“Lest we forget” was meant to remind us not to forget. But it seems that we have done exactly that – and in very quick fashion. The horrors we witnessed last century at the hands of the Nazis in Europe are now being replicated again in Europe and elsewhere, this time by Muslims.
Sure, in the West at least, we are in the early stages of this, but all we have to do is look at Muslim majority countries to see how Jews and other non-Muslims are treated. But if we simply consider what has happened in Europe in the past few weeks, we all should be shocked at how history seems to be repeating itself.
We have the same persecuted group – just a different persecutor. Let me just highlight a number of examples of the rising anti-Semitism we find, as taken from the links below:
-Travelling by tram through Paris, a boy heads back from school with his sister when a group of teenagers spots that he is wearing a Star of David pendant. They surround the pair and start shouting: ‘Dirty Jews — you have too much money, too much power, you should get out of France.’ Terrified and shaken, by the time Eden, 16, and his sister Elie, 12, get back home they are still in tears.
-A Dutch watchdog group said it was observing record levels of anti-Semitic hatred online. Meldpunt Discriminatie Internet, or MDI, said the current volume of reports on punishable hate speech against Jews is unparalleled during the organization’s 17 years in existence, the AT5 television channel reported Monday. “Usually, we get three to five reports [of incidents] per week, but now we have received 73 reports,” MDI cofounder
-In the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles – nicknamed “Little Jerusalem” for its large community of Sephardic Jews, dozens of youths, some of them masked, raided shops, wrecking a funeral home and destroying its front window as several protesters shouted: “F**** Israel!” Others raided a drugstore that caught fire. Young girls looted baby formula inside.
-Such has been the concern about anti-Semitism in France that last year the number of French Jews relocating to Israel exceeded those from America, despite the fact that America’s Jewish population is ten times larger than France’s. This year, thousands more have already made the journey — and they are not just heading to Israel.
-In Germany, meanwhile, Israeli ambassador Yakov Hadas-Handelsman has protested after one of his countrymen was abused by anti-Semitic thugs. He said: ‘They pursue the Jews in the streets of Berlin as if we were in 1938.’ In Essen, 14 people were arrested on suspicion of planning an attack on the historic Old Synagogue — the largest surviving example of pre-war Jewish culture in Germany — and the imam of a Berlin mosque allegedly called on Muslims to murder ‘Zionist Jews’.
-Anti-Semitic graffiti is increasingly common. In March, the words ‘Hitler burned six million Jews and forgot half’ were removed from a building in Toulouse. According to Professor Wistrich, the rise in anti-Jewish incidents can be traced to the beginning of this century, with a sharp increase in the past two years. Coming from the Left, he says, is the ‘relentless demonisation’ of Israel that spills over in attitudes towards Jews — ‘you can’t separate the two’.
-Today, it is estimated that there are 600,000 Jews living in France, making it the third-largest Jewish community in the world after the U.S. and Israel. But despite making up less than one per cent of the total population, during 2013 they were the victims of one-third of all racist crimes reported in the country. Among the assaults, one involved the attempted stabbing of a Jewish schoolboy in Paris. In another attack in the capital, two young Jewish brothers were set upon by men armed with knuckle-dusters as they left a synagogue.
This is just a tiny sampling of anti-Jewish hatred and violence occurring throughout Europe. And it is no coincidence that the places with the most anti-Semitic activity are also the places with some of the biggest Muslim populations. Andrew Bolt offers a nice summary of this:
A putrid Jew-hatred has returned to the West, fed by mass immigration and stoked by the Left. Do not mistake this anti-Semitism for mere anger at Israel over the war in Gaza. That war is just the calculated pretext for a month of menace that has terrified many Jews — as well as those of us who prize civilisation over barbaric tribalism.
France now has more than six million Muslims and two weeks ago Arab protesters — some chanting “death to Jews” — attacked synagogues, torched cars and burned Jewish shops in Sarcelles, a suburb of Paris dubbed “Little Jerusalem”.
Germany now has four million Muslims. Arab and Turkish protesters were this month filmed shouting “Gas the Jews” and other Jew-hating slogans and a Berlin imam, Sheik Abu Bilal Ismail, was filmed at his mosque preaching: “Oh Allah, destroy the Zionist Jews … Count them and kill them to the very last one. Don’t spare a single one of them.”
The Netherlands has almost one million Muslims and protesters in The Hague this month chanted “Death to the Jews” in Arabic, while some waved the black flags of the Islamic State terrorist group. The home of Holland’s chief rabbi was pelted with rocks.
Belgium has 700,000 Muslims and in Liège this month a Turkish shop showed a sign that read: “Dogs are allowed in this establishment, but Jews are not under any circumstances.” Two months ago four Jews were shot dead at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, allegedly by a French Muslim.
Austria has 500,000 Muslims, and this month Arab protesters invaded a soccer game involving an Israeli team, kicking players and waving Palestinian flags.
He continues:
This is not really about Gaza, where Israel is fighting Hamas terrorists who have fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians in the past two months — and keep firing even during ceasefires. Yes, these pictures of dead Palestinian children are horrifying. They are meant to be, which is why Hamas shoots from among its civilians and orders them to ignore Israeli warnings to move clear of targets.
That is also why the United Nations has found missiles hidden in at least three schools it runs in Gaza and why Hamas so pointlessly launches them at Israeli cities — to provoke Israel into exactly this self-defence against an enemy whose stated aim is to destroy it.
Then when Israel does shoot back, cue protests and riots around the world to exhaust the West’s willingness to defend not just Israel but Jews generally. Don’t tell me these protests are about Israel’s “blockade” of Gaza, which actually has a border with Egypt porous enough to let Hamas smuggle in thousands of rockets.
Don’t tell me they’re about Israel’s “occupation” when Israel does not occupy an inch of Gaza. And especially don’t tell me these protests are about Israel’s “war crimes” or “murders”. No, if these protests are really against killing Muslims — and not against Jews — then where are the protests over the 2000 Syrians killed by other Muslims in the past two weeks?
Ezra Levant helps to put things into perspective:
Serious question: If Hamas terrorists in Gaza were to build Auschwitz-style ovens to burn Jews like the Nazis did, would the world still demand that Israel stop attacking them? Of course. The official goals of Hamas are the same as the Nazis: to kill every Jew. The Hamas Charter says so 12 times. And yet the world demands Israel’s army stand down.
This month Hamas confirmed yet again that every Jew in Israel – man or woman, adult or child – is a target for their terrorism. The Hamas chant “from the river to the sea” is shorthand for eliminating every single Jew from all of Israel – as in from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Not just from the disputed West Bank, but from everywhere in Israel. Just as Hamas does not distinguish between civilians and soldiers, it does not distinguish between different proposed peace maps. They want all the Jews dead. And yet the world demands Israel cease fire.
We were not supposed to forget why we went to war. We were not supposed to forget what transpired in November of 1938 when a series of coordinated attacks against Jews in Germany and Austria took place. What we now know as Kristallnacht involved the German authorities standing by as European Jews were diabolically targeted.
Over 90 Jews were killed and some 30,000 arrested and sent to concentration camps. There were over 1,000 synagogues and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged during this period. It was in many ways the real precursor to the Holocaust.
Why do recent events in Europe seem so eerily similar to the atmosphere found in the months leading up to Kristallnacht? And why are so many people forgetting what took place back in the 1930s? Is history going to repeat itself once again? Have we learned nothing from recent history?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2703594/Hatred-driving-new-exodus-Synagogues-attacked-Shops-flames-And-terrified-Jewish-families-fleeing-Britain-As-Israeli-envoy-says-like-dark-days-1938-chilling-dispatch-
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Europes-moral-failure-369343
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/hatred-of-jews-is-fuelling-protests-across-the-western-world/story-fni0ffxg-1227007637712?nk=1a4549e0223ff9a9b309542e6bab3308&utm_content=buffer29837&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
http://www.jta.org/2014/07/29/news-opinion/world/dutch-watchdog-reports-record-levels-of-online-anti-semitism
http://www.ezralevant.com/israel-must-defend-itself/
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