Sweden: "Jews are leaving Europe in record numbers, and more are thinking about it. I am now one of them."

Annika Hernroth-Rothstein writes @ Mosaic

Malmö: Anti-Israel activists don't 

want to be infected by Zionist bacteria

Time for Swedish Jews to leave? When we ask for guarantees of our safety, we’re met with speeches and calls for patience. This is not living.

They canceled Jewish winter camp. It sounds like a little thing, but in Sweden, where we have very few venues in which to lead our Jewish lives, it means a great deal. Winter camp is a yearly highlight, a place where our children can learn and play with other Jewish children, without worry. This year, they won’t be able to go, and for a simple reason—because it’s not safe.  [...]

Back in the summer of 2013, I read Michel Gurfinkiel’s sweeping essay in Mosaic on the threatened state of European Jewry and was moved to write him a letter. The editors then kindly published it as a response to his analysis. In it I described the particular difficulties and dangers facing a Jew in contemporary Sweden, and announced my intention to stay and fight for the future of Jewish life in the European Diaspora. As the situation in my country worsened, I ended up—as I again reported in Mosaic—filing for asylum in my own country on grounds of religious discrimination. My act was aimed at raising public consciousness and eliciting from my government at least an acknowledgment of reality. But despite the publicity my filing attracted, no such acknowledgment was forthcoming. Nor did my action garner any significant support within the official Jewish community itself; to the contrary, I was not spared ridicule for my alleged hyperbole and fear-mongering.  [...]

As more and more people, including communal leaders, are voicing their anxiety and alarm, and attracting the notice of the media, the sheer intractability of the problem is also emerging, sometimes with startling nakedness. A couple of weeks ago, a major public-radio station interviewed Isaac Bachman, Israel’s ambassador to Stockholm. ‎During the interview he was asked: “Do the Jews themselves have any ‎responsibility for the growing anti-Semitism that we see now?”‎ Naturally, the ambassador was stunned. “I reject the question ‎altogether,” he said. “It’s like asking a woman how she has contributed to the fact ‎that she is being raped. I don’t think there is any provocation on the part of the Jews; they just exist.”  ‎[...]

Rallies, speeches, a solidarity ring around a synagogue as in Oslo: these are no substitute for the actual guarantee and protection of civil rights, for actual inclusivity, for actual religious freedom; they are at best a way of treating symptoms while ignoring the disease. We are being urged to join others in striving for peace and understanding, as if all along we have been striving for something else and need to assume our share of responsibility for the campaign being waged against us. The marches, the one-off visits of dignitaries to synagogues, the solemn frowns of sympathy: all instruct us to be patient and do nothing until we reach the point where there will be nothing left to do.

They canceled the Jewish winter camp, and men with automatic weapons are guarding our schools. Our children will not forget this; fear and hate—their fear, others’ hate—are now somehow coterminous in their minds with the very nature of Jewish life. We European Jews have been here before.

In 2014, immigration to Israel from Western Europe went up by 88 percent over the previous year, corroborating the trend already emerging in the 2013 survey. Jews are leaving Europe in record numbers, and more are thinking about it. I am now one of them. In my first contribution to Mosaic I wrote that I was absolutely determined to stay and fight for a strong Jewish life in the Diaspora. “We want to live,” I said. Today I don’t know what’s next for me, or for Europe. But I know that for my children and for me, this is not living.