Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column
If American Jews are going to have it tough in the future, things look worse for Europeans.
The recent attempted murder of a Jewish woman in Sweden, apparently committed by a Muslim man “known to the police” and possibly motivated by antisemitism, brings up yet again the question of whether Jews are safe in Europe.
They aren’t – but neither are non-Jewish native Europeans.
For Jews, it isn’t a problem. They have a country, whether they like it or not. It is here waiting for them. Europeans, on the other hand, are stuck where they are, especially if they want to preserve their historic cultures. There are too many of them to go to America or Australia, even if they wanted to.
The massive migration of people from non-European cultures, especially Muslims, into Europe, threatens to overwhelm the native cultures. Some may think that these natives deserve what they are getting, considering their history of colonialism and genocide, but nevertheless there is great value in what has been accomplished by the West over the centuries since the Middle Ages, and it would be a pity to see it become like the countries of the Middle East and Africa, with their kleptocratic identity politics and general barbarism.
This position is anathema to most educated Westerners, who tend to believe that treating everyone equally is a fundamental moral value. They believe that the migrant from Somalia should have exactly the same rights and receive the same treatment as the native Swede or Briton, sometimes even receiving extra benefits to compensate for a lower socioeconomic starting point.
Looking at the situation from the standpoint of an individual, it is hard to disagree. Nothing justifies discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or national origin (I am deliberately leaving out ‘race’ because I see this concept as cognitively meaningless and emotionally loaded). But it’s different to consider the impact of a mass of individuals from a different, and possibly inferior (yes, I said that) culture.
As an example, there are cultures where rape is rare, and there are cultures in which it is commonplace. If you introduce a large number of individuals from the latter kind of culture into the former, you will have a problem. This is not an abstract example. There has been a marked increase in the number of rapes in Sweden correlated with the growth of the migrant population (although precise numbers are hard to come by because so many are not reported and the conviction rate is so low).
Crime, especially sexual crime, gets people’s attention, but there are many other aspects of non-European migrant groups that are as problematic or more, such as a political culture of identity politics and corruption. Add to this the prevalence of radical Islamism, which advocates the replacement of democratic regimes with shari’a-based theocracies. Islamist organizations and individuals frequently commit terrorist acts, which makes the impact of a culture clash greater.
It is a fundamental principle of Islamic shari’a that Muslims have more legal rights than non-Muslims. Some Muslims believe that this gives them the “right” to victimize non-Muslims, increasing friction between groups of Muslim migrants and native Europeans.
There are also highly violent and less violent cultures. Here in Israel we are very familiar with the hyper-violent Palestinian Arab culture, which often expresses itself by random stabbings of Jews or honor killings of Palestinian women.
Some people dogmatically insist that it is a moral axiom that no culture is superior to any other. I suspect that the reason they say this is that they are conflating this with the legitimate principle that no individual can be prejudged to be superior to any other individual. When one considers a large group of individuals, however, statistical considerations make it possible to draw conclusions – not about particular individuals, but about the group as a whole.
Saying this would get me banned or shouted down at many Western universities. And I haven’t even brought up the possibility – no, the certainty – that some “cultural” properties are actually genetic.
One of my favorite examples is the fact that statistically speaking, Kenyans are good long-distance runners. Whether or not there are social factors involved, it’s certainly true that to a great extent they are born that way. We know that a great deal of human nature and abilities is genetically determined. Why shouldn’t groups of people that share a gene pool have similar behavioral characteristics?
Immigration into Europe is slowing since it peaked at about 1 million in 2015. But due to the low birth rates of native Europeans (the overall rate in the EU is 1.6, far below the replacement rate of 2.1), it may be too late to do anything to prevent the collapse of native European societies, and their transformation into something more like the culture of the migrants. And if it is going to be bad for the natives, it will be even worse for the Jews.
I would advise European Jews to make aliyah. Not only because you’re likely to be physically more secure than in Sweden or the UK or France – you could still be stabbed to death here by a terrorist or blown up by a rocket from Hamas or Hezbollah – but because here you can be spiritually secure. Unlike in Europe, you don’t have to feel the existential anxiety of living where you do not belong and are not wanted. This might be part of the reason the Jewish birthrate in Israel is about twice as high as that in Europe.
Israel is not close to a perfect society, but it’s yours, even if it doesn’t seem so welcoming once you get here. The fact that there is a state belonging to the Jewish people, dedicated to the ingathering of the exiles, where every Jewish person has an irrevocable right to live, is nothing less than miraculous.
