‘Do you still want us Jews?’

Attacks on both Jews and Jewish praxis are rising in Europe. But the consequences go beyond European Jewry.

By EVELYN GORDON
Berlin anti-circumcision protest (photo credit: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters)
Berlin anti-circumcision protest
(photo credit: Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters)
On September 5, a former president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews published an op-ed in a leading German paper that demanded, “Do you still want us Jews?”
“For 60 years I have defended Germany as a survivor of the Shoah. Now I ask myself if that was right,” wrote Charlotte Knobloch, responding to a German court’s ruling that circumcision was illegal and a subsequent criminal complaint against a rabbi for performing circumcisions. Charging that people who know nothing about Judaism “now want to tell us whether and how we can follow our religion,” she said that for six decades, she defended her decision to stay in Germany after the Holocaust “because I was firmly convinced that this country and these people deserved it. For the first time my basic convictions are starting to shake … I seriously ask if this country still wants us.”
Berlin has since unveiled draft legislation to legalize circumcision. But as a recent study by the Jewish People Policy Institute makes clear, Germany isn’t the only European country where non-Jews are trying to tell Jews “whether and how we can follow our religion.” Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Iceland all ban kosher slaughter, and Holland came close to joining them this year before a last-minute deal averted the threat. Switzerland is now considering abolishing eternal cemeteries, a cornerstone of Jewish burial practice. Switzerland and France have both denied Jews the right to reschedule public exams administered on Shabbat or Jewish holidays. And the list could go on.
Perhaps even more troubling is the rise in physical assaults on Jews. Anti-Semitic attacks have occurred in many countries: In Germany, for instance, a rabbi out walking with his six-year-old daughter was brutally assaulted in August. But the worst outrages have occurred in France. In March, a Muslim extremist murdered three schoolchildren and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse, while just two weeks ago, a firebomb thrown at a kosher supermarket in a Parisian suburb wounded four people, at least one of them seriously.
A decade ago, at the height of the intifada, it was Israelis who had to fear being killed while engaging in everyday activities like attending school or going grocery shopping. Today, it seems, it’s French Jews who must live with this numbing fear. Being Jewish has always been more comfortable and convenient in Israel than in Europe, but this is the first time in 25 years here that I’ve felt I could honestly say it’s safer as well.
These developments clearly have serious implications – not just for European Jews, but also for European non-Jews and for Israel.
With regard to European Jews, France may prove to be a bellwether: French Jews have been buying second homes in Israel in record numbers in recent years (thereby contributing to the surge in home prices that brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets last year). Daniel Ben Simon, author of a 2007 book on French Jewry’s response to anti-Semitism, recently estimated that “almost one in two French Jews maintains a residence in Israel.” Partly, this is because many French Jews are committed Zionists: They care about Israel and like spending time here. But it’s also “a sort of insurance policy, just in case the situation in France gets even worse,” Ben Simon noted.
There hasn’t yet been any comparable surge of home-buying in Israel among other European Jews. But if their situation continues to deteriorate, more and more of them may consider leaving – or at least buying themselves an Israeli “insurance policy.”
Yet the implications may be even graver for Europe’s non-Jewish majority. Jews are the canary in the coal mine, in the sense that mistreatment of Jews has always been a warning sign of more widespread societal problems. In Europe, the problem is twofold: The physical attacks on Jews – almost all of which have been perpetrated by Muslims – reflect a rising radicalism among the continent’s sizable Muslim minority, while the legal attacks on Jewish praxis point to a majority increasingly intolerant of “the other.” Unless these trends reverse, Europe may well be headed for an ugly, violent clash between its intolerant majority and its radicalized minority. And unlike the continent’s Jews, who will always be welcome in Israel, its non-Jews have nowhere to go to escape the fallout.  
Finally, there are the implications for Israel. As the JPPI study noted, most of the attacks on Jewish praxis have been couched in the language of universal human rights: Circumcision allegedly causes pain and bodily harm to a helpless infant with no medical justification (and never mind the evidence to the contrary); kosher slaughter allegedly causes unacceptable suffering to animals (again, never mind the evidence to the contrary). That proponents of these bans are thereby denying Jews (and Muslims) one of the most fundamental human rights of all – freedom of religion – evidently doesn’t matter.
“Human rights,” of course, are also the favorite justification for European attacks on any and all Israeli self-defense measures: The West Bank security fence impedes Palestinians’ freedom of movement; the Gaza blockade impedes their freedom of commerce; Israeli military operations cause unjustified civilian casualties. Here too, no evidence to the contrary seems to matter (such as the testimony by a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan that the Israel Defense Forces does “more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”) Nor does the fact that acceding to European demands to eschew such measures would deprive Israelis of the most fundamental human right of all: the right to life.
But the fact that this twisted definition of “human rights” is now being turned against Europe’s own citizens means the disease is metastasizing. And if it continues to spread, even the limited support Israel now receives from European governments is liable to evaporate.
Yet even so, Israel will likely get the better of the bargain. For if these trends continue, it may well be compensated for the loss of European support by a mass immigration of European Jews. Europe, in contrast, would only be poorer for their loss.
The writer is a journalist and commentator.