Already in 2006, the London Daily Telegraph ran a story entitled, “Is this the last generation of British Jews?” In 1990, there were estimated to be about 340,000 Jews in Britain. By 2006, the population had declined by a fifth to 270,000. While the article dealt mainly with the consequences of secularism and intermarriage, it referred to a parliamentary inquiry which stated “that anti-semitic violence has become endemic in Britain, both on the streets and university campuses.”
As in France, in Britain, in the past few years, emigration to Israel has doubled. The Jewish population in the United Kingdom is expected to decline to 240,000 by 2020, 180,000 by 2050, and 140,000 by 2080.
In the Netherlands, in 2010, Frits Bolkestein, a prominent Dutch Conservative and former European Commissioner, said there is no future for Jews in his country because of “anti-Semitism among Dutchmen of Moroccan descent, whose number keeps growing.” He referred to the increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the Netherlands over the past decade and urged Jews to “emigrate to the U.S. or Israel.”
As always, the Jews are like the canary in the coalmine. If Europe fails to protect its Jews, it must be feared that soon Christians, too, will no longer feel safe in Europe. When the Jews are made to flee, it will not be long before others will have to flee as well. Recently, Monsignor Anba Damian, bishop of the Coptic Church in Germany, warned that persecutions of Christians might soon be a reality in Germany. “There is a real danger that an ever more dominant Islam in Germany will seriously threaten Christians,” he said. Many think the Bishop is scaremongering. However, as teacher Iannis Roder said in the Nouvel Observateur, in the late 1990s, he could not have believed that anti-Semitism would again become a common phenomenon in France. “I am from a generation that thought that anti-Semitism had died with the Shoah [Holocaust]. I could never have imagined that it would resurface.”
Originally published by Gatestone Institute http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org
