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| Life Is Intolerable for Jews In Europe, Assemblyman Says | |
| 2007-12-04 | |
Following a recent fact-finding trip to Europe, a Democrat who represents Boro Park in the state Assembly, Dov Hikind, said yesterday he is convinced that anti-Semitism has made life intolerable for Jews in England, France, Germany, and Belgium.
While Western European Jews would likely fail to qualify as persecuted refugees under State Department standards, America has made rare exceptions for certain groups in the past, including Jews and other religious minorities in the former Soviet Union who qualified as refugees under the 1989 Lautenberg Amendment. Mr. Hikind wants this treatment extended to Western European Jews. At least one major Jewish organization is already opposing Mr. Hikind's plan. The director of international Jewish affairs at the American Jewish Committee, Rabbi Andrew Baker, said yesterday life is now improving for Jewish communities in Europe following a "resurgence of anti-Semitism" in 2002. "I think while community leaders would not dismiss that there is a problem, they would agree that the solution to the problem is not emigration," Mr. Baker said. He cited France as an example of positive change: Its new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has publicly committed to combating anti-Semitism. "I think it seriously disturbed French Jewry, maybe more than just the incidents themselves, the sense that the government would not address it," Mr. Baker said. "Now you have a government saying that we can't excuse these issues. Even if the numbers of incidents are not equally reflecting that change, that's a dramatic change in their minds." Mr. Hikind described recent reports on anti-Semitic incidents in European countries as "staggering." He pointed to a Tel Aviv University study on worldwide anti-Semitism published in 2006 that described a marked increase in incidents against Jews in Europe in the last year, including twice as many acts of violence against Jew in Belgium than the previous year, and reported anti-Semitic incidents "on an almost daily basis" in Germany, mostly in the form of verbal harassment. In July, the Anti-Defamation League published a survey describing increasingly negative attitudes toward Jews in Western Europe. In England, 50% of those surveyed said they believed Jews were more loyal to Israel than to their own country, versus 38% in the previous year. An organization that records anti-Semitic acts in Britain, the Community Security Trust, said it recorded a 31% rise in incidents over the last year, to 594 in 2006 from 455 in 2005. State Department officials could not be reached for comment | |
| Posted by:lotp |
| #7 This isn't hard reading the on line media of Europe it's pretty plain Europe hates Israel and Jews. The Arab vs Israeli conflict just gives them cover for their long standing hate of Jews and anything Jewish in Europe. Canada is infected with it too. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet of Doom 2007-12-04 18:05 |
| #6 Trailing Wife, 10 points. Not saying they necessarily should move there but I should think Israel could use the numbers. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2007-12-04 18:04 |
| #5 anonymous5089 ("iceberg? A joooooo!")... that be a funny!! 1) Who is behind this increase? spontaneous generation of jackbooted neo-nazis??? The boys from Brazil??? Think hard. Jews themselves.. it must be dem anti-Semitic Jews who are responsible! yeper it be dem damn Jooooooos |
| Posted by: Red Dawg 2007-12-04 15:56 |
| #4 Or else there is probably a Jew friendly state somewhere in the world that could use additional immigration. Israel? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-12-04 15:26 |
| #3 Who is responsible. Bush. Who else? /liberal |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2007-12-04 14:19 |
| #2 1) Who is behind this increase? spontaneous generation of jackbooted neo-nazis??? The boys from Brazil??? Think hard. 2) Violence against jews, sad and despisable as it stands, is only the tip of the iceberg ("iceberg? A joooooo!")... The hidden part of the iceberg is the violence against white europeans, from rapes to motiveless assaults, to even small scale (stones thrown at cars, rampant vandalism, firebombings of city bus, as it happened not only in France, but also in Netherlands and Sweden, if I remember my blogs reading correctly), or large scale civil unrest (just think frenchifada and the 100 torched cars a night). Who is responsible for this violence??? Think hard. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2007-12-04 13:28 |
| #1 I don't know about special refugee status but they should be given prime spots as regular immigrants if they want to come over to the USA. Or else there is probably a Jew friendly state somewhere in the world that could use additional immigration. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2007-12-04 13:21 |