RUTHFULLY YOURS

At the end of May, a seemingly small news story made it to the headlines of the British Jewish Chronicle ‎and the American Algemeiner. The gist of it was that France was scaling back the security of its Jewish ‎communities, even though anti-Semitic incidents average three per day according to the French anti-‎Semitism watchdog the Bureau National de Vigilance Contre l’Antisémitisme (BNVCA).‎

According to the Jewish Chronicle, “Congregants at some synagogues, particularly those outside urban ‎centers, have recently noted that at some nonreligious evening events, soldiers are present at the ‎beginning as participants arrive, but leave soon afterwards, leaving the buildings and the people inside ‎unprotected. … Some small shuls [synagogues] have been told that they will not be guarded for an event ‎that has fewer than 10 participants — this particularly has an impact on Orthodox communities, where a ‎few congregants come regularly to pray every morning.” Similarly, according to the paper, the rabbi of a ‎small Orthodox community on the outskirts of Paris, who asked not to be named, says his synagogue is ‎now under fairly minimal protection. “Realistically, we knew that level of protection wouldn’t last. It ‎couldn’t. At some point we won’t have any state protection anymore, so I’m planning to put in bulletproof ‎windows and stronger locks on the front door. In fact I think that it’s more reassuring than otherwise — it ‎means that the immediate threat level has gone down.”‎

This is the quintessential, classical Jewish Diaspora response to persecution. The hope against hope, the ‎taking refuge in the comforting thought, however ephemeral and temporary, that the threat has passed, ‎and that the worst is over. The belief that perhaps now things will revert to normal.‎

The French rabbi and the Jews of Europe are hoping against hope. Nothing points to a reversal to ‎‎”normal” — if indeed there ever was a “normal” for the Jews of Europe. A temporary lull in European anti-‎Semitism across most of the divided continent during the Cold War led to a false belief among the ‎postwar generations that anti-Semitism was a thing of the black-and-white past. ‎

One cannot begin to understand the shock that European Jewry experienced at the discovery of the ‎depths of European and Euro-Islamist anti-Semitism in recent years unless one fully appreciates how ‎contented and thoroughly ensconced in the Panglossian belief that “we are living in the best of all ‎possible worlds” European Jewry really was. ‎

The reactions have been many, but probably the award-winning British Jewish writer Howard Jacobson ‎aptly summed up the most prevalent one. In January, he told the British newspaper The Guardian that he ‎had experienced very little anti-Semitism in his life but that a woman had approached him recently and ‎said: “You Jew … go and have a shower, you know what kind of shower I mean.” The woman was ‎referring to gas chambers and this is how Jacobson reacted: “Your heart races and you don’t know ‎whether you feel strong or weak. … The main thing is you don’t know what to do.”‎

The sentiment of not knowing what to do was echoed by BNVCA director Danielle Ferra, who told the ‎Algemeiner that “if the perpetrators get arrested they are released again and just continue with the ‎attacks. … If they go to prison, they become Islamist extremists. We don’t know what to do.”‎

Indeed, it is hard for European Jews to know what to do. The scaling back of security for Jews in France, ‎however gradual, shows that there are indeed no European solutions to the security of European Jews. ‎Maintaining constant surveillance and protection of Jewish sites and institutions in Europe should be of ‎the highest priority for European governments, proof that there is some reality to the pompous and ‎ultimately empty reassurances of government officials that their country “would not be the same without ‎its Jews.” ‎

France is not alone in this respect. Less than three months after the terrorist murder of a Jewish guard in ‎front of the synagogue in Copenhagen, certain members of the Danish police authorities began a public ‎campaign, complaining to the mainstream media that the increase in security for Jewish sites and ‎institutions was taking away resources from other policing tasks. ‎

Yet, these questions are never only questions of lack of resources, but constitute important and telling ‎political decisions about the allocation of resources. Clearly, the physical safety of Jewish citizens, ‎arguably one of the most threatened ethnic minorities in Europe, is not at the very top of the security ‎agenda and Jews should take careful note of this fact.‎

Yet, there it is, the basic Jewish Diaspora desire to believe that the world is still the same and that Jews do ‎not really need heavy state security but can help themselves with a couple of bulletproof windows and ‎strong locks. The escapist belief that the surge in violent anti-Semitism is a passing phase or just a row of ‎‎”isolated incidents” — as the mainstream European media indeed still prefers to describe anti-Semitism in ‎Europe, when it describes it at all, that is — and that somehow, everything will revert to normal. Human ‎beings have tremendous capacities for adjustment and none more than the Jews, who have been ‎accommodating their surroundings and the powers that be for millennia. ‎

In the era of the modern State of Israel, Jews should not be adjusting, nor accommodating, least of all on ‎the European continent, where centuries of adjustment only led to persecution, indignity, powerlessness ‎and ultimately the Shoah. ‎

Jews should not be hiding behind fences, bulletproof glass and double-locked doors, as was the case in a ‎synagogue during the riots run wild in Paris last summer, when a mob howled for the blood of the ‎terrified Jews inside.‎

Jews should not be powerless to defend themselves, relying on the fickleness of changing European ‎governments, many of whom actively support one-sided anti-Israeli policies, which in turn lead to even ‎more anti-Semitism. To name just one example, at the annual assembly of the U.N.’s World Health ‎Organization in May, European Union members voted for the resolution to single out and condemn Israel ‎to be the primary, and indeed only, violator of health rights in the world. ‎

Viewed from Israel, European Jews remain in a time warp, a remnant of the bad old days of European ‎anti-Semitism, only now fuelled by Euro-Islamism, where they depend on the mercy of others to protect ‎them instead of being able to defend themselves. ‎

No one in Israel denies that leaving your home, your job and possibly your family for a new life in Israel is ‎difficult. ‎

No one disagrees that security problems abound with all of the very real military and terrorist threats ‎surrounding Israel.‎

No one will argue that Israel is perfect or that things cannot be improved. In fact, Israelis are always ‎working on improving what they think is wrong with this country, which makes it such a wonderful and ‎vital place to live. ‎

The most important thing, however, is that in Israel Jews are the masters of their own destinies. They do ‎not depend on the French, Danish or British governments to grant them police and military protection, ‎because here Jews fight for themselves. No matter the shortcomings of this region, and there are many, ‎nothing in the world beats that. ‎

The situation for the Jews in Europe is unfortunately becoming increasingly reminiscent of the proverbial ‎frog in the frying pan. Not paying attention to the fact that the heat is on, and that it is gradually being ‎turned up, it does not perceive that its life is in danger. Consequently, it does not manage to jump from ‎the pan to safety, but is instead cooked to death.‎

The late Professor Robert Wistrich, the pre-eminent historian of anti-Semitism, who tragically passed ‎away recently, told The Times of Israel in July 2013 that “any clear-sighted and sensible Jew, who has a ‎sense of history, would understand that this is the time to get out. … In two to three decades, the Jews’ ‎history in postwar Europe will have come to an end. … It’s finished. It’s a slow death.”‎

There is still time to jump, but the time is running out.‎

Judith Bergman is a writer and political analyst living in Israel.