Europe's Anti-Semitism at Crisis Point

NY State Assemblyman and overall mench Dov Hikind, just got back from a fact finding tour to Europe and what he found was pretty frightening. He is convinced that anti-Semitism has made life intolerable for Jews in England, France, Germany, and Belgium. The NY Sun reports:

At a dinner tonight organized by the New York Association for New Americans, he said he plans to call on President Bush to accord special refugee status to Western European Jews.

While Western European Jews would likely fail to qualify as persecuted refugees under State Department standards, America has made rare exceptions for certain groups in the past, including Jews and other religious minorities in the former Soviet Union who qualified as refugees under the 1989 Lautenberg Amendment. Mr. Hikind wants this treatment extended to Western European Jews.

I wonder if the harsh treatment of Jews can be connected to the Increase in Muslim Populations in those same European communities.

Mr. Hikind described recent reports on anti-Semitic incidents in European countries as "staggering." He pointed to a Tel Aviv University study on worldwide anti-Semitism published in 2006 that described a marked increase in incidents against Jews in Europe in the last year, including twice as many acts of violence against Jew in Belgium than the previous year, and reported anti-Semitic incidents "on an almost daily basis" in Germany, mostly in the form of verbal harassment.

In July, the Anti-Defamation League published a survey describing increasingly negative attitudes toward Jews in Western Europe. In England, 50% of those surveyed said they believed Jews were more loyal to Israel than to their own country, versus 38% in the previous year. An organization that records anti-Semitic acts in Britain, the Community Security Trust, said it recorded a 31% rise in incidents over the last year, to 594 in 2006 from 455 in 2005.

State Department officials could not be reached for comment.

For all of us living the comfy life in America...don't be so comfy because it can--and will happen here if we are not vigilant.

See the full story at Life Is Intolerable for Jews In Europe, Assemblyman Says