On the 80th anniversary of the Nazi-led Kristallnacht pogrom, anti-Semitism in Europe keeps rising, while the number of European Jews declines. Like International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Kristallnacht is an occasion when Western leaders shed crocodile tears over the dead Jews of yesterday. While these murdered Jews were still alive and in desperate need of help, most of the free world looked the other way.
During the rest of the year, many of those same Western leaders are busy demonizing and slandering the Jewish State of Israel for defending itself against enemies seeking its destruction. Dead and defenseless Jews are more popular than ever in a Europe, as the many Holocaust memorials and “Jewish” culture festivals that feature no Jews prove.
When it comes to Jews and anti-Semitism, post-1945 Europe’s words do not match its actions.
In a tweet on the eve of the Kristallnacht anniversary, Sweden’s foreign minister Margot Wallström vowed to fight anti-Semitism in Sweden and globally. “Anti-Semitism and intolerance is spreading again in many places. We must fight the threats and hatred, in Sweden and globally,” she said. In practice, she has been busy fighting and slandering the Jewish state for defending itself against Muslim Arab anti-Semitic terrorism.
At an event marking Kristallnacht, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. Merkel has been described as a friend of Jews and Israel. However, more than any other current European leader, Merkel played a key role in opening up Europe’s borders to uncontrolled mass immigration from the Middle East and North Africa. In 2015, around one million immigrants arrived to Germany alone. The vast majority of these immigrants hailed from Muslim-majority countries plagued by rampant anti-Semitism.
Whereas European leaders such as Merkel have claimed that their pro-immigration policy was guided by humanism, it has increased Jew-hatred and crime levels in Europe. Polls reveal that anti-Semitic attitudes among Muslims are significantly higher than among non-Muslims in Europe.
Established politicians have unsuccessfully tried to cover up one of Western Europe’s worst kept secrets for years—namely, that the leftist-Islamist alliance, and not fringe neo-Nazis, are responsible for the majority of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe, which have been conveniently mislabeled as “Israel criticism.”
Recently, a London vigil was held by pro-Israel Jews to commemorate Jewish victims of pogroms in the Muslim world. A group of Arabic-speaking Muslims threatened the Jewish activists while chanting “Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.” Khaybar refers to the seventh-century massacre of Jews by Muslims. The leader of the Muslim group also denied the Holocaust and accused Jews of being “killers” and “thieves.”
Amsterdam is another place where tolerance for intolerance thrives. At a monument to Holocaust victims, anti-Semitic BDS activists recently organized a rally that featured the singing of a suicide-bomber song that glorified the murder of Israeli Jews.
Meanwhile in France, Prime Minister Edouard Phillipe warned of a new “Night of Broken Glass” amid reports that anti-Semitic crimes in France have increased by 69 percent in 2018. French President Emmanuel Macron recently caused outrage by referring to the Nazi collaborator Marshall Phillipe Pétain as a “great soldier.” French collaboration with Nazi Germany caused the murder of more than 70,000 French Jews during the Holocaust.
Macron claims to fight anti-Semitism while vocally interfering in Israel’s internal affairs. Like most European leaders, he strongly opposed the move of the U.S. embassy to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem. Alongside Angela Merkel, Macron has been a staunch apologist for the Iran deal, which emboldened Iran’s aggression against the Jewish state and the wider Middle East.
As far as Europe’s “liberal” establishment is concerned, Jews are apparently only worthy of sympathy if they are defenseless or dead. For many years, the European Union has portrayed itself as a “critical friend” of Israel that merely opposes Israeli policies like Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. However, the European Union opposes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Brussels vocally attacked Israel’s Jewish nation-state law and largely ignores terrorism—to a large extent indirectly financed with European funds—against Israeli Jews.
Europe’s main problem with Israel is that a powerful Jewish-nation state defending itself does not fit into the idealized European image of Jews as homeless and defenseless.
Daniel Kryger is a writer and a political analyst and a Fellow at the Haym Salomon Center. You can find more in-depth articles on Israel and the Middle East @en.mida.org.il.
