Repliker om Europas judar och islamismen

Walter Laqueur

I nystartade Mosaic Magazine (med underrubriken Advancing Jewish Thought) finns det nu tre rejäla repliker på Michel Gurfinkiels tankar om den europeiska judenhetens relation till islamismens offensiv. Den första är skriven av Walter Laqueur och han inleder så här:

"I broadly agree with Michel Gurfinkiel’s thoughts concerning the eventual disappearance of European Jewry. The process will probably take longer than we assume today—such events have multiple causes, and there are almost always retarding factors as well. In my judgment, however, anti-Semitism is only one factor contributing to the demise of European Jewry, and not the most decisive one.This is hardly to deny the truth of everything Gurfinkiel records about the incidence of verbal and physical anti-Semitism, up to and including murder. Indeed, every passing week supplies fresh evidence. Anti-Semitism has appeared even in the most tolerant European lands, among them the countries of Scandinavia and Benelux where Jews have been advised not to wear certain types of clothing or display other obvious signs of their identity, and Israeli tourists are cautioned against speaking Hebrew."

Längre fram i texten inskärper han sin tanke att antisemitismen inte är den avgörande faktorn. Den utgörs, menar han, istället av demografin:

"Still, to repeat, anti-Semitism is not the main factor. The main factor is demography. Before World War II, more Jews lived in Europe than in any other part of the world. Ever since the great bloodletting of the Holocaust, the presence of Jews in Europe has been insignificant. Against the backdrop of earlier European history, and contrary to what Gurfinkiel writes, European Jewry today does not even look healthy. The postwar flowering that he describes, impressive as it is (or was), should not be exaggerated; the real vibrancy of a community is not measured in new museums and similar institutions.In the 27 member states of the European Union, Jews today number, in all, only slightly more than a million souls: demographically, an immaterial factor in the affairs of Europe and one that appears destined to become even less consequential as the century progresses."

(Walter Laqueur is the author of, among other books, A History of Zionism, Weimar, A History of Terrorism, and After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent. His newest book, Optimism in Politics and Other Essays, is due out from Transaction in January.)

Efter Laqueurs kommer en replik av David Pryce-Jones:

David Pryce-Jones

"Is Gurfinkiel right? Since Cassandra, prophecy has served to avert perceived doom. The Jewish future surely depends on the international standing of Israel. The United Nations seems to have few other purposes than expressing and magnifying hostility toward Israel. Year in, year out, the world body has sought to make Jews feel that any attachment to their national liberation movement is contaminated. In this forum, Arab and Muslim nation states accuse Israel of the racism and exclusiveness that they themselves practice. Sub-committees packed by representatives from despotisms granting no human rights to their own citizens regularly single out and condemn Israel for alleged abuses of human rights. The falsification of Israel’s measures of self-protection as aggressions driven by the ambition to colonize Arab territory puts Jews on the defensive and undermines any identification they might feel with their nation-state.

The European Union perceives nationalism itself as the cause of war, and seeks to deconstruct altogether the concept of the nation-state. Israel is the embodiment of the sense of proud nationhood that runs counter to EU ideology. With a logic all their own, EU policy makers oppose Israel while doing whatever they can to build a nation-state of Palestine. Jewish communities are unsettled to observe large-scale EU subsidies ending up in the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists, or measures like the boycott recently imposed on products, goods, and personnel coming from Jewish settlements beyond the pre-June 1967 borders.

If Jews do indeed abandon Europe, it will be to escape a situation in which their very identity is increasingly treated as a matter of suspicion and political contention. Should an emigration en masse come to be a reality, Gurfinkiel concludes, it would constitute “a profound blow to the collective psyche of the Jewish people” as well as a shattering judgment on the “so-called European idea.” In the absence of living Jews, Europeans will have nothing but Holocaust museums and memorials on which to base the moral reckoning of their past."

(David Pryce-Jones, the British novelist and commentator, is the author of, among other books, The Closed Circle and Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews.)

Daniel Johnson

Den tredje repliken kommer från Daniel Johnson:

"At the grassroots level, Jewish communities in Europe are not in terminal decline, as even the Fundamental Rights Agency survey and the study by Dov Maimon cited by Gurfinkiel attest. Spectacular acts of Islamist terror, like Merah’s killing spree in Toulouse or the beheadings in London and Amsterdam, are no more typical of Europe than the Boston bombing was of the United States. Security around Jewish schools, synagogues, and other institutions has been tight for so long as to be taken for granted.

What affects Jewish morale more deeply are the hundreds of more or less serious anti-Semitic incidents that the police typically fail to prosecute, such as last year’s attack on a Berlin rabbi with his six year old daughter. (The four Muslim youths responsible have yet to be caught.) There are more of these incidents every time Israel is vilified in the media, usually after it responds to some intolerable provocation. However, in most EU countries, the Jewish community tends to live in the more prosperous districts, well away from large concentrations of Muslim immigrants; France, with its large proportion of poorer North African Jews, may be unusual in this respect. What does, of course, strike fear into the hearts of all European Jews, rich or poor, is the specter of a pogrom. When Muslim “youths” riot in Paris and Stockholm, threatening lives and property, accompanied by anti-Semitic agitation, it is hardly surprising that French or Scandinavian Jews tell pollsters they are considering emigration."

(Daniel Johnson, the founder and editor of the British monthly Standpoint, writes widely on politics, culture, and religion.)

I sammanhanget kan man också citera vad avgående brittiske Chief rabbi Lord Sacks sade i gårdagens The Guardian, då han både kom in på multikulti-religionen och relationen mellan muslimer, judar och de väsensskilda sätt historien sett dem leva på, för muslimernas del i nationer under deras egen sharialag, för judarnas del som minoriteter i nationer utanför deras egen jurisdiktion:

"Lord Sacks also said multiculturalism in Britain had had led to "segregation and inward-looking communities".Comparing it to a hotel where "nobody is at home", he said: "It doesn't belong to anyone, we've each got our own room and so long as we don't disturb the neighbours we can do whatever we like."

But he acknowledged the difficulties faced by British Muslims when they tried to assimilate."We've had 26 centuries of experience which most Muslims haven't," he said. "The norm was for Muslims to live under a Muslim jurisdiction and the norm since the destruction of the first temple was for Jews to live under a non-Jewish jurisdiction."