That’s how many European Jews have fled to Israel in 2015, almost 80 per cent of them from France.
It’s one thing when Jews emigrate to Israel because they want to. It’s quite another when they run for their lives because they feel they have to.
The Holocaust made the previously unthinkable possible. The current, overwhelmingly Muslim, anti-Semitic attacks make it likely.
Having lost half their population to the previous outburst of racial hatred, the Jews are understandably alert to the slightest signs of a brewing repeat performance. They aren’t being oversensitive, for assaults on Jews have become a daily event in Europe.
Synagogues vandalised, Jewish cemeteries desecrated, Jews abused – it’s not quite Kristallnacht yet, but the signs are worrying for those who can read them.
The other day, after a Muslim fanatic attacked a Jewish teacher with a machete, the Marseille Jewish authority told the Jews not to provoke assaults by wearing skullcaps in public.
Now France has the highest Muslim population in Europe, and the link between such demographics and anti-Semitic incidents is causative.
Except that saying so out loud isn’t the done thing, just as covering up Muslim rapes all over Europe is. A modern tongue, twisted out of shape by the PC dicta, can’t utter the simple words: more Muslims, more crime – including anti-Semitic attacks.
That most Frenchmen aren’t anti-Semitic is as true as it’s irrelevant. Most Germans weren’t anti-Semitic either, but that arithmetic wasn’t much consolation to the six million victims.
It wasn’t just they who died during the war; the total count was closer to 50 million. The difference between the two numerals ought to suffice to make an observation that holds true irrespective of time or place:
A society that fails to nip anti-Semitic escapades in the bud doesn’t just acquiesce in the suffering of Jews. It signs its own death warrant.
It’s true that most outrages are perpetrated not by the indigenous population but by Muslims – most of whom aren’t part of the indigenous population even if native-born.
But that doesn’t exculpate anyone else personally or society collectively. Millions of Muslims should never have been allowed to settle in the West, for they’re viscerally and doctrinally hostile to everything the West stands for.
True, the Holocaust was perpetrated without much Muslim participation. But anti-Semitic violence on that scale was an aberration both to Western morality and religion. Since, unlike the Koran, the founding documents of our civilisation don’t prescribe violence towards Jews, the West was able to lick its moral wounds after the war.
The wounds have now reopened because the West has proved too weak to protect itself against an influx of aliens first, and their propensity for criminal behaviour second. We’ve failed to inform the newcomers that our civilisation isn’t just different but also better than theirs. More important, it’s indeed ours, we like it and intend to keep it by any means at our disposal.
These could include deportation of undesirable elements, stiff sentences for any crimes, especially Islam-inspired ones, ending any Muslim immigration, summary closure of any mosque in which a single anti-Western or anti-Jewish word is uttered.
Alas, a civilisation needs to have self-confidence to act with such resolve, and in the West today that commodity is lacking. That’s why anti-Semitic violence shames us all, not just the Muslims in our midst.
That’s why also we must brace ourselves to face the consequences of our frailty. For it’s not just the Jews who find themselves at the receiving end of Muslim violence.
If Marseille Jews are told not to wear skullcaps today, tomorrow all women will be told to cover themselves head to toe in shapeless black garments (ideally masking the face too) not to provoke rape.
And then people will start taking the law in their own hands. Street battles, like those between the fascists and the communists in pre-war London or Berlin, are far from impossible today.
This could well create troubled waters in which assorted extremists will then fish, and we’re already witnessing the strengthening of the extremists’ electoral muscle all over Europe.
An economic crisis, something certain to happen in the next few years, can provide an ideal backdrop for violent anarchy to descend on Europe.
Though history teaches everything but complacency, complacency seems to be the only lesson we’ve learned. That’s a mistake, for a society unprepared to defend its civilisation doesn’t deserve to keep it.