My father served in the Army Signal Corps, under General Patton, and participated in the liberation of one of the Nazi concentration camps. He and his fellow Signal Corpsmen photographed what he saw. As a young boy I found some of those grisly photos tucked away in the garage. They left an impression on me that lasts to this day — to this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, to be exact, when I decided to take some time to discuss the current state of anti-Semitism.
Europe is now witnessing a surge in anti-Semitism such as it has not seen since the Holocaust era of the 1930s and 1940s. This certainly shows up in European soccer matches, as a recent Washington Post article reports: the crowd at a game taunts the visiting fans from Amsterdam, a city with a historically large Jewish population, with chants such as “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas” and “My father was in the commandos, my mother was in the SS, together they burned Jews, because Jews burn the best!” At another game, British spectators taunted a team often supported by Jewish fans with the chant “I’ve got a foreskin, how about you? F— Jew!” In other games, players and fans have given an imitation Nazi salute (the “quenelle”) invented by a devoutly anti-Semitic French comedian named Dieudonne M’bala M’bala. The article cites a study showing that anti-Semitic incidents at European soccer games are at a record high.
Whenever there are demonstrations or riots in Muslim neighborhoods of European cities, the participants don’t scream “Death to Israel,” but “Death to Jews” and “Gas the Jews.”
More generally, as a recent US News & World Report piece put it, “From Toulouse to Paris, London to Berlin, Brussels to Copenhagen, Jews are being harassed, assaulted and even killed.” The report notes that a new study conducted by the Pew Research Center shows anti-Semitic attacks at a seven-year high. As of 2013, Jews have faced intimidation and even persecution in more than three-fourths of Europe — 34 out of 45 countries, to be exact. These attacks include desecration of synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, verbal slurs and physical assaults, and even murders — most recently of the Charlie Hebdo magazine staff and (right afterward) the killing of customers at a kosher food market.
The Pew survey indicates that currently 25% of all Europeans feel antipathy toward Jews. This result comports well with a 2013 survey reported in an article by Cathy Young. The survey was of 6,000 self-identified Jews living in eight EU countries, conducted by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights. The results were both surprising and disturbing. The survey revealed that:
- two-thirds of the respondents thought that anti-Semitism was a serious problem in their home countries;
- three-fourths thought that anti-Semitism has increased over the last five years;
- one-fourth reported being personally subjected to anti-Semitic bullying or attack;
- nearly one-half reported being concerned about harassment;
- two-thirds were afraid that their children would be harassed at school, or in transit to and from.
What is behind this swelling tide of European anti-Semitism? I think we can point to three groups: Muslim immigrants to Europe European leftists and European right-wing extremists.
This triumvirate of communities infected with large numbers of Jew-haters is explored in a recent report by the American Jewish Committee. As the report puts it, “Three distinct groups in France are noticeably more anti-Jewish than the overall population, according to two new public opinion surveys on French anti-Semitism. The groups are supporters of the National Front party (extreme right), to a lesser extent supporters of the Left Front coalition (extreme left), and members of the Muslim community.”
The article gives the results of polling conducted by the French think-tank Fondapol last year. They show that while about 25% of the French generally say Jews have too much power in the media, 33% of Left Front sympathizers, fully 51% of National Front sympathizers, and a mind-boggling 61% of French Muslims agree. Again, on the question of whether Jews use “Holocaust victim status” as an egoistic ploy, 35% of the whole French population agrees — already a shockingly high number — while 51% of Left Front supporters, 56% of Muslims, and a nauseating 62% of National Front supporters agree. Regarding the recent upsurge in violence against Jews, while 14% of the French public generally thought it was “understandable,” 29% of National Front supporters agreed, as did 21% of Left Front supporters, and 25% of Muslims.
The polls also showed that the degree of anti-Semitism among Muslims was directly proportional to the degree of self-reported religiosity.
Let’s examine these groups more closely.
Start with the Muslim European community. It is no shocking news to report that Europe in recent years has seen a massive increase in Muslim immigrants. As a recent Pew study reports, the Muslim percentage of Europe’s population has grown about 1% per decade, from constituting 4% of the EU population in 1990 to 6% in 2010. (In 2010, the total Muslim EU population was over 13 million.) The study projects that this will continue through 2030, when the Muslims will be 8% of the total population. France and Germany have the highest percentages of Muslims (at 7.5% and 5.8% respectively). And from that community has come most of the attackers of Jews.
The idea that the Left was sympathetic to the Jews after the Holocaust doesn’t comport with historical reality.
The polls I discussed earlier showed anti-Semitic sentiment strong among French Muslims. Other polls indicate that the same holds true of the rest of Europe. As a recent paper by Gunther Jikeli notes, many other surveys done throughout Europe confirm that there is a much higher level of anti-Semitism among Muslims than among non-Muslims (or the public at large). In a 2006 Pew study, Muslims in France, Germany, and Spain were twice as likely to have unfavorable views of Jews as were non-Muslims, while in Britain Muslims were seven times more likely. Jikeli reviews ten other studies conducted in a variety of ways in a variety of other European countries, all showing basically the same result.
It is often said that whatever hatred comes from elements of the Muslim immigrant community is created by Israel’s policies, specifically its occupation of the West Bank. I don’t find this claim plausible, for several reasons.
First, as the US News article noted, whenever there are demonstrations or riots in Muslim neighborhoods of European cities, the participants don’t scream “Death to Israel,” but “Death to Jews” and “Gas the Jews.”
Second, and more obviously, European Jews — i.e., precisely those Jews who have chosen to stay in their European homelands rather than immigrate to Israel — have virtually no influence over Israeli policies. So harassing, assaulting, and killing those Jews will certainly not change Israeli policy. And how crazy is it to think that desecrating the graves of long-deceased Jews could be motivated by the intention to protest against Israel and its various policies? I mean, if this were anger at Israeli policies, you would expect the attacks to be directed at Israeli embassies, not random Jewish graveyards.
Third, there has been tremendous antipathy toward the Jews in all Muslim lands since the inception, not of Israel, but of Islam itself. Anti-Semitism has been endemic in Islam throughout its existence for the same reason it has been endemic in Christianity throughout its existence. Judaism denies that Muhammed was a prophet and that Jesus was the Messiah. It is basically that simple. And we should note that the hatred Muslims often feel against the Jews for not accepting the Prophet is also directed at Christians (and Hindus, Zoroastrians, and so on) for the self-same reason.
None of this should be taken to mean that I think Israel’s state policies are now or have ever been above reproach, or that I think anybody who criticizes those policies is necessarily (or even likely) an anti-Semite. Of course everyone is free to criticize Israel — or America, Egypt, Iran, or any other country.
Islam itself was a colonialist creed. The Turkish Empire was hardly a Jewish one, to take the most recent case.
I just doubt the claim that Israel’s policies are the predominant cause of Islamic anti-Semitism. The existence of Israel is the current focus for that anti-Semitism, but the long-standing Muslim antipathy toward Jews would have remained even if Yasser Arafat had accepted the two-state solution negotiated by Bill Clinton some years back, and even if all Israelis moved to somewhere else tomorrow. As Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Islamist terrorist army Hezbollah, so charmingly put it: “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak, and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice I do not say the Israeli.” Duly noticed.
Let’s now turn to another group responsible for the recrudescence of European anti-Semitism, the European Left. I want to start with addressing what I will call the New York Times Received Account. The name gives recognition to an NYT article written a couple of years ago by Colin Shindler.
In that piece (“The European Left and Its Trouble with the Jews”), Shindler began by noting the growth of anti-Semitic violence in France, such as the then recent firing of blanks outside a synagogue, Islamists tossing a grenade into a kosher restaurant, and the killing of a teacher and some children in a Jewish school. He then averred that much of the European Left had remained silent about these cases where “anti-Zionism spills over into anti-Semitism,” as he put it.
His thesis was that the Left was very sympathetic to Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust, but started reversing itself with Israel’s “collusion with imperial powers like Britain and France during the Suez Crisis,” and only intensified during the 1970s with the Israelis building out settlements on the West Bank. By the 1990s, he added, many European Leftists began to view the growing Muslim immigrant population as “a new proletariat.”
I don’t find the Times Received View remotely persuasive (but then, very little of what emanates from the Great American Progressive Propaganda Organ seems persuasive to me). To begin with a couple of obvious quibbles, the idea that the Left was sympathetic to the Jews after the Holocaust doesn’t comport with historical reality. Certainly in the contest of the post-war Soviet Empire, as Daniel Hannan notes, Stalin’s pursuit of the “Doctors’ Plot” was intended to initiate a campaign targeting Jews with the goal of throwing massive numbers of them into his Gulag. Also, there were show trials of “Israeli spies” in both Czechoslovakia and Hungary, as well as purges of Jews by the Polish communist party.
Of course, much of the European Left did not support the Stalinist Soviet Empire. But much of the European Left did.
And the idea that the Left began to oppose Jews and side with the Muslims because Israel sided with imperial powers in 1956 doesn’t square with the fact that the European Left seems to have had little problem with Soviet imperialism (remember, the year 1956 also saw the Soviets butchering Hungarians who wanted freedom from their empire), or Chinese imperialism. Moreover, as Daniel Greenberg has observed, Islam itself was a colonialist creed. The Turkish Empire was hardly a Jewish one, to take the most recent case. And the empire that Iran is trying to put together (by controlling Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen) is again not a Jewish but a Shia Muslim one.
Anti-Semitic trends in socialism go back to the beginning.
But waive those points. Jews who have chosen to remain in Europe have no control of any kind over Israel’s policies. The main reason a person would allow his hatred of Israel’s policies — which are not universally accepted even by Israelis — to extend to all Jews would be that he is a Jew-hater to begin with.
And again, as Daniel Hannan has forcefully observed, anti-Semitic trends in socialism go back to the beginning. Pierre Leroux, the 19th-century leftist who coined the term “socialism,” trumpeted, “When we speak of Jews, we mean the Jewish spirit — the spirit of profit, of lucre, of gain, of speculation in a word the banker’s spirit.” The 19th-century German radical Wilhelm Marr embraced the term “anti-Semitic,” crowing, “Anti-Semitism is a Socialist movement, only nobler and purer in form than Social Democracy.” The 20th-century French socialist-communist Pierre Myrens had that, “The Yid is an Israelite by religion, a Jew by race, and what is more, a capitalist!”
Of course, the über-leftist himself, Karl Marx — whose father converted to Protestantism from Judaism, so would have been categorized as Jewish under the Nuremberg laws — held that “the essence of Judaism and the root of the Jewish soul is expediency and self-interest: the God of Israel is Mammon, who exposes himself in the lust for money.” He and his collaborator Engels wrote of the Polish Jews, “The Polish Jew-Usurer cheats, gives short weights, clips coins, engages in common swindling.” This from the “genius” revered in philosophy departments worldwide!
Jews themselves have often been politically leftist, but as a group they have historically been associated with capitalism (“money-lending”) in the European mind. And what defines the Left — from progressive liberalism, to socialism, to communism — is precisely the disapproval or loathing of capitalism.
Here of course is one of European history’s great ironies. You might call it the Catch-22 of Judaism in Europe. Jews were often barred from land ownership, membership in the trade guilds, and government service. They were, however, allowed to be peddlers, and otherwise to engage in business. They were allowed to do something Christians were forbidden to do: lend money at interest — to Christians. So Christian policy itself often drove Jews into business generally and banking in particular. Drove them into it — but condemned them for it.
Again, I want to add the caveat that while the European Left has been a wellspring of anti-Semitic sentiment, I don’t say that most European leftists harbored such feelings. I simply say that they are more likely to have such sentiments than the population as a whole.
Let’s finally consider the rise of ultra-Right parties in Europe. Over the past five years, they have been making rapid gains in membership and (accordingly) in representation in legislatures. Last year in particular saw these parties achieve major gains.
Christian policy itself often drove Jews into business generally and banking in particular. Drove them into it — but condemned them for it.
These parties fall into two broad categories: the ultra-right-wing, so to say, and the neo-Nazi. The Independence Party in the UK and the contemporary National Front in France, both to the right of what we would call conservative or neoliberal parties, are of the first category. The Golden Dawn Party in Greece and the Jobbik Party in Hungary are both in the second category. The difference between the two types of European radically right-wing parties is explored in an article by John Palmer a couple of years back.
The neo-Nazi parties mimic the German Nazi Party of yore. For example, the Golden Dawn party of Greece has its own version of the SA (Sturmabteilung), which delights in bullying immigrants and refugees. And the Jobbik party in Hungary delights in bullying the Roma (Gypsies). On the other hand, the UK Independence Party and the contemporary National Front don’t terrorize anybody, but instead oppose continued widespread immigration and want firmer measures to assimilate the recent immigrants.
Interesting here is the National Front in France. It has recently seen something of a power struggle between the founder of the party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and his daughter Marine. The father has said a number of things that seem to show genuine anti-Semitism. For instance, he has spoken about making an “oven-load” of a Jewish singer. Regarding the Holocaust, which killed 6 million Jews, he has repeatedly made slighting comments, such as, “If you take a book of over a thousand pages on the Second World War, in which 50 million died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that’s what one calls a detail.” Considering that of the 50 million people killed in WWII, at least 11 million died in the Nazi concentration camps, I don’t think we are talking about a detail meriting two pages out of 1,000. And he has said, “I’m not saying that the gas chambers didn’t exist. I couldn’t see them myself.” While not denying the concentration camps existed, Le Pen has clearly attempted to dismiss them, which seems odd for a person who had no anti-Semitic beliefs to do.
His daughter seems to have taken command of the party and distanced it from his anti-Semitism, focusing instead on anti-immigrationism. But even so, it seems clear that the long-term members of the party are more likely to harbor anti-Semitic beliefs than is the French public as a whole.
Now, in the European context, radical right-wing parties have a markedly different flavor from that which we Americans view as “right-wing.” Many Americans consider libertarians to be on the Right politically, but Europeans would more correctly view then as “liberal” advocates of minimal government. Most American conservatives, too, are distrustful of a powerful central government. But the European Right tends to favor economic statism and intense nationalism. What focuses their anger is the vision that many European leaders share of a “United States of Europe.”
The European Union started as a free trade zone (at which it was quite a success). Then it became a unified monetary zone (the success of which is bound to be severely tested, should Greece leave). But the goal of political union, in which the existing European nation states merge into one overarching state, sticks in the craw of the radical Right. (To get a sense of the intensity of the disagreement, you can listen to a recent heated debate between two Euroskeptics and two True Believers in a United States of Europe.)
There are plenty of reasons for even libertarians to distrust the idea of a unified European state. But one of the main reasons for the European Right lies in its own tribalist feeling of “volk,” of the people as an extended kinfolk bonded by blood as well as culture. Many of those who view immigrants as “outside the tribe” — i.e., as members of the out-group — also view Jews in this way as well. Jews are often seen by the ultra-rightists as being “cosmopolitan,” a code for saying that they aren’t really Germans (or French, or whatever). They are of “different blood.”
Add to this the traditional tie between the Right and the church in Europe, which brings in the element of Christian antipathy toward the Jews, and the attraction the fascist Right has toward socialism, with its suspicion of capitalism (and hence of “money-lending”), and you have a further source of anti-Semitism.
As Europe struggles economically, the radical Left and radical Right may continue to grow in number and political influence.
One point should be made explicitly and stressed. While the three European communities with the most anti-Semitic feeling are Muslims, leftists, and rightists, that of course does not necessarily mean that the majority of their members approve of Jews being physically attacked, or are even anti-Semitic. Reverting to one of the polls reported earlier, while 14% of the French generally say violence against Jews is “understandable” (which may or may not mean that those respondents approve of it), 21% of the Left Front, 25% of Muslims, and 29% of National Front say it is understandable. That in turn means that 79% of the Left Front, 75% of Muslims, and 71% of the National Front say that they do not believe anti-Jewish violence is understandable, much less approve of it.
That said, however, some other points must be made as well. First of all, the number of people agreeing to certain anti-Semitic statements (such as the one about Jews using the Holocaust as a victimhood ploy) does reach majority support among the three groups. Also, it is quite likely that many people who really do believe violence against Jews is understandable (and perhaps even deserved) will not want to admit that to a pollster. Almost surely, the reported percentages are lower than the real ones.
Further, as Europe struggles economically, the radical Left and radical Right may continue to grow in number and political influence. Should Greece leave the Eurozone, and should this lead to financial crisis, these groups may increase their influence. And regardless of Europe’s short-term financial future, the Muslim population is likely to continue to grow. In view of these trends, I think that the level of European anti-Semitism will probably be rising as well.
In short, though Holocaust Remembrance Day has come and gone, there is much still to ponder, and it is deeply disquieting.
