They’re right to point out that anti-Semites won’t be satisfied by driving Jews into hiding. Moreover, to abandon the streets to Islamist thugs is tantamount to saying that Jews can’t live openly as Jews in France. If European Jewry is to have any future in an era when anti-Semitism is on the rise, it can only be by standing up for who they are and what they believe in, including support for Israel, rather than cowering in fear.
Depending on your point of view, Europe is either surrendering the citadel of Western Civilization to outside forces determined to undermine it, or is giving in to darker instincts thought buried by the abomination of the Holocaust.
Angela Merkel’s public call on all Germans to resist anti-Semitism should be lauded, but more important, it must be acted upon. Well-intentioned rhetoric will be insufficient to stem either the increase in anti-Semitic acts in, or flow of Jews out of, Europe.
No government can effectively legislate against hatred or prejudice. Short of invasive thought control, secular law places no controls on the human heart, and control over angry words is limited by the right to free speech. But government can use the law as a righteous truncheon to put an end to sectarian discrimination and violence, and the people can make clear that public anti-Semitic behavior, speech, or action is beyond the pale of acceptability.
Ordinary Europeans must have the courage to stand up in the face of groups attempting to use religion to justify violence. They must understand that the expedient of sacrificing Europe’s Jews in a play for internal concord with Islamist immigrants is but the first ugly step toward utter submission to Shariah.
And the above goes double for us in America. We may well soon find ourselves the last bastion of Western Civilization that is not engaged in a creeping surrender to values that are not our own. Muslims have had, have now, and must continue to have a place in the American melange, to live, to raise families, and to practice their faith. But we must make clear to peoples of all faiths that as a nation of religions rather than a religious nation, America draws the line at the imposition of the law of any creed upon those of other faiths.
As for Europe, the next time I am there without my family, I will wear my kippah.
