Mazal Tov to Israel’s new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. The first Kippah wearing leader the country has had so far (he will need as much divine providence as he can muster with all the challenges ahead!). As Israel opens a new chapter in its political history, we wish the government well, good luck, and to do us proud!
What exactly do they mean? No more concentration camps? No more mass murder? One would certainly hope so, given Europe’s turbulent and bloody treatment of the Jewish people.
And what about never allowing the circumstances that led to these barbaric and inhuman manifestations of hate to happen again? Does “Never again” mean that too?
The Jewish communities across Europe certainly thought so. It appears that we were laboring under a misapprehension, brought into vivid and stark relief in the aftermath of October 7.
Since the Hamas pogrom, reported cases of antisemitism have gone through the roof – in the UK, Spain, and France the percentage rise is over 1000%. Today, as I write this, Jews are facing levels of antisemitism last seen in 1939 in Nazi Germany.
This is an unbelievable and incredible sentence to have to write.
Things were already bad. Like a dormant volcano before October 7 , there were regular tremors and some eruptions, but we hoped for the best. The war awoke it. Jewish Communities are daily facing molten streams of hate everywhere across the continent.
In Holland, earlier this year, they canceled Holocaust Remembrance Day events at universities over security concerns and because of vociferous opposition to the memorializing. Just recently, in Amsterdam, there were protests at the opening of a new Holocaust museum.
Rabbis are slapped in the street and verbally abused. In capitals across the continent – mainly in those with significant Muslim populations – there are regular protests displaying Nazi images referring to Jews, images drawing parallels between Gaza and Auschwitz, and you can hear calls for Jewish genocide and ethnic cleansing “From the river to the sea.” You can read placards calling Jews terrorists, and the blood libel of “child killers” is regularly used.
Death threats against rabbis are common. Jews are insulted on the street on a daily basis and our children cursed at.
Those European citizens who have served in the IDF are outed in their communities through letter campaigns pointing out that a “child killer” is living next to them; flights arriving from Israel are tracked and met by protesters.
The Jewish community president in Porto takes his child to nursery wearing a bulletproof vest. The principal Jewish organizations here in Belgium have had to write to their prime minister, urging him not to abandon them.
A Brussels commune, in which NATO HQ is located, just this week raised the Palestinian flag above their town hall.
To paraphrase Nietzsche, as Israel stared into the abyss, Jews in Europe have seen the abyss staring back at them in their neighborhoods in London, Paris, Madrid, and Brussels. Just because they are Jews.
At least Israel can fight back. What can we do? We place our lives and our trust in the hands of our respective governments. Are we right to do so? Let’s take a minute to look at the evidence.
Back in 2021, amidst a spike in COVID-related antisemitism, the EU published a detailed strategy for combating antisemitism. The strategy was handed over to the member states, and they in turn were to adopt measures and develop national plans for combating antisemitism. Many did. A great many also signed up to the IHRA definition of antisemitism, patting themselves on the back.
But any strategy must ultimately pass the test in the real world. So how have these strategies, plans, and IHRA adoption held up upon meeting the post-October 7 landscape from what you have read so far?
That’s right. They have no visible or demonstrable practical application across Europe today. Or to put it as eloquently and simply as a Dutch Jewish community president put it: “They are not worth the paper they are printed on.”
The reality is that police departments are hamstrung at openly antisemitic protests, unsure and therefore unable to stop public manifestations of hate and overt antisemitism.
A swastika is allowed because it is “context-dependent”; “From the river to the sea” is allowed in some capitals, because it isn’t explicit enough to count as hate speech. (Would they just prefer “Burn, Jew, burn”?).
The courts too, seem to have little to no frameworks available to prosecute the anti-Zionists and antisemites who are making our collective Jewish life here in Europe hell.
And these Jew-haters are emboldened because they can act with total impunity. They simply moved the goalposts and – when they can be bothered – have just replaced Jew with Zionist, thereby rendering the vast majority of Jews in Europe as the Azazel for their hate. It must be such a relief for them to finally give air to their sulphurous pent-up poison.
As I write this, an image from a community in Dortmund has just popped up on WhatsApp. It shows a large graffiti of a Star of David with a swastika inside it.
Never again? If European governments are not prepared or are unwilling to turn words into action, these important words will have just been a platitude. And an insulting one at that.
The writer is chairman of the European Jewish Association, which represents hundreds of Jewish communities across the continent.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-796594
“In a cynical world, such a noble act of kindness, generosity and solidarity has bowled us over”, said Rabbi Menachem Margolin – Mr Abdallah Chatila will join the EJA as guest on major Auschwitz trip to receive award.
Following the controversial auction of Nazi memorabilia by Hermann Historica in Munich last week that was raised by the European Jewish Association (EJA) and let to massive uproar and media attention, it has emerged that a prominent Lebanese businessman directly responded to the news by buying over 600,000 euros of nazi memorabilia with the sole purpose of giving it to the Jewish community to do with it as it sees fit.
Rabbi Margolin spoke to Mr Chatila to thank him, and Mr Chatila has accepted an inviation to come to Auschwitz on a delegation organised by the EJA for 100 parliamentarians from across Europe, where the businessman will be awarded for his act.
Besides the top hat belonging to Hitler and the rare edition of Mein Kampf, the Businessman also bought the personal Fuhrer’s cigar box, a silver frame offered to SS commander Ulrich Graf, several handwritten letters to his childhood friend August Kubizek, a box to silver music, Edda Göring’s baptismal gift in 1938, or the typewriter Traudl Junge, Hitler’s assistant, used to capture the Nazi leader’s texts. In a statement today, Rabbi Margolin said,
“We believe that the trade in such items is morally unjustifiable and it seemed, given the uproar and outrage that led up and following the auction that we were not alone.
“We were not prepared however, in this cynical world in which we live, to expect an act of such kindness, such generosity and such solidarity as demonstrated by Mr Chatila. It is clear he understood our aggravation and hurt at the sale, and decided to do something about it in a way that nobody foresaw. We greatly appreciate his understanding that such items have no place on the market, and should ultimately be destroyed. But that he chose to give the items to Jews shows a remarkable conscience and understanding.
“I personally spoke to Mr Chatila on behalf of our Association, our members and the hundreds of communities that we represent to extend our heartfelt thanks for his selfless and important act.
He has also accepted our invitation to attend an upcoming delegation to Auschwitz that we are organising for 100 MPs from across the continent to see and learn first-hand where the Nazi ideology leads. Mr Chatila’s inspiring act is a story that deserves to be told at the highest levels, and he will be there as our guest where we will present him with an award for his act.
“The example set by Mr Chatila is one that deserves as much attention as possible, we thank him for showing the world that an act of righteousness such as this has the power to literally and metaphorically burn the dark Nazi past away.”
The letter written by Rabbi Margolin to Mr. Abdallah Chatila:
The Rabbinical Center of Europe (RCE) has unveiled yesterday morning a memorial tombstone on a mass grave of the Jewish community of the City of Sadigora in Ukraine, that were slaughtered in 1941 by gangs of Ukrainians and Romanians that were granted “24 hours to do what they wanted with the Jews” by the Russian Command
“We played together – all of the children and suddenly our Jewish friends began to disappear”
RCE General Director, Rabbi Arye Goldberg:
“We are in the midst of an extensive operation to detect and establish tombstones on other mass graves of Jews who were slaughtered in Ukraine”
Israel‘s ambassador to Ukraine, Joel Leon:
I call upon the new President of the Ukraine and Members of the Rada (parliament of Ukrain to adopt the Anti-Semitic definitions of the IHRA
Thursday, July 25, 2019, Ukraine, The Jews of Sagura in southern Ukraine, near the border with Romania and Moldova, thought that the Russian army’s victory over the German Nazi army during the fighting in the region in July 1941, was the end of the war, and the end of the attacks on them by the Romanian Army who controlled the area and cooperated with the Nazis.
However, the Russian command allowed local Ukrainian and Romanian gangs a “24-hour window to do with the Jews as they will”. The relief sensations of the Jewish community of the region became a murderous nightmare: “We played together – all of the children and suddenly our Jewish friends began to disappear one by one” said this morning in a trembling voice, an elderly Ukrainian woman who was present at the time of the acts during the unveiling ceremony of the tombstone established by the Rabbinical Center of Europe over the mass grave in which , about 1,200 Jewish children women and men were murdered and burried – some of them when they were still alive.
The mass grave and the hidden testimonies were found in part by Rabbi Mendi Glitzinstein of the nearby city of Chernivtsi who harnessed the RCE in order to establish a headstone on the mass grave. The unveiling ceremony that took place this morning, saw the distinguished presence of the district’s Governor, Eiom Vasilovitz, , Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine, Joel Leon, RCE General Director, Rabbi Arye Goldberg, Chief Rabbi of the nearby Jewish Community of Jetimore and Western Ukraine, Rabbi Shlomo Wilhelm, members of the small Jewish community who survived the massacre and Ukrainian neighbors, some of whom testified how they could feel the “earth burning underneath their feet” even days after the terrible massacre took place.
RCE General Director, Rabbi Arye Goldberg, said during the ceremony that the Rabbinical Center of Europe, and its over 700 rabbi Members across the continent, took this very important mission upon itself and is now in the midst of an extensive operation of locating and establishing tombstones on other Jewish mass Graves in the Ukraine. “We collect evidence and testimonies as much as possible from elderly Jews and Ukrainians who still remember. We than locate the mass graves and only after a team of experts confirms the findings, we establish tombstones for the memory of the victims.”
RCE and EJA Chairman, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, made it clear that the special activity for locating and establishing tombstones on the tombs of the victims was held in parallel with the effort to further and renew Jewish life throughout the Ukraine, as well as the restoration of synagogues and mikvehs.
Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine, Joel Leon who carried the Kaddish prayer in the ceremony, thanked the RCE for the initiative and its implementation in the field, and said that the embassy was conducting a special program for training Ukrainian teachers on how to teach the lessons of the Holocaust in schools throughout the country. I call upon the new President of the Ukraine and Members of the Rada (parliament of Ukrain to adopt the Anti-Semitic definitions of the IHRA
It’s a challenging time for Jewish communities in Europe. Anti-Semitism is on the rise as populism and the politics of the lowest common denominator are gaining traction. Our communities often need round the clock protection and our practices and customs such as keeping Kosher are under pressure from increasing political interference.
