Pro-Palestinian demonstrations in cities across Europe have descended into unrestrained orgies of anti-Semitism after protesters opposed to Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip openly called for the destruction of Israel and death to Jews.
The protesters, numbering in the tens-to-the-hundreds of thousands, include a hodgepodge of anarchists, hard-left anti-Israel activists and immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa. Many demonstrators — carrying flags of Muslim countries, including Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia, Turkey and Syria, as well as the green flag of the Islamist terrorist group Hamas and the black flag of global Jihad — have shouted Islamist chants such as 'Allahu Akhbar' ('Allah is the Greatest'), and have openly called for Jews to be murdered or raped.
Pro-Palestinian protesters, who also have been silent about the plight of Muslims in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria or Yemen, among other places, clearly are exercising selective outrage with their single-minded concern for Muslim human rights in Gaza.
The spiraling anti-Semitism, and the apparent inability or unwillingness of European governments to stop it, has sounded alarm bells among Jewish communities in Europe, where anti-Jewish hatred is reaching levels not seen since the Second World War.
The violence has also shed renewed light on the consequences of mass migration to Europe from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and especially on the failure of governments to require newcomers to integrate into European society.
Some European lawmakers and security officials are now calling for migrants who commit anti-Semitic hate crimes to be deported back to their countries of origin. Given the iron grip of political correctness in Europe, this is unlikely to happen. In any event, it may be too little, too late for Europe's Jewish communities. The current crisis of anti-Semitism is a testament to the failure of European multiculturalism, which is making Jewish life in Europe increasingly unviable.
The current wave of protests appears to have begun in earnest on May 13, when a highly aggressive group of at least 200 people brandishing Palestinian and Turkish flags and shouting anti-Semitic slurs gathered in front of a synagogue in Gelsenkirchen. Police were deployed to prevent the mob from entering the building.
North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul vowed to prosecute the perpetrators:
"I find it unbearable when anti-Semitic slogans are chanted on German soil. Our police are pursuing the perpetrators with all resoluteness so that they can be punished."
Synagogues and Jewish memorials have also been attacked in Bonn, Düsseldorf, Mannheim, Münster and Solingen.
In Berlin, on May 15, at least 3,500 protesters gathered in different parts of the city to denounce Israel and Jews. Some brandished anti-Semitic slogans — "Israel Child Killers" and "Stop Doing What Hitler Did to You" — and chanted "Bomb Tel Aviv!"
Some held banners describing Israel as a "genocidal settler state" and Zionism as racism. Others openly rejected Israel's right to exist. A large red banner stated: "Palestine is sick and tired of paying the price for Europe's Holocaust of the Jews." Other banners called for the total elimination of Israel, which would be replaced by a "free Palestine" from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Protesters attacked an Israeli film crew reporting on the protests.
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