Is Jewish life coming to an end in Western Europe?

MUNICH, GERMANY - OCTOBER 9: Demonstrators with Palestinian flags gather to show their support for Hamas's murderous assault against Israel on October 7 (Photo by Leonhard Simon/Getty Images)

Share

Future historians will marvel at the fact that the ideology of multiculturalism has accomplished what even Nazism could not: Ending Jewish life in Western Europe.

This might seem like an exaggeration, but what we are witnessing is the growing impossibility to live a normal life in many parts of Europe if you happen to be Jewish. In France, for example, 37 per cent of Jews refrain from using visible Jewish symbols, 25 per cent avoid revealing their Jewish identity, and over 50 per cent have considered leaving France. Almost 60 per cent believe that “Jews have no future in France” – according to a poll from 2014. It is unlikely that the situation has improved since then. 

While anti-Semitism has historically been a European problem, the new anti-Semitism is an imported one: The Metropolitan Police in London has recently begun to tear down posters that show children taken hostage by Hamas, supposedly in an attempt to “avoid any further increase in community tension”.

The tensions they are referring to are not between Jews and members of the English Defence League, mind you. The “tensions” are a euphemism for the fear of state authorities regarding anything that could provoke the more excitable members of the British Muslim community. 

It is a numbers game: In Britain, you have 300.000 Jews and 4 million Muslims, with similar numbers in France, Germany, and other Western European countries. Whose sensibilities will loom larger in the mind of policy makers in the years to come?

If putting up posters of kidnapped Israeli children is already deemed too much of a provocation in major Western cities, how long until simply being Jewish will be seen as too much of a provocation.

How close are we to the point of saying that the best way to get rid of those “community tensions” is to have no Jews in your cities at all? This is how a growing number of Jews in Europe feel – given the feeble response of the local authorities from Brussels to Sydney – when confronted by chants like “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas” by a passionate mob. One understands why.

In the years to come, more and more politicians will argue that unless you want to risk a civil war in your own cities, officially supporting Israel and the Jewish community will come with an ever higher price tag that they will be ever more reluctant to pay. 

Yes, not every Muslim is an anti-Semite, but history is not made by the silent majority but the vocal minority. And that minority within the Muslim community has a problem with anti-Semitism – and massively so.

The delusion of multiculturalism was that the Western way of life is so seductive that within a generation or two most Muslims will exchange their faith for the gay pride flag and join the annual pride march. In truth, the exact opposite happened.

The ideology of multiculturalism offers nothing exciting for the migrant population, it has no core values to integrate into and in many ways made their own traditions look more attractive. Islam might be less pleasant than hedonistic liberalism, but it certainly has confidence and believes in itself, while Western liberals mostly enjoy apologising for their civilizational sins of the past – real and imagined. Why would a 15-year-old boy in the French banlieues sign up for a masochistic, self-hating liberal ideology, when he has a much stronger alternative available? It is no coincidence that someone like Andrew Tate decided to convert to Islam instead of becoming a Quaker. 

None of these developments bode well for the sustainability of Jewish life in Western Europe, and all the solidarity addresses by politicians will not change the facts on the ground.

In parts of Europe being Jewish will simply cease to be an option, and many will be forced to either leave the country or hide their Jewish identity. It is a tragedy that not even a century after the horrors of the Holocaust, Europe is failing its Jewish population again.