If Jews in the West are once again thrown into a pit of death, you can thank Jewish activists such Annika Hernroth-Rothstein. Declaring war on your host nation can often propel host nations to go to war on your tribe. Guess who will win that war?
No healthy majority bends to its minorities. It demands that its minorities bend to them. Israel is an excellent example of a nation that is run for the benefit of its majority Jewish population.
If you don’t want to abide by the observed laws of your nation, perhaps you should try to change those laws, and if that fails, perhaps you should move?
Shmuel Rosner writes Oct. 20, 2013:
Annika Hernroth-Rothstein is a political advisor, writer, and activist in support of Israel. She is from Sweden, and is working to promote “a strong traditional Jewish community” in her native country. In September 2012 she organized the first public pro-Israel demonstration in Sweden in seven years – an event that drew 1500 people. A couple of months ago she wrote an article for Mosaic, on how to survive as a Jew in Sweden (Mosaic ran an important series of articles on the fate of European Jewry). But perhaps survival is proving to be a non-option. With circumcision under attack, Kosher food under attack, and a general sense of insecurity on the rise, the traditional Jew is gradually being outlawed in Sweden.
Last week, Hernroth sent a letter to my JPPI colleague Dov Maimon, our point man on Jewish European affairs. Maimon just recently wrote an important – and disturbing – report on the fate of contemporary European Jewry for JPPI’s annual assessment. “The campaigns to restrict Jewish rites we are observing today”, he wrote, “seem to be part of a wider cultural mega-trend that is not disconnected from the political, economic, and demographic European identity crisis. It is worthwhile considering whether current approaches and strategies utilized by Jewish communities – of winning short-term votes and attaining back-door agreements, but not always engaging with wider developments in public opinion – can protect Jewish practices over the long-term”. The Jerusalem Post was convinced- by Dov’s paper, among others – that it is time for Israel to get ready “to absorb thousands of European Jews”.
Maimon shared Hernroth’s letter with some colleagues, and with her permission I’m now sharing parts of it with our readers. “In my community”, she wrote, “the traditional Jewish community of Stockholm, we discuss the possibility and consequences of Aliyah all the time. The main factor that holds people back is, honestly, the long term cost of relocation from a developed country. At this point, not only is the process almost laughed at for its bureaucracy, but one is also concerned about the downgrade in living – and working conditions”.
She then moves on to discuss the state of Swedish Jewry and what she calls “the horrific situation not only in my country but in Europe as a whole”:
In Sweden, kosher slaughter is outlawed. This, in a country that has one of the most liberal hunting laws in the world (where private slaughter is permitted during hunting) and that also permits halal slaughter. Brit milah is under attack. I personally am (today, actually) handling the 2nd bill in 6 months demanding the outlawing of all circumcision that is not deemed medically necessary and acute. Anti-Semitic attacks are constant. Most not being filed and processed. I have done the research and seen the statistics. It’s frightening. The people around me cannot walk the streets being visibly Jewish. The men cannot don kippot until within the synagogue; we are heavily guarded as we enter. At Rosh Hashanah 7 policemen guarded us as we walked to the stream for tashlich, a 5 minute walk in the most well off neighborhood in Stockholm. We are living in a silent terror, and accepting it with bowed heads. However, I cannot accept it any longer.
So I have decided to seek asylum in my own country. I realize how strange it must sound, but in a reality lacking logic it makes perfect sense.
I have read and re-read the terms and basis for seeking asylum in my country, as well as in the European Union. The law states that a person should be granted asylum in Sweden if he or she “has reason to believe that she will be persecuted due to religion, ethnicity, political views and/or sexual orientation and gender.” My plan for action is to seek asylum on the basis of religious persecution. As Jews, we meet these demands.
In another letter I received from Hernroth-Rothstein late last week, she writes that “I do realize the absurdity of what I am writing, what I am asking”. Still, she says, “the situation is beyond absurdity, beyond op-eds and strongly worded letters. This situation calls for action, reaction, and a statement from Swedish Jewry that it refuses to choose between fear and assimilation”.
The JPost, quoting from the survey of European Jewry conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, has the numbers from all over Europe. “In Hungary, 91% of respondents said anti-Semitism has increased in the past five years. That figure was 88% in France, 87% in Belgium and 80% in Sweden. In Germany, Italy and Britain, some 60% identified a growth in anti- Semitism, compared to 39% in Latvia”. This doesn’t mean that these Jews will soon immigrate to Israel. “In order to avoid friction with their environment, Jews take various steps – the more practicing Jews relocate in self-segregated neighborhoods, the more idealistic ones make Aliyah, and the most ambitious ones quit Europe for more promising horizons”, wrote Maimon in his recent paper. I guess Hernroth-Rothstein is the exception: she’s going all out against her own government, knowing that the chances for success are low, but feeling that fleeing without a fight just isn’t the right thing to do.
THE COMMENTS ARE SHARP:
* So she thinks Jews have a right to a “strong, traditional Jewish community in Israel” but doesn’t believe that Sweden has the same right? Sweden is a traditionally Christian nation; if they want to keep Christian traditions and reject kosher rule or circumcision (which, in Judaism, often involves the Rabbi sucking blood off of the infant’s penis after the foreskin is removed — it’s called “metzitzah b’peh) – then Sweden has just as much right to their own tradition. Ridiculous. This is what multi-culturalism has wrought. Hatred for host countries and religions.
* As fas as I know from reading about this development it will either be us or Germany that will be the first to ban the insane religiously backed inhuman practice of cutting babies dicks off. I am so happy if it will be another thing us progressive Swedes are yet again first to act against. This is a practice very disliked in Sweden but politicians do not want to touch the issue because if the practice is even mentioned Jews start screaming ANTI-SEMITISM or BLOOD LIBEL until they can’t breathe anymore. We don’t give a shit about religion in Sweden, take your backwardass violence and child abuse elsewhere, it has nothing to do with judaism or religion (in this case anti-semitism), we’re atheist in Sweden so we don’t care about ancient barbarism. You can cut of your foreskin when your 18 and old enough to make your own decisions. And no, we’re not banning kosher food. That’s just made up propaganda.
@Anthony Davis no we’re not a traditional christian nation, we’re a nation of nature worship through our history and we were the last country to adopt christianity in Europe and in many parts of Sweden christianity wasn’t culturally adopted until only about 200 years ago. We used to believe in spirits in nature everywhere, kind of like in Japan but today the vast majority are irreligious and think religion is for less developed people, as we should.
