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| A boy lays a tribute at the Jewish Museum in Brussels after the killings [GETTY] |
(Daily Express) A BAYING mob surrounds a synagogue chanting “Death to Jews”, a gang of men storms a Jewish school bus screaming “Heil Hitler” and a cafe owner puts up a sign saying “dogs are allowed, but Jews are not.”
A newspaper reporter, anxious to expose a rising tide of racism, is surrounded by belligerent youths, who tell him: “F*** off Jew. You’re not welcome here.”
It could have been Germany in the 1930s when a wave of anti-Semitic hatred carried Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party to power, paving the way for the Holocaust during the Second World War.
Yet these disturbing events have taken place in France, Australia and Belgium within the past fortnight, leaving Jewish communities reeling at the sudden rise in anti-Semitic attacks and abuse.
The newspaper reporter referred to above was Sunday Express Home Affairs Editor Ted Jeory and the racist abuse he experienced happened last week in the centre of London.
Most violent incidents in western Europe have been carried out by young Muslims who claim to be angered by the bombardment of Gaza, carried out in response to rockets fired at Israel by Hamas militants.
There is a growing fear, however, that the conflict in the Middle East is being used as an excuse to vent prejudice against Jews across Europe.
Demonstrations against the Gaza conflict in France, Belgium, Italy, Holland, Hungary and Sweden have quickly turned from being anti-Israel to open hatred of Jews in general.
Chants of “Gas the Jews” at protests in Germany have provided flashbacks to the Holocaust unleashed by the Nazis. The rise of anti-Semitism across Europe has been a growing concern since terror attacks in Toulouse two years ago and in Brussels this year.
Security services have struggled to keep track of the thousands of young Muslims who have left France, Britain and Belgium to fight in Syria and Iraq, and who could apply their training in further attacks if they return to Europe.
One of these, Mohammed Merah, 23, killed three soldiers before shooting dead four people, including three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse in March 2012. Another five people were injured. The dead included a rabbi and his two children. The French-Algerian had been radicalised in prison after a childhood of petty crime and went to receive terror training at a camp in Afghanistan after his release.
In May, as extreme Right-wing parties in France, Greece, Hungary and Germany made spectacular gains in the European parliament elections, a gunman calmly walked into a Jewish Museum in Brussels and shot four people dead.
Mehdi Nemmouche, 29, a French national who had spent a year fighting in Syria, is accused of killing an Israeli couple, a Belgian staff member and a French woman who was volunteering at the museum. A court has approved his extradition to Brussels to stand trial.
The murders have inflamed anti-Semitic hatred instead of dampening it, with the TV images of dead children in Gaza providing justification for latent anti-Semitic views.
At the start of last month a demonstration against Israel’s military action in Paris saw thousands of people surround a synagogue and rain missiles down on it as terrified worshippers huddled inside. Two weeks later 400 protesters attacked a synagogue and Jewish-owned businesses in Sarcelles, in the north of Paris, shouting “Death to Jews”.
Molotov cocktails were then thrown at a Jewish cultural and religious centre in Toulouse at the end of last month, followed by a petrol bomb attack on a synagogue in Wuppertal, western Germany.
PROTESTERS in Germany were heard chanting “Jews to the gas chambers” and police officers had to protect an Israeli tourist walking by a demonstration after protesters spotted his cap, and charged towards him shouting “Jew! We’ll get you”.
In Italy, a black swastika was daubed onto a Jewish memorial plaque near the Vatican, followed by 70 hate messages scrawled with red and black paint on Jewish businesses in Rome, which has the oldest community in Europe.
The phrases included “Anne Frank Was A Liar”, “Dirty Jews” and “Jews, your end is near”.
Meanwhile a cafe owner in Liege, Belgium, put up a sign which read “Dogs are welcome, but Jews are not”.
The wave of anti-Semitism has even reached Australia, where eight men ran on to a bus full of Jewish school children in Sydney, shouting “Kill the Jews” and “Heil Hitler”.
One young girl called her mother, saying: “Please help us, they want to cut our throats.”
Anti-war demonstrations in Britain have not turned violent but there has been a spike in the number of anti-Semitic incidents since the conflict in Gaza began. Last month was the second worst since the Jewish community started keeping records in 1984.
There were more than 200 attacks on Jews in Britain in July, which compares with 304 in the first five months of this year.
Most of these involved abuse on social media sites but members of the 300,000-strong Jewish community in this country have also been told “Hitler was right, he should have killed you all” by people in the streets.
Police have launched an investigation into comments made by George Galloway, the Respect Party MP for Bradford West, at a meeting in Leeds, during which he declared the Yorkshire town he represents to be “an Israel-free zone”.
A Jewish man who was stuck in slow-moving traffic in Bradford with his wife was called a “Jewish bastard” for refusing to give money to a group of people collecting for Gaza at the end of last month.
JUST last week, Sunday Express reporter Ted Jeory was surrounded by young Muslims after he attempted to take a picture of an Islamic black flag at an east London estate. They demanded to know if he was Jewish. Ted, who is not Jewish, replied: “What if I were? Would that be a problem for you?”
They said: “Yeah, f*** off Jew. You’re not welcome here.”
Mark Gardner, from the Community Security Trust, which tries to ensure the safety of the Jewish community in Britain, said: “The events in Gaza do seem to have provided an excuse for people in Europe to vent feelings of anti-Semitism, but this has not been a surprise to us.
“It is a dynamic of racism, unfortunately.
“You get what is called a trigger event and then it causes a spike in incidents.
“Jewish communities have been through this many times since the year 2000, when the second intifada [Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation] began.
“Every time you get events, like 9/11, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and wars against Hamas in 2006, 2006, 2012 and now, these trigger anti-Semitic attacks and you end up with Jewish communities being held hostage to overseas events.”
He said anti-Semitism appeared to be worse in western Europe than in Britain.
“The community here is very concerned about security issues and about anti-Semitism but I do not think it is on the same levels as the concerns in France and Belgium,” he added.
“In western Europe the essence of the problem is anti-Semitism from Muslim communities, whereas in Britain it is a little bit more diluted.
“I think it is because British Muslims are better integrated as a society than their European counterparts.
“Jewish communities need to be supported by the Government, police and decent people across all of society, Muslims and non-Muslims.”
“We do get this in Britain, but it is less the case in Europe.”
