Europe’s Refugee Crisis: Jews Must Tread Carefully: Manfred Gerstenfeld, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 24, 2015— Jewish communities have to tread carefully in their reactions to the huge influx of refugees, mainly Muslims, into Europe.
We are Watching the Death of Open Frontiers in Europe: Philip Johnston, Telegraph, Oct. 26, 2015 — The extraordinary aerial photo of a column of refugees and migrants tramping through the fields of Slovenia may come to symbolise the moment the EU began to fall apart.
Muslim Invasion of Europe: Guy Millière, Gatestone Institute, Oct. 22, 2015— The flow of illegal migrants does not stop.
Europe is Shrinking and Ageing. Stopping Immigration is No Longer an Option: George Jonas, National Post, Sept. 22 2015 — Hungary’s ambassador, Bálint Ódor, is right, of course, when he notes, as he did elsewhere on this site, that his country cannot accept foreign countries imposing an immigration model on it that would dramatically change its cultural composition.
Anti-Semitism Among Migrants a Concern for German Jews: Sam Sokol, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 28, 2015
Germany May Soon Have 8 Million Muslims and an Islamic Political Party: Raheem Kassam, Breitbart, Oct. 23, 2015
Europe's Muslim Migrants Bring Sex Pathologies in Tow: David P. Goldman, Asia Times, Oct. 14, 2015
Jews, Islamophobia and Compassion for Refugees: Isi Leibler, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 3, 2015
EUROPE’S REFUGEE CRISIS: JEWS MUST TREAD CAREFULLY
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Jerusalem Post, Oct. 24, 2015
Jewish communities have to tread carefully in their reactions to the huge influx of refugees, mainly Muslims, into Europe. This was particularly the case in the first emotion-laden weeks following publication of the appalling picture of the dead Syrian child on the beach of Lesbos, Greece. No Jew could publicly say: the intense suffering of many of these people is real – but so is the environment of extreme anti-Semitic hate in which these people have been raised. However, as the many practical problems related to the refugee influx have grown and received increased publicity, Jews have made more realistic statements, though remaining cautious.
The indiscriminate European acceptance of many millions of Muslims in the past has caused huge damage to European Jewish communities. A major influx of Muslim refugees into a European country means a further increase in anti-Semitism there. This is not because all the immigrants are anti-Semites. However, a high percentage of the immigrants are. So are those more likely to perpetrate anti-Semitic acts if compared with the hate-crime perpetrators in the existing local population? Some Muslim immigrants or their descendants are also far more radical than the native population. In the current century all murders of Jews in Europe because they are Jews, be they in the Paris area, Toulouse, Brussels or Copenhagen, have been committed by Muslims.
Every Jewish leader in Europe knows this. Yet at the onset of the crisis we saw several humanitarian-masochist statements by some who should have known better. Some Jewish representatives welcomed the newcomers without any mention whatsoever of the huge potential problems which could result. The umbrella body of Jewish organizations in Flanders issued a press release reminding the authorities of the sufferings of Jewish refugees in the 1930s, and asking them to implement a generous admission policy for the newcomers. They even praised Germany’s current refugee policy, something about which the German Jewish community would later express deep concern. This “see no evil” Jewish umbrella body made no mention of the many problems anti-Semitic Muslims had caused Jews in Belgium.
Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the UK and usually a keen observer also got carried away. On September 6, 2015, he published an article in the anti-Israeli British daily The Guardian, entitled “Refugee crisis: ‘Love the stranger because you were once strangers’ calls us now.” Part of his article was devoted to comparisons of the new immigrants with the “Kindertransport,” the Jewish refugee children who were brought to England from Germany in the 1930s. He also mentioned their subsequent significant contribution to British society. This was all the more surprising in light of Sacks’ familiarity with the many problems created for UK Jewry by Muslim immigrants and several Muslim organizations. A few weeks later, these problems were revisited in articles concerning frequent harassment of Jews in London’s Stamford Hill neighborhood by “young Asian men.” This is politically correct terminology for Muslim criminal suspects.
One should also remind the former chief rabbi that many of the people he welcomes with lovingkindness take the Koran literally. They consider him and his fellow Jews pigs and monkeys, in other words subhuman. The Kindertransport children were fleeing from Germans who also considered Jews subhuman. These Jewish children did not promote hate of anyone or discrimination of minorities.
One of the first to present a realistic opinion was Esther Voet, the editor of the Dutch Jewish weekly NIW, in the Internet magazine Jalta. She wrote that people should not be carried away by their emotions. Voet mentioned that it was dangerous to state her opinion because she would risk inclusion in the extreme right-wing camp. She reminded readers how Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Lodewijk Asscher was laughed at for his suggestion in 2013 that each refugee seeking asylum in the Netherlands should sign a declaration accepting the rights of women and homosexuals, and assertion that he would not tolerate any intolerance against athiests or people of other religions. She added that the new refugees come from cultures where most people cannot accept equal rights for homosexuals, Jews, atheists and women.
One of the first Jewish leaders in Europe who dared to express his views in clear language was Oskar Deutsch, the chairman of the Jewish community in Vienna. There had already been a debate among members following the community’s financial donation to the anti-Israeli Caritas organization. Deutsch wrote in the Austrian daily Kurier on September 21 that the Jewish community had helped many refugees over the years. He also pointed out that in the past, the arrival of 20 million Muslims to Europe had frequently led to physical anti-Semitic attacks and migration of Jews. Deutsch added that refugees arriving now from Syria and Afghanistan come from societies where anti-Semitism is a staple in schoolbooks, media and social networks. Terrorism against Israelis, Muslim attacks on Jewish schools, synagogues and Jewish museums are often glorified in these countries.
Early in October Josef Schuster, the head of the German Jewish umbrella body Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland, expressed his worries in a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He said that among the people who seek refuge in Germany, many come from countries where Israel is considered the prime enemy. Schuster remarked that these people have grown up with a very hostile image of Israel and too frequently transfer this resentment to all Jews. The Jews of Germany therefore are right to fear that Muslim anti-Semitism in Germany will grow…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
WE ARE WATCHING THE DEATH OF OPEN FRONTIERS IN EUROPE
Philip Johnston
Telegraph, Oct. 26, 2015
The extraordinary aerial photo of a column of refugees and migrants tramping through the fields of Slovenia may come to symbolise the moment the EU began to fall apart. The irony can be lost on no one: it was in order to prevent such scenes happening again in continental Europe that the alliance was forged in the first place in the late 1950s. Yet here we are more than half a century later facing the prospect of thousands – maybe hundreds of thousands – of displaced people freezing and starving in the grasslands of eastern Europe as winter closes in.
It is hard to comprehend the stupefying naivety of those, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who thought it a good idea to send out an utterly self-serving signal a few weeks ago inviting anyone who could make the journey to head for Europe. This was ostensibly aimed at Syrians who had fled the civil war in their homeland; but the exodus has been swelled by migrants from many other countries looking for a better life – and who can blame them?
Only they are not going to get a better life. Arguably a transit centre in Europe might be preferable to a refugee camp in Jordan or Turkey, though the latter at least has the merit of being close to Syria, where there are finally tentative signs of some political progress being made. But having encouraged people to move, the Europeans are now pulling up the drawbridge because they have found dealing with the influx overwhelming. Where were the preparations? Why were fleets of buses and trains and boats not laid on at the borders of the EU to bring people safely to Germany, which is, after all, where most people are headed?
At an ill-tempered summit in Brussels on Sunday, European leaders belonging to the borderless Schengen area blamed each other for the crisis before finalising a 17-point plan to be foisted upon countries that don’t agree with it. Since the opponents comprise more than a dozen of the 28 member states, the scope for serious disagreement is clear, not least because the process for sharing out migrants was imposed by majority voting. The countries that are in the front-line of this crisis are understandably seething: Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, accused the German chancellor of “moral imperialism”.
This will unleash extremist politics in Europe. In Germany, the anti-immigrant Pegida movement is attracting thousands to its rallies and in France the Front National continues to gain support. Elsewhere, Eurosceptic parties are making inroads. In Portugal, a Syriza-style leftist minority government has taken office opposed to the eurozone’s fiscal rules; and in Poland, the Law and Justice Party is back in power, pledged to oppose any Brussels diktat on migrant quotas. Against this backdrop, which can only darken, Britain has to decide over the next two years whether to remain part of an increasingly unstable organisation.
Leaving aside any deal that David Cameron can conjure up to reform Britain’s position in the EU, the advantages of staying in are diminishing rapidly. More to the point, the Prime Minister still seems highly unlikely to get any concessions on the free movement of people within the EU. If anything, the migration crisis has made this less achievable: why would countries forced to take migrants against their wishes agree to let Britain off the hook, even if we are outside the Schengen system? Sooner or later, the million or so new migrants will be allowed to move around Europe and many may want to come here.
In the early stages of this crisis, the rationale ascribed to Germany’s policy was that they need people because of a falling birth rate and dwindling population. Britain, by contrast, is growing rapidly. This will be confirmed by population projections this week for which Whitehall is braced and expecting the worst. These figures are produced to help government departments prepare for the number of children who will need schooling, workers who will require transport and sick and infirm who have to be treated and cared for.
The last projections showed the population – now around 64 million – increasing to more than 70 million within 12 years. Yet during the 1970s, planning was predicated upon a static population. Even as recently as 15 years ago, projections were anticipating that the 64 million we have today would not be achieved until 2031, whereupon it would fall. In fact, the population has grown by eight million since 1980 and another 10 million will be added in the next 25 years. Is it any surprise we have too few houses, schools, hospitals and trains to cope?…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Guy Millière
Gatestone Institute, Oct. 22, 2015
The flow of illegal migrants does not stop. They land on the Greek islands along the Turkish coast. They still try to get into Hungary, despite a razor wire fence and mobilized army. Their destination is Germany or Scandinavia, sometimes France or the UK. Some of them still arrive from Libya. Since the beginning of January, more than 620,000 have arrived by sea alone. There will undoubtedly be many more: a leaked secret document estimates that by the end of December, there might be 1.5 million.
Journalists in Western Europe continue to depict them as "refugees" fleeing war in Syria. The description is false. According to statistics released by the European Union, only twenty-five percent of them come from Syria; the true number is probably lower. The Syrian government sells passports and birth certificates at affordable prices. The vast majority of migrants come from other countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Eritrea, Somalia, and Nigeria. Many do not seem to have left in a hurry. Many bring new high-end smartphones and large sums of cash, ten or twenty thousand euros, sometimes more. Many have no passports, no ID, and refuse to give fingerprints. Whenever people flee to survive, the men come with whole families: women, children, elders. Here, instead, more than 75% of those who arrive are men under 50; few are women, children or elders.
As Christians are now the main targets of Islamists (the Jews fled or were forced out decades ago), the people escaping the war in Syria should be largely composed of Christians. But Christians are a small minority among those who arrive, and they often hide that they are Christians. Those who enter Europe are almost all Muslims, and behave as some Muslims often do in the Muslim world: they harass Christians and attack women. In reception centers, harassing Christians and attacking women are workaday incidents. European women and girls who live near reception centers are advised to take care and cover up. Rapes, assaults, stabbings and other crimes are on the rise.
Western European political leaders could tell the truth and act accordingly. They do not. They talk of "solidarity," "humanitarian duty," "compassion." From the beginning, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said that illegal migrants were welcome: she seemed to change her mind for a moment, but quickly slid back. In France, President François Hollande says the same things as Angela Merkel.
After the heartbreaking image of a dead child being carried on a Turkish beach was published, thousands of Germans and French initially spoke the same way as their leaders. Their enthusiasm seems to have faded fast. The people of Central Europe were not enthusiastic from the beginning. Their leaders seem to share the feelings of their populations. None spoke as explicitly as Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary. He said out loud what many of his countrymen seemed to think. He spoke of "invasion" and asked if there were another word to describe the massive and often brutal entry into a country of people who have not been invited to do so. He added that a country has the right to decide who is allowed to enter its territory and to guard its borders. He stressed that those who enter Europe are from a "different culture," and suggested that Islam might not be compatible with European Judeo-Christian values.
Western European political leaders harshly condemned his remarks and the attitude of Central Europe in general. They decided to take a hard line approach, including: forcing recalcitrant countries to welcome immigrants, setting up mandatory quotas that define how many immigrants each EU country must receive, and threatening those countries that declined to obey. Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, said that Europe was built in a spirit of "burden sharing," and that EU breakup was a risk that could not be excluded. An acute division, in fact, is emerging between the leaders of Western Europe and the leaders of Central Europe. Another division is growing between the populations of Western Europe and their leaders.
Those who rebuilt Europe after World War II thought that an enlightened elite (themselves) could make a clean sweep of the past and build a dream society where peace and perpetual harmony would reign. Because they thought democracy had brought Hitler to power, they decided to restrict democracy. Because they thought nationalism was the cause of the war, they decreed that nationalism was harmful and that the cultural identities in Europe had to disappear and be replaced by a new "European identity" that they would shape.
Because Europe had a colonialist past and Europeans had believed in the superiority of their cultures, they claimed that Europe should redeem its guilt and affirm that all cultures were equal. And because Islam was at the heart of the culture of people formerly colonized, the Europeans rejected all criticism of Islam, and said that it would blend smoothly into a multicultural Europe. They did not demand the assimilation of Muslims who came to live in Europe in increasing number. Because the Europeans thought poverty had led to the rise of Nazism, they built welfare states that were supposed to eliminate poverty forever. Because two world wars had started in Europe, the Europeans decreed that from now on, Europe would renounce the use of force, and solve all conflicts through diplomacy and appeasement. We now see the results.
European people still have the right to vote, but are deprived of most of their power: all important political decisions in Europe are made behind closed doors, by technocrats and professional politicians, in Brussels or Strasbourg. Cultural identities in Europe have been eroded to such a point that saying that Europe is based on Judeo-Christian values has become controversial.
Any criticism of Islam in Europe is treated as a form of racism, and "Islamophobia" is considered a crime or a sign of mental illness. Islam has not melted into a smooth multiculturalism; it is creating increasingly distressing problems that are almost never brought to light. Muslim criminality across Europe is high. Consequently, the percentage of Muslims in prisons in Europe is high. In France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe, the prison population is 70% Muslim. Many European prisons have become recruitment centers for future jihadis. Muslim riots may occur for any reason : police upholding the law, a Soccer League celebration or in support of a cause…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
EUROPE IS SHRINKING AND AGEING.
STOPPING IMMIGRATION IS NO LONGER AN OPTION
George Jonas
National Post, Sept. 22, 2015
Hungary’s ambassador, Bálint Ódor, is right, of course, when he notes, as he did elsewhere on this site, that his country cannot accept foreign countries imposing an immigration model on it that would dramatically change its cultural composition. No country could let that happen, inside or outside Europe, except one that lacked any concept of itself as a nation. Calling a government xenophobic, let alone fascist or racist, for trying to cultivate and preserve its homeland’s national identity, is asinine. People who say such things don’t know what racism or fascism means.
But do all countries and regions have a future? When I asked this question 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have predicted (or, for that matter, imagined) that a sudden stampede of Middle East migrants would put the West’s economic, political and demographic future in doubt. All that seemed evident to me was that the so-called First World would fundamentally change during the next half century.
I was far from being the first to write about what some commentators have long called “Eurabia.” But to know what may happen in Europe and why, it’s helpful to recognize what has been happening. Simply put, the Old World has been getting older. Projections from 2002 show the median age of people living in the countries that make up the European Union reaching 50 in 50 years, with about one person in three being 65 or over.
The figures show Europe not only ageing but shrinking, in absolute as well as relative terms. Currently, the countries that make up the EU house about six per cent of the world’s population, which is down from 14 per cent when the 20th century began, and on its way to being about four per cent by the middle of the 21st century. Even in absolute terms, there will be about 7.5 million fewer Europeans in 2050 than there are today — and that’s with 2002 levels of immigration being maintained.
To be shrinking and ageing in a world that’s growing and getting younger (the median age in 2002 was 37.8 for Canada, 31.5 for China, 22.9 for Iran, 19.8 for Pakistan and 15.3 for the Gaza Strip) has some inexorable consequences. One is that, regardless of how immigrants may change the character of Europe, or whatever backlash they may engender in what the historian Niall Ferguson has called “the economically Neanderthal right,” stopping or reversing immigration is no longer an option.
Nativist politicians, such as the Le Pen family in France, may continue to be in the news, increase their following and even score valid points, but they’ll be butting their heads against a demographic stone wall. Even with continuing immigration, Europe’s taxpayers can only look forward to their steeply increasing taxes buying them steeply decreasing services. Without immigration, one EU taxpayer would soon have to support four or five EU pensioners — or watch his parents build their last igloo, European style.
Continuing immigration, though, even without sudden, catastrophic spikes such as we’ve seen this month, is likely to lead to Eurabia. Immigrants tend to respond to their own demographic pressures, and Europe’s fastest-growing neighbours today are — to quote Niall Ferguson again — “predominantly if not wholly Muslim.” The question is, what will Eurabia lead to? The past is a good (though not infallible) guide to the future. European nations turned their essentially homogeneous countries into U.S.-style immigrant societies after the Second World War for several reasons, one being the aftermath of empire. The law of unintended consequences caught up with Britain, France, Holland and Belgium. The trickle became a flood in the early 1960s as immigrants from North Africa, the Caribbean and the Spice Islands inundated the lands of their former colonial rulers, giving politicians like Enoch Powell grey hair…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Anti-Semitism Among Migrants a Concern for German Jews: Sam Sokol, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 28, 2015 —German Jews are concerned over the potential for a rise in anti-Semitism due to the increasing flow of Syrian migrants, several community leaders told Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday.
Germany May Soon Have 8 Million Muslims and an Islamic Political Party: Raheem Kassam, Breitbart, Oct. 23, 2015—A German political expert has warned that a successful Islamic political party is not a far off thought given Germany’s rapidly changing demographics. In an interview with the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper, Prof. Jürgen W. Falter, who specialises in political extremism, noted that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s position on migration may soon change, claiming “Pandora’s box is opened too far”.
Europe's Muslim Migrants Bring Sex Pathologies in Tow: David P. Goldman, Asia Times, Oct. 14, 2015 —The body of a 20-year-old Syrian woman, "Rokstan M.," was unearthed from a shallow grave in the small Saxon town of Dessau last week. Her father and brothers stabbed her to death on her mother's orders, after she was gang-raped by three men.
Jews, Islamophobia and Compassion for Refugees: Isi Leibler, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 3, 2015—It would be inhumane not to react with compassion to the tragic and harrowing depictions of the suffering of refugees.
