hysterical European Jew-hating media whipping up a genocidal frenzy) to countries like Belgium, Holland, Sweden or Norway. Rioting Muslims attacking synagogues, Jewish cemeteries or the Israeli embassy could then be gunned down by the scores if not hundreds by defending IDF forces, and these Jew-hating countries would then be rewarded basically with a Muslim revolt that would destroy these countries in a civil war.
But what of nuclear powers, the UK and France? What can Israel do when the pogroms occur there, without inciting those countries to destroy Israel with their nukes in a second Shoah?
And I don’t think that Cameron would be any better than Hollande in this.
The writing has been on the wall for the last decade. Why do any Jews remain in Europe?
From the New China News Agency:
Times have certainly changed, since I can rely on the Communist Chinese, more than the Europeans, to inform me on what’s going on there — and that, even though our Asian friends still cut-paste and amateurishly photoshop photographs of their president:
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/titlepic/111945005_title0h.jpg