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Anti-Semitism Spiking: 'They Start with Jews, but They Never Finish with Jews'
08-05-2019
CBN News Dale Hurd
BRUSSELS, Belgium – Anti-Semitism is on the rise around the globe, especially in Europe. The world's leading Jewish organizations gathered in New York last week to discuss what can be done about it as the increasingly dangerous situation in Europe comes to America too.
Adolf Hitler would have loved it: a float in this year's carnival parade in the Belgian city of Aalst. It featured a Nazi-style depiction of greedy Jews, sitting on a pile of money, one with a rat on his shoulder. And when confronted by Jewish groups, the town mayor defended it.
This is the same carnival which in 2013 featured a Nazi railroad car carrying Jews to a death camp.
Sometimes the evidence of anti-Semitism in Europe is obvious, and sometimes its subtle – like when Jews quietly leave a neighborhood because it isn't safe anymore.
CBN News traveled through Brussels with Jewish leader Joel Rubinfeld to visit his boyhood synagogue, which had to be sold because the area became too dangerous for Jews.
"I felt insecure coming here with my family. So it's a better thing that we left this place and that we go to a safer space," he said.
Jews have been in Brussels since the first century. They're still here. But many now are leaving because of anti-Semitism and threats of violence.
Rubinfeld said, "It's the not the aliyah, the big aliyah, but the internal aliyah – people who are leaving their city, remaining in the same country, leaving their city to go to a safer city; or people leaving their neighborhood because they feel threatened as a Jew there in this neighborhood and going to another neighborhood where they feel more secure."
The Jewish Museum in Brussels, where an Islamic terrorist killed four people in 2014, shows the 2,000-year history of the Jews in Belgium. But it's the more recent history that Europeans seem to be forgetting.
"So it's people who say yes but it's not anti-Semitic it's humor. But you know this kind of humor is killing Jews. Meaning Jews have the power, Jews have the money, Jews have the control – all these are very basic anti-Semitic clichés," Rubinfeld explained.
In Germany last year, violent attacks against Jews almost doubled. A prominent rabbi was spat upon in public last week.
In Germany last year, violent attacks against Jews almost doubled. A prominent rabbi was spat upon in public last week.
In Britain, anti-Semitic incidents have risen for a third year in a row.
Anti-Semitism even began to show itself in France's yellow vest movement. In Paris, American writer Nidra Poller says it showed that revolts against the wealthy and powerful inevitably turn against Jews.
"Anti-Semitism is something like, oh the fumes and the fire that come up out of the center of society when the surface is crackling apart. And it's always there. And when it comes up it can become unmanageable and they are very destructive," Poller said.
A new Hudson Institute poll shows most Americans now believe anti-Semitism is growing in the United States. Some say anti-Semitism has infected the Democratic Party. And Rubinfeld has this warning for Christians: you're next.
"More problems will come. No, it's just the beginning. We know this. We know that about anti-Semitic…the anti-Semite. They start with Jews. But they never finish with Jews," Rubinfeld said.
