Europe’s blindspot over antisemitism

You would think that we Europeans might have learned a thing or two about antisemitism over the past century or so — and perhaps come to understand pragmatically, if nothing else, that what begins with the vicious persecution of Jews usually moves on to murdering lots of other people, too. But no. Or if we did, then it has conveniently slipped our minds, as things tend to do in these complicated times. Or perhaps we think that the persecution of the Jews we are seeing right now in Europe is of a different marque to that which began in the early 1930s in Germany. Yes, it’s sort of antisemitism — but it’s of a nicer kind than that instigated by that psychotic little Austrian with the performative mustache. A little more excusable.

That may be the answer as to why we don’t do anything about it, apart from spout platitudinous drivel, when Jews are attacked on our streets. Drivel about how awful it all is and how we must stand together — but never telling the whole truth, and never making sure it will not happen again even if the politicians always say: “It must never happen again.” It happens again the following week, somewhere in Europe. And it is not a different brand of antisemitism, either. It is the tried and trusted old brand, based on lies, stupidity, doublethink and racial hatred. Exactly the same kind that Goebbels et al. subscribed to, using exactly the same tropes, the same false allegations, the same inchoate loathing.

If only our TV news programs and politicians could bring themselves to call it all “Far-Right Terrorism,” then something might get done — because we all know that Far-Right Terrorism is the biggest threat to our democracy. But they don’t. Even though it is, of course, far-right terrorism, lower case — the real far-right terrorism which our politicians do not want to think about and indeed lock people up when they complain a little vociferously about it.

In November the Dutch soccer club Ajax of Amsterdam played a cup tie against the Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv and as a consequence what the media carefully call “pro-Palestinian” thugs attacked the visiting Jewish supporters, with five hospitalized and twenty to thirty more injured. Many of the attacks were carried out by young men on mopeds — according to one Dutch politician, Moroccan young men on mopeds, which is about as close to actually identifying who these perpetrators might have been as you will get. The Israeli government reacted with shock, booking two planes to bring the soccer fans home from the fetid ghetto that parts of the decent, liberal Netherlands has become. Dutch politicians lined up to do the platitude stuff. The reliably witless Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, was among the first out of the blocks: “I strongly condemn these unacceptable acts. Anti-Semitism has absolutely no place in Europe. And we are determined to fight all forms of hatred.”

Just read that vacuous bilge again — the bloodless and vague “unacceptable acts” and ending with a commitment she does not remotely mean to keep. Oh, and antisemitism has absolutely no place in Europe? Au contraire, Ursula. It has many, many places, largely as a consequence of policies enacted by people like you. So, in that crescent (fittingly) of Europe from northwest France, through Belgium to Rotterdam and the Hague — and now arcing further north, to Malmö — these are the places where a large diaspora of Muslims from the Maghreb and the Levant have settled. Hey, it’s just occurred to me — gee, could there perhaps be some connection? If there is you can bank on the mainstream politicians and the mainstream media not to make it.

But there is plenty of antisemitism in London (and indeed Manchester), of course, and Britain has done nothing about it. Every time the Hamas groupies and their useful idiots from the white liberal left chant about rivers and seas they are too ignorant to identify, London’s Jews are targeted and feel afraid. There are fewer than 150,000 Jews in London, but over the past year there have been more than 2,000 attacks upon them. The woman who was dragged to the ground and punched in the face for putting up a poster demanding the return of the hostages. Or just the sort of thing this young Jewish bloke had to put up with on a Tube train last November: “I was talking to my friend and then next to me I hear someone say ‘pigs.’ The guy next to me was on FaceTime and says, ‘I’m on the train with a bunch of dirty Jewish pigs, scumbags and baby killers.’” If that had happened to someone from any other race, imagine the furor and the demands for retribution.

Please don’t believe this is all about Israel’s actions in Gaza, even if it is used as an excuse. It is a deep-seated problem located at the very center of Islam and it was in evidence well before October 7, 2023. It has been a recurrent theme. Whenever I have interviewed Palestinian activists they almost always say, “off the record,” “Well, there’s a reason everyone hates them, my fren’.” And then the lies come out, the incredibly familiar lies, the lies that take us right back to Treblinka and Sobibor. Islamism bought into Hitler and cannot yet bring itself to renounce him. The ideology of Hamas is drawn directly from Mein Kampf and the Third Reich, in which the Jews are to blame for everything — communism, capitalism, all warfare, the enslavement of other races, controlling the media, et cetera, ad infinitum — and must therefore be exterminated. Genocide, then: explicit and very clear. And yet we are weirdly afraid to articulate this obvious point.

If we really believe that antisemitism has no place in Europe, then can we point the finger a little more? And mean it when we say “never again.”

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s January 2025 World edition.