Aliyah from France up 25%

Michael L.

Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, writing in the Jewish Press, tells us:

Aliyah to Israel from France has soared 25 percent so far this year, from 4,000 to 5,100, according to figures supplied by French Jewish officials.

A sharp increase in the number of Jews moving to Israel from France also was recorded in 2013 following the escalation of violent anti-Semitism.

This past Januury was particularly bloody for Jews in Paris, where four Jews were murdered in an attack on a kosher deli and a Jewish cartoonist was among 12 victims in the attack on the offices of Charles Hebdo satirical magazine.

I find myself rather skeptical that the idea of an increase of 1,100 Jews making aliyah from France represents a soar, but why the heck not?

I, for one, would like to see as many Jews get out of Europe as possible, but I also understand that it is not necessarily so easy.  People have lives.  They have family and social and economic attachments, so it is not necessarily too easy to just up and move to Israel.

And, although this may be difficult for some to believe, there are plenty of Jews who are undoubtedly perfectly happy living in Europe and who barely even notice the increasing tension.

Nonetheless, I am one of those who tends to see in Europe a dying culture.

The home of the Enlightenment is being slowly absorbed by something else and anti-Jewish hatred and violence is very definitely on the rise.

In part this is due, obviously, to increasing levels of immigration of Muslim racists from North Africa and the Middle East, but you cannot blame European decline entirely upon Muslim emigres.  Europeans still represent the vast majority in their own land and, therefore, must be held accountable for developments within their own countries.

The fact of the matter is that much of Europe has simply bought into the "Palestinian narrative" of pristine victimhood and, much like the Nazis before them, sincerely believe in Jewish malevolence.

I find it rather mind-boggling that within living memory of the Holocaust so many Europeans still consider the Jewish people - embodied, now, by the State of Israel - as horrendous people who enjoy killing children.

Have they learned nothing?