Jews are leaving Europe driven out by Muslim migration! Is America next?

The following is an excerpt from a speech given by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in Warsaw, Poland on Tisha B’Av in 1937. [Two years before the Nazis invaded Poland.]

“… it is already three years that I am calling upon you, Polish Jewry, who are the crown of world Jewry. I continue to warn you incessantly that a catastrophe is coming closer. I became gray and old in these years, my heart bleeds, that you, dear brothers and sisters, do not see the volcano which will soon begin to spit it’s all consuming lava. I know that you are not seeing this because you are immersed in your daily worries. Today, however, I demand your trust. You were convinced already that my prognoses have already proven to be right. If you think differently then drive me out from your midst.

“However, if you do believe me, then listen to me in this 11th hour: In the name of G-d, Let anyone of you save himself as long as there is still time. And time there is very little.

“… and what else I would like to say to you in this day on Tisha B’Av: whoever of you will escape from the catastrophe, he or she will live to see the exalted moment of a great Jewish wedding: the rebirth and the rise of a Jewish state. I don’t know if I will be privileged to see it; my son will. I believe in this as I am sure that tomorrow morning the sun will rise.”

It was Jabotinsky’s last Tisha B’Av Message to his largest and most loyal constituency. In a short time both he and they would be gone.  Two years later World War Two started in which Six Million European Jewish men, women and children were murdered in Hitler’s Final Solution. The world said ‘never again’.

This weekend we viewed at a local art theater Son of Saul a powerful and impactful film. It is a Hungarian production that won an Academy Award for the Best Foreign Film this year. The film is set against the background of the October 7, 1944 Sonderkommando revolt about the heart rending search by a Sonderkommano to find a Rabbi to say Kaddish over a teen age boy who briefly survived the gassing at Crematoria IV in Auschwitz Birkenau. Seated next to me were fellow B’nai Israel synagogue members, two local doctors, their daughter and the grandmother, a Polish Jewish survivor. After the viewing of Son of Saul, we held a brief conversation about the grandmother’s experience.  She was all of 11 when her town in Poland was overwhelmed and set ablaze by the invading German Army in September 1939. She and her family fled to a small community where they ended up in a Ghetto. She was liberated by the Russians in 1945 and later evacuated with her sister to a DP camp in Germany where she met her late husband. During the Shoah, her husband, a Polish Jew, as a teenager, fled to the woods to fight with the partisans until his capture by the Germans who incarcerated him in one of the camps. Her late husband said that holocaust film treatments like Schindler’s List barely scratched the surface of what really happened to Jews during the Shoah.

Fast forward to Shoah Commemorations in 2016.

Jews in Paris, Toulouse, Brussels and Copenhagen have been murdered by Muslim émigrés, Al Qaeda and Islamic State returning veterans.  Israeli and European Jews were among those targeted and injured in the March 2016 Brussels Airport attack. Jewish synagogues throughout Europe have been the subject of fire bombings, anti-Semitic graffiti defacing synagogues and members attacked by rioters.  Today it is common for synagogues throughout Europe to be protected by machine gun toting security police or military. Observant Jewish men and youths are fearful of wearing kippots in public. Young girls cover their Mogen David star necklaces. The insurgent far right Alternative for Germany political party has proposed banning Jewish humane ritual slaughter of animals and circumcision for male babies.

Many of 2.5 million European Jews see no future there for themselves and their children.

Surveys of Jewish Communities in France, Britain and Germany attest to the fear of Islamic terrorism and uncertainty of continued protection by national governments of their homes, synagogues and communities:

• 58 percent  of British  Jews surveyed  felt they might have no long-term future in Europe; and
• 45 percent felt their families were threatened by Islamist extremism.

40 percent of respondents in a poll of European Jewish leaders published in March 2016 by the International Center for Community Development of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee said that anti-Semitism poses a serious threat to the future of Jewish life in their countries.

Estimates drawn from several EU Surveys indicate that 150 million of the 400 million EU population harbor anti-Israel and anti-Semitic views.

Most troubling EU and Belgian Surveys indicate that Muslims are 8 times more likely than non-Muslims to espouse Anti-Semitism.

Europe’s 44 million Muslim population in 2010 is estimated to grow to more than 58 million by 2030. Perhaps more given the influx of over a million Muslim refugees in 2014 and 2015, alone.

The Muslim population in European countries with major Jewish communities is already significant:

• Germany and France have the largest Muslim populations among European Union member countries.
• The Muslim share of Europe’s total population has been increasing steadily and may reach by 8% by 2030.

Muslim population  in major European cities far exceeds national representation.

Here’s what European Jewish Congress President, Dr. Moshe Kantor said:

If hundreds of thousands of Jews leave the European Union, which is becoming a very strong possibility, then it will be judged a failure.

Over the past few years, tens of thousands of Jews have left Europe to seek a safer home elsewhere, and today, one-third of Europe’s nearly 2.5 million Jews are considering emigration. Whole areas of Europe are being emptied of Jews.

Franz Timmermans, EU vice president said:

In the last couple of years we have seen this age-old monster come up again in Europe, which is anti-Semitism. We Europeans, whenever we are in trouble, when there is a crisis, we look for people to blame and throughout the ages Jews have been on the receiving end.

What does this mean for American Jews?

• Consider launching programs to make American Jewish communities aware that some Muslim refugees may harbor deep-rooted religious and ethnic antagonism

• Consider fund raising for American sponsored absorption programs for European Jews seeking aliyah  to Israel and immigration to the US; and,

• Establish joint American /Israeli programs for young Jewish adults as Shaliach, “emissaries” to meet with European Jewish community leaders and peers to assess problems and develop constructive programs to facilitate absorption of those European Jews who wish to emigrate.

EDITORS NOTE: Readers may listen to Mr. Gordon’s speech at the March of Remembrance in Pensacola, May 1, 2016 by clicking here.

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