Winds of Anti-Semitism Blow from Europe to U.S.

Winds of Anti-Semitism Blow from Europe to U.S.

Posted By Joseph Puder On May 1, 2013

The winds of anti-Semitic hate are clearly blowing westward from Europe to the Americas, particularly as more Muslims arrive in America and as Europe becomes increasingly Muslim. A clear sign of European style anti-Jewish harassment occurred in a Brooklyn, NY subway on April 15, 2013. An African-American teenager, Stephen Stowe (17), along with a group of friends, spat anti-Semitic epithets at a kippa-wearing Jewish man, in what amounted to an unmistakable hate crime. According to Jihad Watch, Stowe is a Muslim.

Court records and police testimony indicate that Stowe shouted at the Jewish man “I am going to kill you right now,” and then added, “They should have killed all of you,” a rather transparent reference to Hitler’s Holocaust against the Jews.

The subway incident in Brooklyn was reminiscent of a similar occurrence on March 14, 2013, in Vitry-Sur-Seine, France. Three men accosted a Jewish kippa-wearing teenager on the subway (Metro in Paris) and threatened to do to him what Mohammed Merah, the cold-blooded Muslim murderer of a rabbi and three Jewish school children, did in Toulouse. France. The three Muslim men added that what Merah did “was right … We will kill all of you Jews – one day we will kill a Jew.”

Earlier this year, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Global Human Rights and co-chair of the house Bipartisan Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism, called a hearing in response to increases in anti-Semitic violence in European nations, much of it perpetrated by Muslims. Testifying before the Subcommittee, Rabbi Andrew Baker of the American Jewish Committee stated, “Some European governments willfully do not want to know, and they have limited their monitoring tools so that they will not be confronted with facts. This may be a reflection of political correctness or a fear that such data are likely to increase anti-Muslim sentiments. Either way they contribute to the problem.”

Charles Knudsen, former police commander and military officer who also testified, noted that, “It is a sad state of affairs when nations bend-over-backwards to avoid the tiniest slight against Muslims but tolerate the assaults and killings of Jews in the streets of otherwise liberal democracies.” Knudsen added, “Even here in the United States on college campuses, some of the most vile, anti-Semitic language is tolerated, even heralded, by students and some faculty members.” Knudsen has been an experienced hate crime investigator.

The U.S. Congressional hearing on anti-Semitic violence in Europe follows a report submitted by the French Jewish community to France’s Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on anti-Semitic incidents. The report presents figures that show an almost 60% increase in anti-Jewish incidences during 2012.

Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League in New York, pointed out that Muslim immigrants bring with them the anti-Semitic religious and political teachings from the Middle East. Foxman contended, moreover, that not all European countries perform satisfactorily when it comes to public awareness on the issue of anti-Semitism.

He considered the problem to have been the lack of anti-Semitism being catharsized out following WWII; instead there was a denial about it.

Fritz Bolkestein, a senior Dutch conservative politician in the VVD (Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy) Party, former cabinet minister and European Commissioner, claimed that there was no future for practicing Jews in the Netherlands because of anti-Semitism among Moroccan immigrants. In the Swedish city of Malmo, which has a sizable Muslim population, 54% of the Jewish residents reported that they have been subjected to anti-Semitism. And in Belgium, Orthodox Jews in particular were subjected to physical attacks and harassment, especially in the city of Antwerp. In Germany, the Jewish community of Berlin blamed young Muslim Turks and Arabs for anti-Semitic attacks. And, in Manchester (UK), two men approached an unmistakable Jewish man, ripped off his kippa, and punched him to the ground.

Back in the U.S., on April 10, 2013, police arrested a man charged with 12 counts of hate crime, 12 counts of arson as a hate crime and 12 counts of criminal mischief as a hate crime. According to the police in Brooklyn, a borough of New York with the largest Jewish population, the man, Ruben Ubiles, 35, set fire to a dozen mezuzahs outside front doors of residents in the Taylor-Wythe House, a public housing complex. A mezuzah is a parchment containing sacred text from the Torah affixed to the doorpost of a Jewish home.

According to the FBI Table 4 statistical chart on hate crimes in America, anti-Jewish hate crime tops the list with 820 incidents for the year 2011. By comparison, there were 175 anti-Muslim hate crimes. Hate crime against Jews exceeds all other religious and ethnic groups.

Europe’s economic difficulties, and increased awareness of the threats (security, demographic, and political from radical Islam) by European institutions and governments have changed the direction of Muslim immigrants and jihadi infiltrators. They are focused increasingly on entering North America. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public life research reveals that the Muslim population in the United States is projected to more than double in the next 17 years, from nearly 2.6 million in 2010 to about 6.2 million in 2030, in large part because of immigration and higher-than-average fertility among Muslims.

The Pew Forum projects that Muslims are expected to account for 1.7% of the total U.S. population. It means that Muslims will constitute a larger share of the U.S. population than Jews. The implications of continued Muslim immigration into the U.S. are therefore not just demographic but political as well, and not only for Jews.

Although there is some correlation between events in the Middle East (such as in the aftermath of Cast Lead Operation conducted by Israel against the Palestinian Hamas terrorists) and the rise in anti-Semitic incidents, the basic explanations of anti-Semitic hatred have not changed. They include a combination centered on negative stereotypes of the Jew, the perception of the State of Israel as assuming the individual negative Jewish stereotypical characteristics, and the adoption of such stereotypes by both neo-Nazis and radical Muslim youth.

It would be unfair to malign all Muslims in negative terms. There are numerous Muslims that are law abiding citizens who believe in the U.S. Constitution. It is, however, becoming clear that just as many of the Muslim immigrants to the West, including the U.S., would prefer Sharia (Islamic) law over secular Western law. It is also apparent that many Middle Eastern Muslims arriving in the U.S., whether from Europe or the Middle East, tend to be radicalized by Islamic institutions, and in mosques where the imams are Saudi (Wahhabi) funded, or alternatively funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Stephen Stowe’s provocative gesture using the traditional Muslim greeting of “Assalamu Alaikum” was not said in peace, it was an expression of hate. It reflects the rising level of Muslim anti-Semitism in the West as well as in America.

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