Antisemitic Attack In Paris, WZO Head Yaakov Hagoel Wants to Find ‘Source of Antisemitism Worldwide’

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Antisemitic graffiti – 20 Swastikas – were spray-painted on October 9 in Paris, in the very poshest part of the city, right near the Louvre, along the Rue de Rivoli and the Place de la Concorde. The story is here.

Swastikas were spray-painted on walls and columns near the Louvre Museum in Paris’s first district on Saturday night.

A 31-year-old man was arrested at the scene and is suspected of spray-painting the 20 red swastikas on walls and columns in Place de la Concorde and Rue de Rivoli, according to French police.

Antisemitism continues to rage and raises its head without fear. This incitement is dangerous and could lead to bloodshed,” said Vice Chairman of the World Zionist Organization and the Head of the Department for Israel & Countering Antisemitism Yaakov Hagoel.

“I congratulate the authorities in Paris for arresting the despicable criminal. But unfortunately, it does not stop here. We must take a hard line and uproot the source of antisemitic hatred that is raging all over the world,” Hagoel went on to say….

The police have not released the name of the antisemitic dauber, but I’m sure they would have done so had he been a white Frenchman; they would be reluctant to identify him, however, if he’s a Muslim, which leads me to conclude that he must be. Paris, and France – and for that matter all of Europe – have seen a sharp increase in attacks on Jews and Jewish property by Muslim immigrants in the last few years. Most dramatic has been what has happened in Malmö, Sweden, once a center for Swedish Jewry. But the city is now one-third Muslim, and Jews there have endured so much harassment and physical attacks by Muslims that they have fled the city en masse, so that only 200 Jews are left in what was once the center of Jewish life in Sweden. Jews in major European cities are now fearful of wearing identifying Jewish garb – kippahs, or Star-of-David pendants – in public, and many no longer do so. Some who have worn kippahs have been set upon in the street by Muslims in German, British, and Belgian cities.

France has seen the worst examples of antisemitic violence by Muslims. There were the murders of four Jews in a kosher market in 2015. There was Ilan Halimi, the young Jewish man who was kidnapped by a Muslim gang and tortured over a period of three weeks, until he finally died of his injuries. There was the murder outside a Jewish school in Toulouse of Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, and three children, including his two tiny sons Gabriel and Arieh, aged four and five, by Mohammed Merah.

There was Sarah Halimi, the 65-year-old Jewish woman attacked by a Muslim neighbor whom she had known since his childhood. He beat her almost to death, then threw her out of a third-floor window to finish the job. There was Mireille Knoll, the 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, who was stabbed and then set on fire by her Muslim attacker, Yacine Minoub. And there have been others, Jews harassed, beaten, forced to live in fear, by the Muslim migrants whom unthinking European governments have allowed into their countries in the dreamy belief that, as Pope Francis says, “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Quran are opposed to every form of violence.” Meanwhile, during Al Quds day, and on many other occasions, Muslims and their willing local leftist collaborators march through the streets of European cities, openly calling for the killing of Israelis, denouncing “Zionist conspiracies,” and chanting “free Palestine from the river to the sea.” Flags of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are on display, and imams regularly preach antisemitic verses from the Quran to the crowd in Farsi and Arabic. And having allowed millions of Muslim migrants into their midst, those same European governments do not dare admit either to their own people, or to themselves, the historic folly of what they have done.

Antisemitism continues to rage and raises its head without fear. This incitement is dangerous and could lead to bloodshed,” said Vice Chairman of the World Zionist Organization and the Head of the Department for Israel & Countering Antisemitism Yaakov Hagoel.

Yaakov Hagoel’s response leaves much to be desired. The “incitement” to which he refers and claims “could lead to bloodshed” has already led to the shedding of blood by Jews, caused by Muslims, in a half-dozen European countries and the U.S., with France leading the list. He ought to have said “the incitement to commit antisemitic acts has in the past, and does so now, and will in the future, lead to the shedding of Jewish blood.”

Then there is this remark by Hagoel:

“I congratulate the authorities in Paris for arresting the despicable criminal. But unfortunately, it does not stop here. We must take a hard line and uproot the source of antisemitic hatred that is raging all over the world,” Hagoel went on to say.

Hagoel refers to, but carefully does not identify, that “source of antisemitic hatred that is raging all over the world.” But if we continue to be afraid to name it, how do we fight it, much less “uproot” it? The “hate-whose-name-we-dare-not-speak” is a prescription for policy paralysis. Why shouldn’t Hagoel say something like this: “Today’s main sources of antisemitic hatred are not to be found among neo-Nazis and the far-right, but among Muslims, some of whom refer to the Qur’an and Hadith as the sources of their hatred of Jews.” He should not avoid mentioning, but dare to adduce, the textual evidence of Islamic antisemitism: that is, the many Qur’anic passages that denounce Jews for a multitude of sins. But to soften the blow, Hagoel could add: “We allow ourselves to believe that with the cooperation of the many Muslims who do not share these views, we will be able, perhaps not to eradicate, but at least to reduce to manageable levels, the antisemitism that is now plaguing the world.”

Does Yaakov Hagoel dare to do this? Or will he, entrusted at the highest level of Jewish communal life with the responsibility for combating antisemitism – his official title is Vice Chairman of the World Zionist Organization and the Head of the Department for Israel & Countering Antisemitism – continue to shy away from identifying the true source of almost all the antisemitic acts in the world today? And how long will such fearfulness prevail, not only with Yaakov Hagoel but with other Jewish leaders, too, who prevent home truths from being told about Islam as “the source of antisemitic hatred that is raging all over the world”? How can they fight Muslim antisemitism if they refuse even to name it?

First published in Jihad Watch.