Even from across the Atlantic, it’s startling to see mobs of Europeans joined by Arab immigrants rampaging through the streets of France and Germany shouting, “Death to the Jews.”
The demonstrators are ostensibly protesting Israel’s ground operation in Gaza, but the stink of anti-Semitism hangs over so much of what is happening.
In Paris, for example, eight synagogues have been targeted in the past week alone. Other targets included Jewish-owned stores and kosher butcher shops.
In Berlin and other German cities last week, mobs draped in Palestinian flags defaced synagogues to cries of “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.”
Said the head of the German Jewish community Monday: “Never in our lives did we believe it possible that anti-Semitism of the most primitive kind would [again] be heard on the streets of Germany.”
Even in Britain, where demonstrations were not as violent, a group of protesters drove through a heavily Jewish neighborhood shouting, “Heil Hitler.”
All this is in response to Israel’s decision to send ground troops into Gaza to destroy both the rockets Hamas has been firing into Israel and the tunnels it uses to sneak terrorists into the Jewish state for attacks.
Which reminds us: When the death toll is reported in terms of Israeli soldiers versus Palestinian civilians, how many of these latter deaths are Hamas terrorists fighting in civilian clothes?
The mobs claim to be outraged by the Palestinian dead in Gaza. But the French prime minister rightly observes that “hatred of the Jews” is lurking behind “a mask of anti-Zionism.” Indeed.
This hatred the European Union has fomented with policies that treat the Jewish state as the source of all conflict in the region.
Sometime in the next few weeks, the fighting in Gaza will end. But the violence on the streets of Europe suggests the ugliness there is only beginning.