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Francesca D'Esposito

Europe, no Country for Jews?

There was Toulouse attack, then Bruxelles, then one month ago the execution at Charlie Hebdo and to the kosher market, now Copenhagen, and the profanation of the tombs at the Jewish cemetery in Sarre-Union, in the Bas-Rhin, France.

The symbolism of the targets and the messages they bring are more than clear: European freedom, freedom of speech and Jews.

Europe is under attacked in its point of greatest proud, conquered after a world war: freedom. Those fundamentalists are fanatics, they want us to renounce to our essence. They want to subdue us culturally. They want to humiliate our values. They want to submit us to their medieval culture. And, they want to destroy Jews, because they represent a symbol of freedom in their own territories: a kind of cultural outpost.

Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday his government was encouraging a “mass immigration” of Jews from Europe. “Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews”, Mr. Netanyahu said. “Of course, Jews deserve protection in every Country, but we say to Jews, to our brothers and sisters: Israel is your home”.

Those declarations are very controversial and in some way populist, but this is something that a Prime Minister of Israel needs to do. The general perception is that when Jews come under attack, it is the prime minister’s job to remind them that Israel offers them shelter. Wasn’t Israel created for that?

Manuel Valls spoke this morning to condemn the desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Sarre-Union but also to deplore the appeal of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has urged European Jews to emigrate. “The House of the French Jews is France.” Valls also stressed the need to get used to living with the terrorist threat and urged Islam in France to assume its responsibilities.

Valls added: “When you are in an election campaign, that does not mean indulge in any statement. The place of French Jews is France. A Jew who left France is a piece of France that goes “.

Maybe we have to remind Mr. Valls that, only in 2014, France loses 7,000 pieces…without France government has done anything to protect them.

The real question concerns Europe, by the way.

European governments seem to be incapable of thinking about their own safety, because they have for many times underestimate the risks, the signals. They have conceptually refused that we are living a war. We are living a crisis situation where violence is the only language our enemies are able to speak, there is only one way to stop it: stop talking and start reacting. Less peace marches, more safety for all of us.

Europe can remain linked to the ideals represented by its supranational parliament, but now it is time to defend its citizens, and its principles, from Islamist terror, with greater force and with army actions, because it is necessary and urgent.

Protecting its citizens represent another sort of threat to European ideals itself, in a way we are living again our terrible past, but we are in the process despite ourselves.

European citizens are also under attack in a war which no one has asked. We don’t feel no more safe in our homes and we have no Country to make Aliyah to…

Mr. Netanyahu can we also come to Israel?

About the Author
Francesca D'Esposito is an Italian project manager working for National Research Council (www.cnr.it) and she is in love with Israel and its people.