Europe: It is tragic that Jewish leaders in Europe are not raising the alarm

 Charles Bybelezer writes @ Jerusalem Post:

Brussels Jewish leaders calling
for Belgium to "welcome" refugees
and referring to the Holocaust,
but the same complain of risk to Jews...

In the prevailing climate of political correctness, policies are too often driven by emotional arguments rather than sober analysis, a reality currently playing out in the debate over the mass influx into Europe of migrants from the Middle East and North African (MENA).

While the issue strikes a deep humanitarian chord, over the past two decades Europe has failed miserably at integrating these populations. Nevertheless, the EU is now doubling down on a failed strategy, promising to take in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people over the next few years, many of whom are, in actuality, asylum- seekers – with no intention of returning to their home countries – or economic migrants. Yet nobody seems to be asking the question: Is this good for the Jews? The answer is a resounding “no.”

European Jewry is currently enduring the most intense wave of anti-Semitism to sweep the continent since World War II, and the cold, hard truth is that Muslim immigrants and their poorly-assimilated offspring are fueling it.  [...]

It is tragic, then, that Jewish leaders in Europe are not raising the alarm. To the contrary, many are advocating on behalf of those who are liable to hurt their communities.

Take the greatly respected former chief rabbi of Britain, Jonathan Sacks, who last week penned a moving albeit short-sighted article in support of the EU’s decision to absorb hundreds of thousands of additional people.

“Now is a unique opportunity to show that the ideals for which the European Union and other international bodies such as the United Nations were formed are still compelling, compassionate and humane,” Sacks contended.[...]

Another common rationalization employed by Sacks invokes the lead-up to the Holocaust. “One of the dark moments in [world] history occurred in July 1938,” he writes, “when representatives of 32 countries gathered in the French spa town of Evian to discuss the disaster that everyone knew was about to overtake the Jews of Europe wherever Hitler’s Germany held sway.... Yet country after country shut its doors.”

The flaw in this argument is glaring; namely, that there is no concerted genocide taking place in Syria, Iraq or Libya, but rather Sunni-Shi’ite proxy wars. Some minority populations are, in fact, being systematically targeted – such as the Yazidis, for example – but they are not primary among the young, single and mainly Muslim migrants currently being absorbed into Europe (according to the UN’s refugee agency [UNHCR], 70% of the nearly 450,000 immigrants that arrived by sea to Europe this year are men, compared to just 13% who are women and 18% children). 

This is why comparisons to the Holocaust are invariably blanketed by emotional fluff – “wars that cannot be won by weapons can sometimes be won by the sheer power of acts of humanitarian generosity,” according to Sacks. But taking in millions of migrants will not end the war in Syria or anywhere else; by contrast, it will simply import the root causes – Islamic fundamentalism and tribalism – to the West. (A representative example is the Greek island of Kos, where thousands of migrants have caused utter chaos for local residents, with violent riots erupting between competing ethnic groups).  [...]

Just days before Sacks published his article encouraging more immigration to the UK, four Jewish males were attacked at a train station in Manchester, England, one teen sustaining a fractured skull. This is but one example of the many violent anti-Semitic attacks already occurring with alarming frequency throughout Europe, and taking in more people from MENA countries will only add to the crisis.

The remaining question is whether Jewish leaders will take ownership now, or feign surprise and outrage the next time a European Jew is severely beaten – or worse – by someone they advocated on behalf of.

The writer s a correspondent for i24news, an international network broadcasting out of Israel.