Counter-Terrorism: Anti-Semitism Backfires

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May 25, 2015: One form of Islamic terrorism that has increased greatly of late and does not include getting a lot Moslems killed is attacks on Jews outside the Middle East. Actually overall (violent and non-violent) acts of anti-Semitism peaked in 2009, but they were up again in 2014. There were 38 percent more violent acts of anti-Semitism in 2014 compared to 2013. Once more France had the largest number of these attacks, about 30 percent of the 554 incidents. There were nearly ten times as many non-violent incidents and overall anti-Semitic activity has been increasing. While this pleased Islamic radicals it did not help the Palestinians as much as expected and, according to some measures, hurt the Palestinian cause.

As a result of the growing anti-Semitism Israel saw the number of Jews migrating to Israel up 32 percent over 2013 and expect that to keep increasing in 2015 by at least 50 percent over 2014. This despite a 15 year Palestinian terror campaign meant to make Israel unlivable for Jews. Another odd aspect of this surge in migrants is that in 2014, for the first time, the leading country sending such migrants was France. The number of French migrants actually doubled in 2014 compared to 2013. That was no accident.

The Palestinian governments (both Hamas and Farah) encourage Moslems in the West to attack Jews near them. Because a lot of native Europeans are still anti-Semitic (despite the horrors of World War II) the Moslems in Europe (most of them recent migrants) have been enthusiastic and frequent in their physical attacks on local Jews. This violence and intimidation largely goes unpunished even though many of the victims are from families that have been there for centuries. European governments loudly condemn this anti-Semitic violence but don’t actually do much that can effectively stop it. This may be changing because until Islamic terror groups and pro-Palestinian organizations began encouraging violence against Jews in the West violent anti-Semitism had been declining. Now it is being noted that most of the violent acts of anti-Semitism occurring in the last few years have been carried out Moslems living in the West. The perpetrators are often the same people who are eager to kill non-Moslems in general.

The Palestinians believe that efforts to encourage anti-Semitism worldwide will eventually hurt the Israeli economy (via a European economic boycott), but that has backfired so far. Israel has continued to experience the highest economic growth rate in the region. Meanwhile, the Palestinian economy, crippled by being cut off from Israel (to keep the Palestinian terrorists out) has collapsed. Despite all these failures the Palestinians still believe that mindless hate is the key to victory and they are finding many Europeans willing to collaborate, at least enough to encourage them to continue. Meanwhile the Jews fleeing Europe tend to be talented and well educated and their migration enriches Israel while impoverishing Europe.