re: why Europe?
Reader comment on item: Jewish Life in an Increasingly Muslim Europe
in response to reader comment: Why Europe

Submitted by concerned (Italy), Jul 22, 2006 at 09:19

I certainly can't speak for everyone, only for myself, but I think the answer to the question, "Why Europe?," can have many answers. Firstly, for the Muslims, Asians, etc., Europe represents the "good life" with a chance to get a job, better one's lot in life, and so forth. This is probably true about people whose countries were at one time European colonies; hence Algerians, Tunisians in France, Ethiopians, Eritreans in Italy, Indians, Pakistanis in Britain, etc.

Secondly, for the Jews, they were hounded out of one European country to find refuge in another. This was true after both world wars which saw many Jews take up residence in Britain, France, and Belgium after having been killed in countries like Germany, Austria, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, etc. That unhappy pattern of persecution and refuge has been repeated many times in Jewish history and especially European Jewish history.

At the end of World War II, many Jews felt, however, that they wouldn't be safe in ANY country except their own, hence the need to create and maintain a Jewish homeland in what was then Palestine, now Israel. In light of the above articles on the current status of Jews in Europe, there is more than sufficient justification for KEEPING Israel as the rightful homeland of Jewish people seeing that Europe has learned absolutely nothing from its history, neither recent nor more distant history.

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