Luke Ford

The comments on this Atlantic piece by Jeffrey Goldberg are excellent:

The next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is likely a Jew. He is very open and proud of his ethnic background. He can be because it’s an electoral plus. As was the former President of France. Who proudly extolled his jewish heritage. Jews are not on the fringes of European societies. But often at their heart.

It is a nonsense to suggest Jews are unwelcome or objectively unsafe because of brutal, but relatively rare acts of terrorism. In fact, it plays into the hands of terrorists, validating their wicked strategy. So too that anti-semitism vile that it is, is the kind of prejudice warranting a blanket mass exodus from a diverse continent. Neither are reason to leave the relative peace of much of Europe, their home, for a state that is in a constant state of war. Nor are the prejudices of any segment of a majority for a minority, let alone one minority for another, a validation of the question you pose. Muddling very different European states, in the way you do, as you do with historical and modern Europe, to support preconceived notions informed by history is natural, but also folly.

If anything, mainstream European societies today view people of Muslim backgrounds with overt prejudice, not Jews. But that is no reason for Muslims to leave. Or any minority to leave anywhere, unless the threat places their existence, or at the very least life chances to succeed at risk. None of which is true for most states here.

Europe today is increasingly diverse, and I would argue tolerant. And yet even her most enlightened states have struggled to adapt to immigration, and establish a common identity. And that is where the tension lies between Europe’s progress, and it’s new makeup. Governments do need to be more proactive toward fostering community cohesion then they have been. And confront Muslim prejudices directly, but constructively. To build bridges between communities. And find common ground where it can be found on Israel-Palestine. And to unapologetically reassert the best values of the west.

There are no quick fixes, expectations must be moderated, and I accept it’s imperfect, but unlike mass emigration it’s rooted in addressing the needs of millions of people who aren’t going anywhere, jew or muslim, and everyone else. And not giving up to seek solace in homogeneity either ethnically or culturally when the world is increasingly interconnected.

There is currently an “exodus” of Israeli technology entrepreneurs leaving Israel, for of all places, Berlin, and there are many Jews living in poverty in Israel, including a homeless tent encampment outside Tel Aviv.

European jewry genuinely, and justifiably feel vulnerable after recent attacks. They rely on people like you to provide measured perspective. So it’s all the more irresponsible for a journalist in a respected publication to stoke the flames with Netanyahu’s opportunist propaganda.

* That’s why #HitlerDidNothingWrong and #HitlerWasRight were trending on twitter from mostly Arabic twitter handles and names when the Israel/Gaza war occurred last summer, but sure, continue pretending it doesn’t exist.

* Do you think European countries would have muslim no go zones if Hitler had won? Do you think there would be a chance of some European countries having majority muslim populations in the next century if Hitler had won? Would muslim gang rape be an issue in some places in Europe if Hitler had won?

* Post-war Germany brought in millions of Muslim, mostly Turkish, guest workers, whose German born, German speaking descendants were long denied citizenship. Had the Nazis won the war, something similar would have happened. Hitler lacked a specific hatred of Muslims, but held all non-Germanic peoples to be inferiors. Once the extent of Arab oil resources became clear, the Third Reich’s need for Lebensraum would have extended to the Persian Gulf.

America majored in race hatred and only minored in anti-Semitism. Europe’s Ph.D. was in Jew hating. The Muslims living in America and Europe have picked up on both histories. The more numerous and densely settled European Muslims see Jews as fair game. American Muslims, despite their antipathy toward Israel, by and large live at peace with their Jewish neighbors. Go to Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn where Muslim and Jewish enclaves have long coexisted.

* “Herrenvolk” doesn’t translate as anything close to “master race”. Hitler respected upstanding, volk-minded men of many races. He certainly bore Asians generally and the Japanese in particular no ill will, regardless of circumstance. Indeed, the Japanese and NS Germany recognized the wide concordance between Hitler’s philosophy of life and Shintoism.

* The original Bolsheviks were indeed disproportionately Jews. This is a fact. But they were not all Jews and did not set up a Jewish state. There was no Jewish privilege for citizens. They banned the practice of all religions including Judaism. They burned places of worship including synagogues. The Bolsheviks were ideological revolutionaries who thought they could create utopia from the barrel of a gun and terror. They were not “the Jews,” as people like you call them.

* To the perennially persecuted Jew “anything” not about the Jew is considered a “false equivalent”. For decades we in the United States have been treated to the whining and finger pointing of people like Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center who saw anti-Semitism everywhere he looked. Much like an oft-accused spouse, the paranoia of the accuser becomes reality. While I sympathize with the citizens of Israel and celebrate their courage I find the whining and carping of European and American Jews to be tiresome. Jews have complained so often their cries are now being ignored. What was a sympathetic audience after WWII has become indifferent. By siding with the liberal politicos in America (often against the best interest of Israel) the Jew has found himself isolated now that his former friends in the Democrat Party have found value in mining Muslim wealth.