Red Alert #226 Jews in Europe March 8, 2013
This Alert may seem off our usual pattern but, after thinking a bit, I realized that it deepens the colors in those pictures being painted in only pastels—pictures that try to reflect what is really going on, not only in one country but in most every country I can think of.
I refer to the rising enmity that most countries try hard to minimize between both ethnic and religious communities. Of course, to be politically correct, it is not polite to highlight these enmities—but realism is more important than “touchy-feely-hopey” feelings. Ethnic and religious enmities, for what ever reasons, have been the cause of most all troubles since earliest history—and will probably be heightened in the years ahead—no matter how many “peace” treaties or promises are made.
All this was prompted by a heading: “NO HEBREW, PLEASE — THIS IS EUROPE!” frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/dont-speak-hebrew/
Now, anybody who has lived through the World War II years has to feel sick in the stomach—did anybody learn anything? And many young people relying on recent history books would not have a clue as to what we are talking about.
The article referred to a recent warning from Israel’s ambassador to Denmark and the head of Copenhagen’s Jewish community who both warned Jews in that city that if they don’t want to be roughed up on the street by anti-Semites, they’d better not wear anything that would identify them as Jews – and, for good measure, they should also lower their voices when speaking Hebrew.
Not just Denmark, look at Egypt: “Peace... in our time! A poll in Akhbar El-Youm, Egypt's most widely circulated state owned newspaper, asked readers whether they would agree with the idea of the Egyptian Jews who had been expelled from Egypt returning to the country. 79% percent stated that they disagree. 18% said that they agree. connect.freedomworks.org/node/345029
And Germany: A Jewish theological seminary in Potsdam has asked its rabbis not to wear yarmulkes in public. Pupils at a Jewish school in Berlin have been warned to speak German, not Hebrew, on school trips – and to wear baseball caps over their yarmulkes “so you don’t give stupid people something to get annoyed about.”
And Italy, Sweden and Norway: Jews at Rome’s main synagogue now remove their yarmulkes when leaving services; so do Jews in Malmö, Sweden. A Jewish teacher at an adult education center in Kristiansand, Norway, has been told “that wearing the star could be deemed a provocation towards the many Muslim students at the school.” And so on.
The reason for all this cautious behavior, of course, is to avoid the fate of people like the Paris Metro passenger who was recently beaten unconscious by a mob who pegged him as Jewish because he was reading a book by Paris’s chief rabbi.
In early December, at Edinburgh University in which an Israeli diplomat was “mobbed” and a speech by Israel’s ambassador was “disrupted by chanting students waving Palestinian flags,” many Jewish students, fed up with the “toxic atmosphere” (and, in some cases, scared to publicly identify as Jewish) had left for other colleges – and other countries.
www.thejc.com/.../university-students-quit-after-toxi... - United Kingdom
Meotti is among the few journalists who have been sounding the warning for some time about the rise of Jew-hatred in Europe. The last few weeks, however, have seen a flurry of articles on the topic in relatively high-profile places. Can it be that the see-no-evil! to this international catastrophe is finally giving way under the increasingly heavy weight of reality?
www.israelmilitary.net › Social › Religion › Judaism
Also on New Year’s Eve last, the website of Public Radio International ran a piece headlined “Anti-Semitism a growing problem in France.” Noting that France has Western Europe’s largest Jewish and its largest Muslim populations, and that the Toulouse school shootings last March were only the most widely reported of “an alarming number of anti-Semitic attacks across France this year,” PRI quoted anti-Semitism expert Sammy Ghozlan as saying that French Jews now “avoid going out late, going to certain neighborhoods, wearing yarmulkes.”
To its credit, PRI didn’t try to hide the fact that the problem at hand is, indeed, anti-Semitic prejudice and violence by Muslims. On the other hand, it did what it could – in familiar mass-media fashion – to spread the guilt around, as it were, making references to intercultural “tensions” and suggesting that the answer lies in “mutual understanding.” Needless to say, anyone who understands Islam understands that those whose mantra is “mutual understanding” just don’t seem to understand at all. acrookedpath.com/.../the-illusion-of-change-enlightenment-and-prog...
Believe me, we have touched only the highest of the high points of the anti-Jewish enmity that exists throughout Planet Earth. The fundamental problem is the evil flow of hate that grows in the soil of envy—the soil cultivated in many years of education at the feet of parents and/or teachers. And then grandparents. And on and on. But it is not only the Jewish issue. Look at the devilish stuff that is done every day up and down Africa with ethnic enmity—and I could go on!
Envy is akin to jealousy, but far more dangerous. Envy runs along the lines of “he's got it. I don't have it. I'd like it, but I know I can never get is. Maybe I”ll steal it. Nobody ought to be allowed to have if everyone can't have one just like it. I'll destroy it.”
As long as envy exists along with the fear of the unknown, we will be surrounded with ethnic and racial tensions until Jesus returns.