Fight or Flight?

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In France, vandals deface the Holocaust Memorial along with several other Jewish sites in Paris – a city already plagued for years by Islamic car-burnings, church-burnings, and machete attacks, not to mention several major acts of jihadist terror. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blames this latest rash of antisemitic acts on French President Emmanuel Macron’s support for a Palestinian state and indifference to rising antisemitism.  

In Sweden, which during the last few years has been increasingly tormented by Islamic violence, Jewish students are reported to be “hiding their identities. They walk to class in fear, avoid social media, and feel abandoned by their teachers and universities.”

In Germany, statistics show that the number of antisemitic incidents almost doubled last year.

In Switzerland, a new report reveals that antisemitism has reached an “unprecedented level.” It has “reached the streets”; it has “visibly prevailed against all resistance and taken a frightening turn.” While some observers expected Swiss Jews in Israel to return home after the Hamas attacks, the number of Swiss Jews moving to Israel has actually increased.

In Norway, whose Foreign Minister has promised to arrest Netanyahu if he sets foot in Norway, a writer using the pseudonym Anonymous Jew charges that the Hamas terrorists who butchered Jews in Israel are being treated as “heroes in the streets of Oslo.” Anti-Semitism is everywhere. The Norwegian government, which recognized Palestine last year, seems now to have divorced itself entirely from Israel and abandoned all sense of obligation to Norwegian Jews. “I am tired, writes Anonymous Jew, “of hiding who I am, tired of feeling like a stranger in my own country.” Consequently: “I am leaving. Not because I want to, but because I have to. I am leaving Norway, the country I loved, because it is no longer safe to be a Jew here.”

In the Netherlands, where more than a hundred Muslim men assaulted dozens of Jews in Amsterdam last November 7, a 48-year-old Jewish woman declares that the country is “over” for Jews. “Education has failed, integration [of Muslim minorities] has failed. Respect for us Jews has disappeared and will never return. There are simply too few of us, the other side is so much larger and more aggressive.” Another Dutch Jew agrees. “Jews who would have never considered aliyah before [i.e., moving to Israel] now understand there’s no future for them in Europe.” Yet another Dutch Jew says: “I am usually an optimist, a very happy person, but I worry about my children. Will they be able to go to university safely? When will it be too late to leave if things get worse? Are we back in the 1930s? Two of my grandparents survived Auschwitz. Even after October 7, we thought we could tough it out, the war would end, and antisemitism would eventually die down.” But it hasn’t.

I happened to be in the Netherlands earlier this month. Walking around Haarlem, I ran across the former home of Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983), a Dutch Christian whose family hid Jews there. It’s now a museum. As I stood reading the plaque outside, I respectfully pondered what this woman had done during the Nazi occupation – and wondered how many Dutch Christians today would do the same.

In the year 2025, it’s not an idle question. In all of these countries, accounts of Jewish life are very much the same. Jews no longer feel safe wearing Stars of David or yarmulkes. Kids are beaten up at school by Muslim classmates, and their complaints are ignored by frightened teachers and principals. Their parents feel pressured to condemn Israel. In short, the countries where they’ve spent their entire lives no longer feel like home. Western European Jews used to feel that their governments had their backs; now, in the wake of October 7 and the war in Gaza, their governments and legacy media are going all-out to depict the IDF as veritable Nazis and the people of Gaza as the world’s foremost innocents.

Meanwhile, here’s the latest from Austria: on June 13-15, a Jewish activist organization will meet in Vienna for a “Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress” at which participants will discuss how best to “support the freedom of Palestine.” This comes seven months after a Danish group, “Jews for a Just Peace,” held a pro-Palestinian rally in Copenhagen. Granted, these organizations don’t represent very many Jews: the Danish group, for example, has only 80 members. Still, it’s troubling that even one Jew could be confused enough to be involved in such nefarious nonsense.

Which brings us to Britain. In April, 36 members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the country’s leading Jewish organization, signed an open letter condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza. In May, after the Board of Deputies as a whole criticized the open letter, hundreds of Jews from all over Britain signed another letter, this one condemning the Board of Deputies for being too pro-Israel. This in a country where Jews are arguably in greater danger from Islam than anywhere else in Europe. (How many of these British Jews, I wondered, had ever protested their government’s brutalization of Tommy Robinson, or its imprisonment of other Brits who’ve dared to criticize Islam?)

It’s not just in Western Europe, of course, that life has turned darker for Jews. After October 7, America’s left-wing legacy media began parroting Hamas lies and demonizing Israel as never before. Anti-Jewish protests disrupted American campuses. Anti-Jewish violence soared. Americans became accustomed to previously inconceivable headlines such as “Egyptian Muslim sets elderly Jews on fire in Boulder” and “Princeton students chant ‘Glory to the martyrs!’” And through it all, Democratic Party officials either kept silent or joined in the pile-on.

For the first time ever, in short, many American Jews were getting a taste of what their grandparents and great-grandparents experienced under Hitler. Jews who’d never imagined that America could feel anything but safe and secure for them and their descendants saw their complacency shattered. Many of them registered the stark contrast between the Democrats’ wimpy stances on these existential questions and Trump’s unwavering support of Israel and condemnation of antisemitism; others managed, somehow, to stay in the dark.

How did all this play out in the 2024 election? he Jewish Electorate Institute (JEI) claims that 71 percent of Jewish voters cast their ballots for Kamala Harris – a number that would be consistent with the American Jewish tradition of voting overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party. At FrontPage, however, Daniel Greenfield credibly dismissed these numbers as Democratic propaganda, showing that Trump, in fact, had won America’s “densest Jewish neighborhood,” Brooklyn’s Borough Park, taking “over 90% of the vote” in most of that neighborhood’s election districts. Trump also racked up equally impressive majorities in other heavily Jewish areas, including the Fairfax area of Los Angeles and Miami’s Surfside district.

Nonetheless, as the West Side Rag spelled out, the Upper West Side, home to New York’s densest concentration of wealthy, influential Jews, remained true to the Democratic Party, with most election districts posting “percentages in the high 80s and low 90s” for Harris. Overall, if Fox News is to be believed, “45 percent of New York’s Jews voted for Trump” – a significant move to the right, but still far from a GOP majority.

Of course, a significant move is not enough. More than a year and a half after Hamas’s invasion of Israel, the question is why any well-informed American Jew would vote for the Democrats.

On March 5, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on antisemitism. It was, of course, proposed by the new GOP majority: the topic is one that Democrats on Capitol Hill had no interest in discussing, given that many of their number are themselves outspoken antisemites. Indeed, the witnesses invited by the Democrats turned out to be apologists for anti-Zionism, deniers of Muslim Jew-hatred, and even defenders of Hamas. The Democrats on the committee, to their disgrace, spent much of their time praising Muslims. Soon enough, the Trump Administration, to its credit, was deporting foreigners who were in the U.S. on student visas for tormenting their Jewish fellow students.

The severe contrast between the two parties’ stance on Jewish issues was not lost on the more thoughtful Jewish political donors, and it led, just the other day, to the spectacle of James Carville, hoary Democratic Party strategist, complaining on camera about how difficult it is at present to get wealthy Jews to contribute to the party. One such individual, charged Carville, said that he couldn’t bring himself to donate because of the antisemitic activities that had been permitted to take place at Columbia University. To which Carville’s dyspeptic response was: “What the **** does the Democratic Party have to do with what happened at Columbia?”

This is, note well, the same genius who advised the 1992 Clinton campaign: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Who’s stupid now? Yes, it’s still the economy. But it’s also immigration. And crime. And gender ideology. And identity politics. And, especially for Jewish voters, the staggering recent increase in antisemitism and pro-Hamas sentiment, which the Democratic Party has abetted to an extent that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.

No, most American Jews may not have voted for Trump. But they are very lucky that he won. In the same way, while many of the Jews who remain in Europe are hesitant to support so–called “far-right” leaders like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Jimmie Åkelsson in Sweden, or the supposedly neo-Nazi Alternativ für Deutschland – politicians and parties that are dedicated to reversing their countries’ Islamization and recovering their peoples’ freedoms – no one will profit more if these alleged reactionaries gain power than the dwindling number of Western European Jews. And the sooner that Jews on both sides of the pond recognize this fact and break with their political traditions in order to vote for their real personal interests, the better off we’ll all be.

One last thing. One Western European country that I neglected to mention up front was Belgium. It’s now reported that a majority of Belgian Jews are considering leaving the country for good. And guess which countries they’re most likely to move to? No, not Israel and the U.S. Answer: Hungary and Poland – two countries that have been relentlessly demonized by the EU as far-right but that, as I’ve witnessed personally, are safe and civilized in a way that Western Europe no longer is. Hungary and Poland, according to Moment Magazine, are the countries where Belgian Jews feel “they would be safe and protected.”

Surprised? You shouldn’t be.