Dr. Deborah Lipstadt published an op-ed in the NYTimes yesterday putting together the attacks on Jews over the past year or so in Europe and the rising tide of French Jews immigrating to Israel. “It is not the Holocaust again” she states with good argument but it is still appropriate to worry. The attacks were perpetrated by young men born or raised in Europe, not in Muslim countries. The number of neo-Nazis in Germany is small but the shift from disgust in Israeli government policies to hatred of Jews is large and substantial among the rest of the populaiton.
Ever since Jewish history was subjected to modern critical theory, one pattern has been the departure of Jews from a country signaling a radical downward shift in the abandoned country. No one can predict whether such a pattern holds in the 21st century as it did in previous centuries for many reasons. Even so, when Jews begin in leave in numbers, thought the numbers are still relatively small, it is time to worry.
Glenn Jacob 