How Europe Became Hostile Ground for Jews
Europe is undergoing a moral convulsion just as clarity is most needed. What once looked like narrow arguments over Middle East policy has widened into a civilizational crisis: a convergence of post-modern grievance, mass migration and political opportunism that has normalized hostility toward Israel and revived old antisemitic patterns under new branding.
The spectacle is unmistakable. Politicians and public intellectuals fling terms like “apartheid,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” not as careful legal distinctions but as bludgeons to delegitimize the Jewish state entirely. Once such claims circulate unchallenged, they cease to function as critique and instead become scaffolding for erasure.
Europe’s aim today is no longer constructive criticism, renewed diplomacy or even a viable Palestinian future. It is joining a global campaign of hostility against Jews and the very existence of the State of Israel.
This is not merely a matter of bad history. It is the weaponization of grievance. Across Western capitals, campus movements, NGOs and media ecosystems amplify a single reductive narrative in which Israel becomes the central villain in an already chaotic world.
Meanwhile, far bloodier atrocities elsewhere—mass killings in Africa, systematic ethnic persecution in Asia—elicit no comparable outrage. This selective moral fervor has consequences. When global energy is monopolized by a politically convenient fiction, real victims are ignored and genuine moral clarity is willingly sacrificed.
A generational dynamic fuels this trend. A sizable cohort of young activists has adopted an identity built on performative purity and binary thinking. “Oppressor” and “oppressed” are fixed categories, not analytical tools, and every conflict is squeezed into this rigid framework.
This simplification meshes seamlessly with a left-wing cultural project that has lost faith in the nation-state and seeks redemption in global causes. It also dovetails with Islamist activism that exploits Western guilt and political fragmentation to expand influence. Together they form a political ecosystem where demonization of Israel yields both cultural and electoral rewards.
The alliance produces real outcomes. Universities suspend partnerships with Israeli institutions. Cultural bodies debate whether Israeli orchestras should perform. Unions and municipal authorities pass gestures that isolate Jewish communities rather than protect them.
These are not isolated missteps. They are signs of an institutional drift in which bodies once committed to liberal norms now facilitate, or at least tolerate, an atmosphere where Jews are singled out and Israel is framed as an anachronism with no legitimate place among nations.
A geopolitical dimension compounds the problem. Europe’s faltering strategic posture—driven by economic stagnation, demographic anxiety and bureaucratic paralysis—has eroded its ability to respond coherently to global threats.
At the same time, transnational activism has found fertile ground in European cities. The paradox is stark: a continent that pioneered modern human rights now deploys the language of rights selectively, often to delegitimize the only democracy in the region facing an existential assault.
Cultural drift intensifies this decline. Historical literacy, once a barrier against demagoguery, has withered. Public debate unfolds in a haze of ignorance. Historical complexity is discarded. Narratives erasing Jewish continuity in the Land of Israel are recycled with astonishing speed and credulity.
This intellectual sloppiness is not benign. It produces policies and attitudes that undermine Jewish legitimacy and, eventually, Jewish safety.
The consequences are already visible. Physical attacks and intimidation against Jews in European streets are rising. Synagogues and cemeteries are vandalized. Jewish students report fear and isolation on campus. These are not abstractions. They are breaches of the social contract. The safety of a minority is always the measure of a liberal society.
What can be done? First, clarity of language matters. There is ample room for legitimate criticism of Israeli policy. But criticism that erases history, inflates numbers, fabricates motives, or flirts with rhetorical annihilation must be named for what it is. Democracies depend on argument. They cannot survive the normalization of delegitimization disguised as moral urgency.
Second, Jewish communities and their allies must reinvest in identity, institutional strength and cultural confidence. Pride is not provocation; it is protection. Education, political engagement and cultural resilience are essential for resisting simplistic narratives.
Third, European governments and civic institutions must reassert essential principles: equal protection under the law, firm prosecution of hate crimes, and the expectation that academic and cultural exchanges operate on mutual respect and factual integrity. Symbolic measures that single out Israel for special condemnation must be resisted. They degrade the consistent application of human-rights norms.
Finally, allies beyond Europe—America, civil society networks and global Jewish communities—must not dismiss Europe as a lost cause. It remains a decisive arena where the struggle for historical memory and moral clarity can still be won.
Europe’s return to antisemitism is not an ancient demon wandering back by accident. It is the product of present-day political choices and intellectual failures. If ideological fashion and geopolitical opportunism continue to shape public life, Europe will have abandoned the moral foundation that once distinguished free societies from the mobs that destroyed them.
History’s warning is unambiguous: delegitimization precedes dispossession. Europe must decide whether it will heed that warning or permit another chapter of moral decline to unfold.
The test is simple: Can Jews in Europe walk safely, educate their children without fear and participate fully in civic life? If Europe wishes to reclaim its moral authority, it must begin there.
As for us, the Jewish people, our focus must be on strengthening ourselves—our institutions, our identity and the enduring fact that we remain here. With the United States as the last bastion of moral clarity, Israel must continue to anchor the West as a democracy rooted in freedom, memory and the obligation to defend itself in a just war of survival.
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