A pair of anti-Jewish incidents rocked two different European communities over the weekend, the latest in a surge of hate-filled anti-Semitism that is sweeping Europe and raising questions over whether Jewish communities should move elsewhere.
The first attack took place early Sunday morning, when a gang of inebriated young adults stormed a synagogue in the Stamford Hill section of north London, home to around 30,000 Hasidic Jews. Several angry men and women were caught on camera smashing windows and trying to force their way through the synagogue’s doors, where startled worshippers stood ready to defend their house of worship. Six men were arrested in what police have declared an unplanned anti-Semitic incident “due to remarks made by one of the group.”
Video of the harrowing standoff, which left one Jewish worshipper with minor facial injuries, is below.
The second incident took place in the central European town of Gyongyos, Hungary, where around 20 Jewish graves were shattered, broken, or otherwise vandalized by an anonymous assailant. The attack, which reportedly included the toppling of gravestones and the scattering of human remains, desecrated the final resting places of some Jews who were buried as far back as the late 1800s. The Deputy State Secretary vowed to take action and Hungarian Prime Minister condemned the act as “barbaric deed,” but few could blame the local Jewish community for being skeptical: after all, this is the second time the graveyard has been attacked, the first taking place in 2013.
These assaults on Jews and Jewish heritage are unsettling, but they are also becoming frighteningly common in Europe. Incidents of anti-Semitism surged across the continent in 2014 and early 2015, with tiny Jewish communities enduring as much as 50 percent of hate crimes in places such as Paris, France, where Jews are struggling to ascertain their place in European society while staving off an ad-hock campaign of harassment, violence, and death.
Europe, of course, has a long, ugly history of anti-Semitism dating back several centuries, if not millennia. But analysts argue that this fresh crop of anti-Jewish hatred appears to arise out of a modern mix of right-wing political rhetoric and religious extremism. Many are quick to point to the sharp uptick in the number of Europeans who cite Islam as justification for violence against Jews, and it is true that many spikes in European anti-Semitism track with flare-ups in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During Isreal’s 2014 war with Hamas, for example, French synagogues were attacked by protestors chanting “Death to Jews,” and a similar band of German protesters reportedly sang “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.”
But these aggressions are perpetrated by only a tiny fraction of the European Muslim population, and are nowhere near enough to constitute the totality of the Jewish community’s struggles. Rather, religious extremists are bolstered by a rash of homegrown anti-Jewish sentiment bubbling up within many right-wing — and even left-wing — European circles. In Greece, where members of neo-fascist groups such as the Golden Dawn party openly tout their hatred of Jews, a recent poll found that 69 percent of adults hold anti-Semitic views. Unsurprisingly, a 2013 poll conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reported that 40 percent of French Jews and a quarter of all Jews in Europe are afraid to go out in public while wearing a kippah, a traditional Jewish head covering.
European lawmakers have launched campaigns to combat the hatred, which also coincides with an explosion of Islamophobia in the region. German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to beat back anti-Semitism in her country at a rally organized by the Central Council of Jews in Germany last September, promising a crowd of thousands that she remained dedicated to keeping Jews safe.
“It pains me when I hear that young Jewish parents ask whether they should raise their children in Germany, or elderly Jews who ask if it was right to stay,” she said. “With this rally, we are making it unmistakably clear: Jewish life belongs to us. It is part of our identity and culture.”
The question of whether or not to leave Europe is complicated for many followers of Judaism, especially those whose families have lived on the continent for generations. Raphael Werner, president of Belgium’s Forum of Jewish Organizations, told the Economist in February that he and other Jews refuse to be chased out of their homelands.
“We have to strengthen the Jewish communities in Europe, not panic them,” Werner said.
Nevertheless, the spike in anti-Semitic attacks has fueled something of a minor Exodus of Jews from Europe to Israel and elsewhere. The Jewish Agency for Israel told ThinkProgress that France became the number one source of immigration to Israel in 2014, when around 7,200 Jews fled homes in Paris and Marseille for cities such as Jerusalem. That’s more than double the number who did so in 2013 (3,200) and triple the amount that came in 2012 (1,900).
Jewish communal angst over the issue of abandoning Europe was on full display in mid-January, when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Paris immediately following attacks by militants claiming to be affiliated with ISIS — one of which involved taking hostages at a kosher deli, where several patrons were killed along with the shooter. Given the gravity of this direct assault on the local Jewish community — combined with the region’s aforementioned issues with chronic anti-Semitism — it’s hardly surprising that Netanyahu offered up Israel as a safe haven in his remarks, saying “hopefully you all will one day come to Israel.” World leaders slammed Netanyahu for his invitation, but the Jewish audience assembled in Paris, many of whom are critical of Netanyahu’s leadership, offered a haunting response that embodied their collective ambivalence: as the prime minister’s speech drew to a close, the crowd spontaneously burst into a rendition of the French national anthem, followed immediately by an equally rousing version of the Israeli national anthem.
The looming issue is the subject of a new feature piece in the Atlantic, penned by Jeffrey Goldberg and provocatively entitled “Is It Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?” Goldberg offers an exhaustive treatment of the dire situation facing many of Europe’s Jews, detailing their trials and giving voice to those agonizing over whether to stay. But ultimately, he, like many analysts — and so many European Jews — concludes with a dark declaration that nonetheless leaves his own question unanswered.
“I am predisposed to believe that there is no great future for the Jews in Europe, because evidence to support this belief is accumulating so quickly,” he wrote. “But I am also predisposed to think this because I am an American Jew — which is to say, a person who exists because his ancestors made a run for it when they could.”
Update:
This post was updated to reflect the most recent immigration numbers from Europe to Israel according to the Jewish Agency for Israel.