‘Hitler Was Right!’
With Europe’s Muslim immigrants come ancient hatreds and a revival of anti-Semitism.
The Bergische Synagogue in the German town of Wuppertal has a history with arson. The nearly 120-year-old synagogue was burned down during Kristallnacht in 1938. Rebuilt after World War II, it was targeted again about a week ago by arsonists who threw Molotov cocktails at the house of worship (although, thankfully, they failed to set it aflame).
Welcome to the New Europe, where the street thugs have learned a lot from the Old Europe. Their protests of the Gaza War during the past few weeks haven’t been anti-Israel so much as anti-Jew. Some of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world — Paris, Berlin, London — have witnessed demonstrations airing hatreds associated with Europe’s darkest crimes.
You don’t have to be a German speaker to sense the ugliness in the chant, “Jude, Jude feiges Schwein! Komm heraus und kämpf allein!” That was the verbal calling card of protesters in Berlin a few weeks ago. Translation: “Jew, Jew, cowardly swine, come out and fight on your own!”
The former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany warned that Jews shouldn’t do anything to make themselves recognizable in public. The current president says, “We would never in our lives have thought it possible anymore that anti-Semitic views of the nastiest and most primitive kind can be chanted on German streets.”
In France, protesters have stormed synagogues yelling “Hitler was right!” and “Death to the Jews!” — apparently forgetting in the heat of the moment that what they are supposed to be upset by is disproportionate Israeli attacks in Gaza, not that Adolf Hitler didn’t finish the job.
On Twitter, the hashtag #HitlerWasRight was trending globally in mid-July. Usually, Israel-bashers accuse the Jewish state of being the new Nazi Germany. But don’t sweat the details. All they know is that they hate the Jews, and they will use whatever rhetorical provocation at hand to communicate their venom.