Demography is Key

I broadly agree with Michel Gurfinkiel’s thoughts concerning the eventual disappearance of European Jewry. The process will probably take longer than we assume today—such events have multiple causes, and there are almost always retarding factors as well. In my judgment, however, anti-Semitism is only one factor contributing to the demise of European Jewry, and not the most decisive one.

This is hardly to deny the truth of everything Gurfinkiel records about the incidence of verbal and physical anti-Semitism, up to and including murder. Indeed, every passing week supplies fresh evidence. Anti-Semitism has appeared even in the most tolerant European lands, among them the countries of Scandinavia and Benelux where Jews have been advised not to wear certain types of clothing or display other obvious signs of their identity, and Israeli tourists are cautioned against speaking Hebrew.

It is also true that whereas, in the past, most anti-Semitism, especially in its virulent forms, issued from the extreme Right and fascist groups, today it is spearheaded by new Muslim immigrants. A number of writers, including myself in The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism (2006), have pointed to the increasing pressure on European Jews from this quarter, and it has been clear for some time that Jewish communities are well advised to adopt a low profile. Exacerbating the situation is the policy of silence and accommodation that prevails in many “enlightened” European circles: when a leading left-wing French intellectual, writing in Le Monde, ventured to discuss the political implications of the fact that there are ten times as many Arabs as Jews in France, he was chastised for saying out loud what everyone knew and what most had quietly accepted.