Is Europe being Islamised? And is this leading to the end of European Jewry – thus making Herr Hitler’s dream come true? 

Prophecy is always hard, and this issue is certainly open to debate. However, a case for this controversial issue was published on 3rd February by Giulio Meotti, the Italian journalist who writes on Middle Eastern and Jewish issues. He quoted several prominent figures and cited several examples of Jewish flight from Europe. I would like to say that anti-Semitism is not only due to extreme Islamists but as always, it is also expressed by right-wing extremist groups and Holocaust deniers, whose number constantly increased in recent years; nor are Muslims protected from anti-Islam opponents.

Thus, Meotti said the Dutch writer Leon de Winter told him. “When Israel celebrates its centenary in 2048, the last Jew will leave Europe. Everyone will be free to judge whether it will have been a loss or a gain.”

Some 7,000 Jews had left Holand since 1948. Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs expressed that he and his wife would go were it not for their responsibility for those still there. He added, “I’m like the captain on duty of a sinking ship.”

The late Robert Wistrich, head of the International Center for Anti-Semitism Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, had forecast that European Jewry had 10 to 20 years to live. The eminent Holocaust historian saw the plummeting of “Jews from 3,000 to 600 in just a few years” in Malmö, Sweden, as the barometer of the slow demise of Europe’s Jews after the Holocaust.”

“It’s over,” Wistrich had said. “It’s a slow death.”

Meottti quoted him: “It is not for nothing that former European Commissioner Frits Bolkestein advised the Jewish community of Holland to emigrate to avoid harassment by young Muslim fanatics.” The scholar referred to the decline in European Jewry due to “Europe’s regrettable and cowardly appeasement of Islamism.” This would lead to Muslims taking on Europe’s society, already loathed by “the most fanatical.” 

The ex-Soviet refusenik Natan Sharanksy said: “We are witnessing the beginning of the end of Jewish history in Europe.”

The article said that during the last 50 years, France’s Jewish population had decreased by 60 percent, “with a similar decline expected in the next 30 years,” according to Eldad Beck in Israel’s largest newspaper, Israel Hayom. 

In 2000, France had 500,000 Jews. Today, they are 400,000. The next generation is expected to decline by 100,000. 40% of Jews were anxious to leave. The figures of those who had left are devastating. From Grenoble, half the Jewish community has fled; in Nice, the number had dropped from 20,000 to 5,000. Of 20,000 Jews in Toulouse, 10,000 are left. Over the past ten years, 60,000 of its 350,000 Jews have left Ile-de-France. Richard Abitbol, president of the Confederation of French Jews and Friends of Israel, had said that in a few decades, there would be no Jews left in France. 

Others, such as Semen Gorelick, chair of the State of Brandenburg’s Jews, concurred by saying he did not wish to live in a country with millions of antisemitic Muslims attacking Jews and Jewish structures; it was not possible to wear a kippah in the street. 

The Muslim population in Germany is 5.5 million today. The Jewish community is over 200,000, of whom some 100,000 are members of Jewish communities. However, as mentioned, antisemitism and attacks on Jews or Jewish structures have always come from right-wing extremist groups, which is still the case today.

Jewish synagogues in the country have long been under police protection, as is also the case in Oslo and Trondheim. Twenty percent had left. The two communities in these cities are the largest in Norway. The journalist Julie Bindel said the country could be the first in Europe to be judenfrei. Joël Rubinfeld, president of the Ligue belge contre l’antisémitisme, expressed a similar thought about Belgium to Paris Match.

Denmark’s Jewish community declined by 25% within the past 15 years, chairman Finn Schwarz told the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

Jews had no future in the UK, according to Samuel Hayek, philanthropist and chairman of the Jewish National Fund. He was not against Muslims in the UK or Europe, only against the spread of hatred. As elsewhere, antisemitism is also present within the indigenous population. Britain’s Muslim population could triple in the next 20 years to 13 million by 2050. 

During the 14th century, when Jews were accused of responsibility for the plague, with 100,000 massacred, the Pope issued a Bull to say Jews had not caused the pandemic. This was ignored, even in areas where no Jews lived. Judging by the persistence of antisemitism, it is unlikely that a Judenfrei Europe would also be free of antisemites.