Former Israeli President Shimon Peres slapped Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu behind the back on Sunday for encouraging terrorized Jews to make Aliyah instead of doing so without being pushed by hatred.

Speaking in New York at an event by the Times of Israel newspaper, Peres insisted, “Jews can live all over the world. Just keep your children Jewish.”

The intermarriage rate in the United States is approximately 60 percent. It is above 70 percent in most of Europe, and Israel’s premier president of platitudes can’t connect the dots. The reason is that Peres refers never miss an opportunity to knock Netanyahu. even if at the expense of Aliyah.

The Prime Minister commented after this week’s murder of a Jewish guard at a Copenhagen synagogue, “I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they are: Israel is the home of every Jew.”

Last month, at the funerals in Israel for French Jews murdered by a terrorist in an attack on kosher deli, in Paris, Netanyahu told mourners, ”Today we have a state of our own, one that is blossoming and advanced, one that spreads great light like a lighthouse of morality; a state that takes its fate in its hands.”

But Peres, instead of promoting Israel’s “lighthouse of morality” and encouraging people to have the desire to make Aliyah, preferred to exploit the event in New York to jab his long-time political enemy Netanyahu while broadcasting the old-time Israeli smugness that Israel does not have to ask anyone to come to the country.

“Come because you want to live in Israel,” Peres said, which would have been a reasonable statement if it weren’t for the fact that although Peres’ father and family were Zionists, no one made the move to Israel until anti-Semitism hastened their emigration from Europe..

Peres was born in White Russia and was  ruled by Poland between the world wars. As anti-Semitic violence escalated, Peres’ father traveled to Tel Aviv in 1932 to put down stakes in Israel and then called for his family, including the future president of Israel, to make Aliyah in 1934. Those who remained behind were massacred by the Nazis.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee told Fox News on Sunday (Feb. 15) that he believes Israel’s prime minister was “dead right” to openly remind the Jews in Europe that Israel awaits them as a safe haven.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the Israeli cabinet Sunday that the current wave of terror attacks in Europe – including murderous anti-Semitic attacks – “is expected to continue.”

Netanyahu said in his opening statement, “I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they are: ‘Israel is the home of every Jews. To the Jews of Europe and to the Jews of the world I say that Israel is waiting for you with open arms.’”

“I understand what he’s saying,” Huckabee said in an interview live from Jerusalem, where he is currently on a visit to the Jewish State. Huckabee is also still mulling over the possibility of running as a candidate for president in the 2016 U.S. national election. Netanyahu, for his part, faces Israel’s national elections again on March 17.

“The Jews have been through this kind of horrible situation before, when they were hunted down and murdered, and he’s saying to many Jews in Europe, ‘terrorism is not isolated to the Middle East, it’s global, it’s happening in Oklahoma City, Fort Hood, in Copenhagen… and the one place that Jews can be protected is in Israel,’” Huckabee continued.

“And I can’t blame him a bit – and he’s probably dead right to say it.”

Last week U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice, said in an address to the Brookings Institute that media coverage over terror attacks in Europe and the Middle East have become disproportionate to the threat they represent, at least in the United States. ‘

“While the dangers we face may be more numerous and varied, they are not of the existential nature we confronted during World War II or during the Cold War,” she said. “We cannot afford to be buffeted by alarmism and a nearly instantaneous news cycle,” she added.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on Jews from Europe to walk away from growing anti-Semitism and terrorism and move to Israel.

Speaking hours after a terrorist killed a volunteer Jewish guard outside a Copenhagen synagogue where a Bat Mitzvah celebration was being held, the Prime Minister said, “Extremist Islamic terrorism has struck Europe again, this time in Denmark. We send our condolences to the Danish people and to the Jewish community in Denmark.

“Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews and this wave of terrorist attacks – including murderous anti-Semitic attacks – is expected to continue.”

He told the Cabinet that the government is preparing a $45 million plan to encourage Aliyah from Belgium, Belgium and Ukraine.

Prime Minister Netanyahu added:

 I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they are: ‘Israel is the home of every Jew.

To the Jews of Europe and to the Jews of the world I say that Israel is waiting for you with open arms.

 

 

Israeli government ministers are being warned to prepare for “large-scale immigration” as anti-Semitism rises abroad.

“We are taking action and must continue to do so that those Jews will come here and not go to other countries. The manifestations of anti-Semitism in various European countries will not be forgotten and will even increase due – inter alia – to the rise of the forces of extremist Islam and additional changes that are taking place there.

“It must be assumed that the situation will worsen and that pressure on the communities will increase,” Netanyahu continued. “We are facing a major wave of immigration for which we must be prepared.”

Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky, Aliyah and Immigration Absorption Minister Sofa Landver, and ministry officials also briefed ministers on the actions being taken to strengthen and assist Jewish communities around the world, according to a communique sent to media.

Possibly as a follow up to the necessity of conserving resources in order to prepare for mass immigration, the cabinet also discussed and approved draft legislation on reducing the use of cash in the economy.

Also discussed and approved was draft legislation on electronic check clearing, a move that will streamline financial processing in the country.

The Jewish Agency is making plans to settle 120,000 Jews — one in every five French Jews — over the next four years.

The project sounds fanciful if one looks at recent history, but radical Islamic terror and country-wide anti-Semitism have cast a shadow of the Nazi era over Jews in France.

The Jewish People Policy Institute, the Jewish Agency’s think tank, is drawing up plans for opening up job opportunities to attract French Jews, who enjoy a relatively high standard of living.

The number of Jews from France who moved to Israel last year was 7,000, a small number by itself but a dramatic jump from previous years. Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky has said he anticipates 15,000 Jews from France to make Aliyah by 2016, but the Agency’s think tank has bigger plans.

If history repeats itself, the project for mass Aliyah will create lots of work for Jewish Agency , inflate its budget and bring in only a trickle of results.

Aliyah from Western countries never has been very impressive except in the hey-day of Israel’s victory over Arab enemies in the Six-Day War in 1967.

Since the 1970s, the only really impressive Aliyah has been from what was the Soviet Union, from where more than 1,000,000 Jews — and 300,000 people who were not Jews according to Jewish law — moved to Israel.

But Jews have a tradition of enjoying a good life in the Diaspora, hanging on until they are expelled or often trying to flee after it is too late.

Fear and loathing have not yet sent shivers down the spines of American Jews, most of whom consider Israel a place for hapless Jews who cannot survive elsewhere. The “Golden Medina” has been a tough nut for Aliyah ever since the re-establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

On a trip to Baltimore in 1951, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion told rags to-riches millionaire Jacob Blaustein of expectations of the Aliyah of thousands of Jews every month, to which Blaustein retorted, “American is our home.”

Just think if one in every five American Jews were to make Aliyah. The economy would boom. The so-called “demographic problem” of an Arab and Bedouin population dominating Jews would disappear.

If even 10 percent of 1 million American Jews were to settle in Judea and Samaria, there would be no question about its place in Israel.

But Americans do not face the imminent threat that has caused French Jews to panic and fear.

The Jewish Agency plans are not a pipe dream.

“I was in Netanya this past Shabbat, and everyone is talking about the Aliyah of Jews from France,” French expatriate Yisca Maimon told The Jewish Press Sunday.

She explained:

They are afraid to go to the supermarket and to synagogue and get killed. The Aliyah movement starts with one friend, and then another friend, and everyone influences one another. Jews in France are very close to one another. People are afraid of Islamic terror because there is absolutely no security there. Yes, there are attacks in synagogues and supermarkets in Israel, but here we have the IDF. We are in our own home.

Jews in France feel they cannot stay there anymore. They know they have to leave. There are nearly 8 million Muslims in France, and their presence is increasingly overwhelming. Everyone is afraid.

There is another reason for Jews to flee France, if they want their children to remain Jews. The assimilation rate is nearly 70 percent, which raises the question of which Jews will move to Israel.

Haredi rabbis who are not raving Zionists — except for the fact that they live in Israel — already have objected to mass Aliyah because of problems of Jewish law.

They say they are afraid of more secular Jews but  in truth they also are afraid of the growing national religious community in Israel, which in the past two decades has become very influential in the IDF, professional fields and now in the Knesset thought the Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party, which has opened up its doors to secular Jews who also are strong nationalists.

The Jewish Agency will have to deal with the problem of “Who Is a Jew” when the time comes. It also will have to streamline the absorption process to allow professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, to practice in Israel without some of the obstacles that have no logic but simply exist from the earlier days of the modern State when old-line Israelis expected everyone to be like them.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the Cabinet Sunday, “We must prepare to absorb large-scale immigration to Israel. To this end we are working to remove the impediments to [recognizing] diplomas and professional degrees in Israel. At the same time we will prepare an emergency plan to cancel bureaucracy so as to enable massive construction to absorb the immigrants, just as we did previously to absorb the major immigration from the Soviet Union.”

If the Jewish Agency can succeed, it might even begin to attract more Americans, not enough to make baseball the Israel National Pastime but enough to at least make hamburgers as popular as falafel.

On Sunday, Jan. 25, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the following remarks at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting:

“In the coming weeks, the major powers are liable to reach a framework agreement with Iran, an agreement that is liable to leave Iran as a nuclear threshold state, which would endanger – first and foremost – the existence of the State of Israel. This is the same Iran that has taken over Lebanon and Syria and is now taking over Yemen and Iraq. This is the same Iran that is preparing an active front against us both on the Golan Heights and in southern Lebanon. This same Iran cannot advance toward nuclear weapons.

As Prime Minister of Israel, I am obligated to make every effort in order to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons that would be aimed at the State of Israel. This effort is worldwide and I will go anywhere I am invited in order to enunciate the State of Israel’s position and in order to defend its future and its existence.

I would like to express my condolences to the Japanese Prime Minister and people following reports of the brutal murder of a Japanese citizen by Islamic State. Last week, during Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Israel, I told him that the struggle against extremist Islamic terrorism is a joint struggle and only if we are united will we be able to emerge victorious. Israel stands alongside Japan and the Japanese people in this difficult hour.

This week we will mark around the world International Holocaust Remembrance Day and Struggle against Anti-Semitism Day. Last year we witnessed an increase in anti-Semitic incidents and a wave of anti-Semitism that is flooding parts of the world, especially Europe. Against these phenomena the governments of the world need to act with greater vigor. History has already shown us that violence that begins against the Jews does not stop with the Jews. It is like a brushfire that spreads very rapidly to all societies and all citizens.

At the same time, we must ease the obstacles that impede the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel. Israel is the national home of every Jew and we will act to bring immigrants to the State of Israel.”