Thursday, August 08, 2013

Europe's Jews

In a brilliant and disturbing article, Michel Gurfinkiel, a friend, analyzes the situation of Europe's Jewry in a milieu of ever-increasing anti-Semitism and growing radical Islamisism, the "yogurt expiration date" concern and mentions also Ze'ev Jabotinsky:

The Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky once famously distinguished between the “anti-Semitism of persons” and the “anti-Semitism of things.” The former category, made up of individuals (including some Jews) with their particular moral or political shortcomings, can be fought, at least up to a point. The latter, which has to do with deep-seated social factors, with demographics, and/or with hard, obdurate, ingrained ideology, is another matter entirely. Of the two varieties, European Jews now confront the second. What will they do?

Emigration, either to Israel or to America, is an option being actively considered. Should this become a widespread choice, it will inevitably be followed by the shrinkage of Jewish institutions, the drying-up of religious and cultural life, the deepening erosion of morale, growing anxiety and fearfulness—and more emigration.
 
The Jabotinsky article is here


Michel notes:

To the dead Jews of yesterday, everything; to the living Jews of today, little and littler.

 
One comment, by an 'Anna', includes this:


Gilad Shalit has dual French-Israeli nationality, if he had stayed in France, it is unlikely that he would have been kidnapped.

Perhaps.  But he couldn't have fought back like we do in Israel.  And maybe he would have been kidnapped, tortured and murdered, like Ilan Halimi.

Read it the piece.

And reconsider the Holocaust, for example, how Uri Tzvi Greenberg grapsed it.

(thanks to EH)

^

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Gilad Shalit is a sabra grew up in Israel. So please don't make yourself look, like a clown by saying "could have stayed in". Lest I talk about how all the Muslims in France who don't like the hijab-ban.... "could have stayed" in wonderful Pakistan.