As Jews Feel Threatened in Western Europe, the East Offers More Safety

Next year, the writer Adam LeBor will publish “The Last Days of Budapest,” a book about the city during the Holocaust. LeBor, who divides his time between Budapest and London, notes that “within living memory,” Eastern European cities like Budapest and Prague were “a graveyard for Jews.” Today, he says, they are “two of the safest places in Europe for Jewish people.”

Antisemitic prejudice still endures in Eastern Europe, but the region has not seen the kind of violence against Jews visible today in Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin and other Western European cities. The main reason for the difference: Britain, France, the Netherlands and Germany are all home to large Muslim communities that identify with the Palestinian cause, while Hungary and the Czech Republic have largely closed their borders to Muslim immigrants.

Last month, the European Commission reported that “the conflicts in the Middle East have led to levels of antisemitism unprecedented since the founding of the European Union.” In Berlin, Paris and Brussels, Jewish sites are guarded around the clock by armed police. Government officials and community leaders often warn Jews to hide their identity in public to avoid being assaulted on the street.

In Amsterdam last week, visiting Israeli soccer fans were chased and beaten by crowds. Days later, Belgian police arrested six people on suspicion of conspiring to attack Jews in Antwerp, home to a large Orthodox Jewish community. In Berlin, the teenage team of the Jewish soccer club Maccabi Berlin was assaulted during a match by unknown perpetrators wielding knives and clubs; there were no reported injuries.

On Thursday, French authorities deployed over 5,500 police and security guards in Paris for a soccer match between Israel and France, allowing only around 20,000 spectators. Despite the unprecedented security measures, a small scuffle broke out during the game and some visitors smuggled in smoke bombs, which they triggered while the Israeli national anthem was played.

Statistics show that anti-Jewish violence has been on the rise in Western Europe for a decade, but it has surged since Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s retaliatory invasion of Gaza. In France, the number of antisemitic incidents increased from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 in 2023, while physical assaults, including stabbings, nearly doubled from 43 to 85. Antisemitic incidents in the U.K. rose from 1,662 to 4,103, with physical attacks increasing from 136 to 266. Only a fraction of such incidents are reported to the police or community agencies, according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, a British nonprofit.

{snip}

Most European Jews aren’t immediately recognizable in public. The ones who are most likely to be targets of violence are Orthodox believers dressed in traditional Jewish garb or people speaking Hebrew. The Israeli government now deems the U.K., France and Germany to be “very high risk” for Israelis traveling abroad. In London in January, a group of two men and two women from Israel who spoke Hebrew to each other were assaulted by three men of Arab or North African origin who threw glass bottles at them before punching one of the women in the neck.

Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews, Germany’s largest Jewish organization, said Western Europe was suffering an eruption of anti-Israeli and purely antisemitic violence. While in the past antisemitic violence came from the far right, he said, it now comes much more from left-wing extremists and Islamists: “Israel’s conflicts with Hamas, Hizbollah or Iran seem to rile up the migrant communities.”

According to an official EU survey conducted in 2023 before the Hamas attacks, 50% of the victims of antisemitic physical attacks in the EU reported that the perpetrators had Islamist extremist views, up from 30% in 2018. Another 22% had left-wing extremist views, while 17% had right-wing extremist views.

{snip}

By contrast, Poland’s Jewish community has doubled in the last five years. In the Czech Republic, which the EU study deems one of the least antisemitic countries in Europe, only 18% of Jews have considered emigrating.

{snip}

Binyomin Jacobs, the chief rabbi of the Netherlands, says he stopped using public transport 15 years ago after police warned him about security threats from Muslim youths. His house is equipped with special security, including CCTV installed by the police.

The security situation in Western Europe is dramatically worse than in the east, Jacobs said. On a recent trip to Budapest, he relished the opportunity to move around without police protection, which he needs in the Netherlands. “Back home, I’ve had my windows smashed and Muslim kids shout ‘Jehud,’ Arabic for Jew, at me on the street. In Budapest, there is nothing like that, no danger at all.”

In the week after the recent violence in Amsterdam, Jacobs says, he received 10 requests for the rabbinical proof of Jewishness that Jews require to move to Israel. “I normally get 10 requests in a year,” he said. “Jews have packed their suitcases and are ready to go.”

{snip}