this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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Well, my experience abroad really doesn't cover the time since the events in October (as I was back living in Portugal before that) and here in Portugal I have yet to observe or hear about any attacks on Jews or Jewish symbols even since then. Portugal doesn't treat "criticism of Israel" as anti-semitism - so the numbers are not artificially inflated by counting people demonstrating against the Genocide in Palestine as anti-semites - and as I pointed out in an earlier post the country is actually practicing racial discrimination in favour of Jews, though not quite to the level of the UK or Germany (which even have "Friends of Israel" groups in their Parliaments)
Unfortunately, several countries adopted the IHRA definition of anti-semitism which considers criticism of the State of Israel and its actions to be anti-semitism (leading to ridiculous instances such as that Jewish Holocaust Survivor being considered an anti-semite in the UK for the way he criticized the actions of Israel in Palestine) which muddied the waters considerably helping hid the real anti-semitism, and indirectly spreading a perception that there is a lot more anti-semitism than there is in reality, because when those artificially inflated numbers are reported in the media there is no separation between "criticism of Israel" and actual anti-semitic actions so it all sounds much worse than it is, in turn shifting the perceptions (both amongst Jews and gentiles) of the level of anti-semitism in a country, which is the while point of the IHRA definition and adopting it - it's a long standing propaganda technique of Zionism and the State of Israel to spread the notion that Jewish people are only safe in Israel (and the phrase you original used is literally out of it) and the IHRA definition was created and its use in various countries was pushed by their lobbying to boost that story.
That survey you linked is extremely interesting but for reasons you might not be aware of: It was taken right in the middle of a broad political coup in Britain to oust the first left-of-center politician elected as leader of a mainstream political party in Britain since the 80s - Jeremy Corbyn, who was elected Labour Party leader by a majority of its members - and the core of that campaign, which involved the Press, politicians of the opposing party, politicians of the neoliberal faction within his party, and Israel-linked Jewish groups in Britain (since Corbyn had always been against the Occupation Of Palestine) was to spread the idea that he himself and the Labour party under his leadership were deeply anti-semitic.
That's actually how a Jewish Holocaust Survivor ended up accused of making anti-semitic statements - as part of spreading the idea that Corbyn was anti-semitic, to taint him by association it was widely reported was that he had sat on a panel in a conference with a person who made anti-semitic statements when he compared the actions of Israel to those of the Nazis, never mentioning that said person was an actual Jewish Holocaust Survivor but eventually that small detail they forgot to mention in the Press did come out.
That UK survey you linked was both influenced by and later used as a tool in that campaign (I vaguely remember it being mentioned by politicians within Corbyn's party trying to oust him), so not only had some people in Britain for political purposes an incentive to lie about their feelings of safety in Britain as Jews on that survey, but others who responded to it were influenced by the massive, sudden and out of nowhere panic about anti-semitism in Britain that the Press and most of the Political Class created as part of a political coup.
(As I said, I lived there for over a decade, and information from the UK is generally highly manipulated invariably by indirect means, and I don't mean just this - don't get me started on how the ruling class there manipulate Economic and Crime figures)
I have no doubt that many Jewish people perceive themselves as threatened by anti-semitism, especially in countries which artificially inflated the anti-semitism numbers by counting "criticism of Israel" as anti-semitism, but objectively the idea that Jews are not safe anywhere outside Israel because of anti-semitism is wholly out of proportion to reality, especially when their treatment in most of the West is compared to how just about every other minority gets treated over there (whilst not making wild panicky statements that they cannot live there) - I guess that, as you say, "it is difficult to acknowledge that people with other backgrounds are subject to hate" hence many Jews in countries were they are not discriminated against will have difficulty acknowledging what's happening to those of other minorities and thus seeing their own situation in the broader context, leading to them spreading alarmist takes about their situation entirely out proportion to reality, which serves the goals of Zionist propaganda.
You know i really hope you are right. Maybe my mind has been infiltrated by the zionist agenda and propaganda media of which they supposedly own worldwide. But saying that they are causing their own fear seems a bit like a stretch. It's touching the "It didnt happend, and if it did, its not that bad" to "its your own fault". Jews in other countries are not part of the "zionist agenda" and claiming they are self alarming is really twisting words. There is a long and wide spread history in europe of antisemitism and even if you don't see it maybe you'll acknowledge that all minorities are subject to hate where jews are in a fragile position as they are few - along with israeli government doing what it does. The Porto synagogue was vandalized right after the october event along with the Jewish Cultural Center among other events. Maybe that is also manifactured by die judischen zeitungen. It's a bit of a Catch-22, where you don't think that Jews are in any danger whatsoever but when reading about it, statistics and newspapers are lying so even if they would be persecuted you would never know.
That's a curious take when I've repeatedly reiterated that there is anti-semitism and even pointed some of those who tends to to do it.
What I'm disputing is the level of alarmism about it.
Jews in Europe are victims of prejudice, at times even racial hate from people not in positions of authority (almost always in the form of anti-semitic insults, but also as you point out crimes against Jewish Community property). They are however in not in significant more danger for their lives than the locals, are almost never targets of violence and are treated fairly and taken seriously by the local authorities.
(That said, I do vaguely remember in the last couple of years an instance of actual violent attack on Jews in Europe, so Jewish People are in higher danger than the locals, not with high probability but none the less at higher levels)
There absolutely still is a problem, just nowhere at the levels that we have once seen and far less than for other minorities, mainly because nowadays it's only the powerless that might target Jews, not the powerful.
For Historical reasons there seems to definitely and understandably be a higher sensitivity amongst the Jewish Community to displays of prejudice, which partly explains the higher state of alarm when faced with prejudice of any kind (which also translates into more prompt reporting of those instances to the authorities, perversely enhancing the alarmism because what's reported is what gets reflected in the official figures) compared to how other minorities feel and react even when faced with a lot more prejudice (and those will report less, especially since the authorities themselves discriminate against them, hence the official figures for them is lower than reality), and given that Jews, just like everybody else, "find it difficult to acknowledge that people with other backgrounds are subject to hate", many will have a perception of victimhood wholly decontextualized from the broader phenomenon of prejudice and racial hate in the countries they live in.
All of this is of curse actively cultivated by a country ruled by an ethno-Fascist regime which claims to represent that specific ethnicity, since it's pretty standard in the Fascist playbook to claim both strength and being a victim, and specifically ethno-Fascist regimes enhance their claims of representing a ethnicity if the people of that ethnicity gather around that regime.
All this said, I can understand that the rise of the Far-Right in Europe is scary for Jews here, because the Far-Right in Europe have historically tended to be rabid anti-semites. So far the Far-Right being anti-semitic only seems to be the case in some countries (they're mostly against immigrants), but that fear amongst the Jewish Community is none the less justified.
Maybe we need a different approach. As you don't trust the numbers like i presented before where antisemitic hate crime reporting is 10-20 times as high as islamophobic hate crime reporting, what is a sufficient, or acceptable matrix that you would trust? I'm sure we can find out something we can both agree on. I'm prepared to accept whatever result, maybe i'm full of it but if there is no metric that you accept, there doesn't seem to be any reason to debate in good faith.
I don't trust British numbers because I lived in the damn place and claims of anti-semitism there have been politically weaponized and heavily so - when the rules are such that a Jewish Holocaust Survivor (!!!) gets deemed an anti-semite for criticizing Israel, you know the whole thing is bollocks.
I've already went through all the reasons why the anti-semitic label has lost much of its meaning and hence the numbers for "anti-semitic" racial hate are muddied beyond salvation and why "perception" numbers (which is what you provided) are even easier to shift with Propaganda, and that what you claim doesn't match what I heard over the years of reported experience of actual Jewish People or even what I see pop up in the small progessive leftwing part I'm involved in which is heavily into fighting against racism (and such things definitely pop-up for some other ethnic groups), so won't go into that (again). In fact I literally just deleted a large block I wrote about it :/
The issue is that you've persisted in using flawed metrics to prove your point that "Jews are not safe to live anywhere else".
How about this: show me proof that the number of violent deaths per capita of Jewish People in any European country are actually higher than for the whole population.
"Violent deaths" is a pretty concrete metric that goes straight to show insecurity. Unlike perception of racial hate, death counts cannot be influenced by propaganda and it's pretty hard to over or under report violent deaths (at least in Europe, were the Authorities keep a tight eye on people suddenly appearing dead). The number of violent deaths is also strongly positively correlated with violence in general so the former count should be a pretty good indicator of broader insecurity.
If Jews are dying to violence in Europe more than other people then there is no doubt whatsoever that they are less safe.
Can i count attempted homicide? The problem with violent death in europe is that it's quite skewed by terrorist attacks, like in france 2015, 31 were "homecide or attempt" but it doesnt split that statistic into two columns which it should i.m.o, and also most countries don't seem to register anti semitic killing seprately (maybe some because there were none/few?) Are violent attacks not a valid reason to be afraid for your safety? That looks easier to look up as many countries does register that statistic.
Assuming that "attempted homicide" is determined by an external 3rd party, I expect it not to be skewed by the victim's own perceptions or beliefs so it makes sense to also consider attempted homicide when you can't separate it from homicide.
Also keep in mind that you're not supposed to be looking specifically for murders deemed "anti-semitic killing", just killings in general of any person, per-capita and killings of people who are Jewish in relation to the number of Jewish people in that country, independently of the motive having been determined as being anti-semitism.
Going after murders specifically labelled as anti-semitic would just be getting us back to the problem of the legal classification of anti-semitism - in other words, countries with a broader definition of anti-semitism (such as the ones deeming criticism of Israel as being anti-semitism) having a bias would be more likely to label as "anti-semitic" murders of Jewish people which were not in fact committed due to the ethnicity of the victim, than other countries. Further, only looking at murders for which the motive had been determined would reduce the total of cases considered to just those murders which were successfully prosecuted (which depending on the country can be quite a low fraction of the total), since (I believe) a death can be officially counted as a murder purely based on the autopsy even if the killer has not been found, tried and convicted and his or her motive confirmed during a trial. Also the "how serious are the authorities at investigating a murder depending on the ethnicity of the victim" factor might skew the results if you're limiting your numbers to tried and convicted cases. (Whilst not so in life, we're all equal in death and a corpse is a corpse, so I expect that a coroner's determination after examining a corpse that the person was killed should independent of the ethnicity of the victim).
By just looking at all murders without looking at anything else but the ethnicity of the victim, my expectation is that anti-semitic murders will appear in the numbers as more Jewish people getting murdered as a proportion of all Jewish people than the rate for the overall population - with this method any judgment passed saying the motivation of the murder is not at all examined, hence any possible "inflation" in the use of the "anti-semitic" classification makes no difference whatsoever for the results, and equally any bias the authorities might have in terms of how much resources they dedicate to investigating a murder depending on the victim's ethnicity does not impact the numbers since they're based on the coroner's determination alone.
If in aggregate Jews are getting killed more often than the population in general, the obvious conclusion is that the excess of Jewish people being victims of murder above the general population is because of them being killed due to their ethnicity, which would confirm your point that Jewish people are less safe than the rest (not merely feel less safe, which you already proved and I never disputed, but objectively are less safe).
I honestly think that might be a pretty bad metric because most murders belong to three categories.
For 2 and 3, i don't believe any ethnicity is exempt.
All that statistic will show is that it's far more dangerous to be a criminal wifebeating drunk than the average population and i haven't heard of many jew-gangs.
Example- a gang fight causes 100 people to die. One jew is killed from an antisemitic crime. Now, if the jewish population is 1% of the total population, we would have an equal amount of jewish deaths as the average population, but criminals mostly kill eachother so it's still obviously more dangerous to be a criminal than a jew but the antisemitic crime weighs more compared to the non-criminal population. So we would have to exclude a whole bunch of murder causes to get a reasonable result and define those, or you know, just use the antisemitic deaths as a factor from the start.
Were did you get a that list of categories for most murders which doesn't have non-gang-related crime? Because most crime doesn't involve gangs.
Are you classifying all organised crime as being gangs (i.e. classifying the Mafia as a "gang") and all non-gang related but crime related murder under "spontaneous"? Because that's the only way you'll end up with with that list of top categories for murders and in that case since those "gangs" aren't just bands of teenagers from poor backgrounds, I'm pretty sure there are Jewish people in "gangs".
Further, your entire point rests on the assumption that Jews are less likely to be involved in or with violent criminals than other people - in other words that Jews are different from other people in something which is unrelated to one's religion, which is pretty straightforward racial prejudice and easily disproven by there being Jews committing crimes, including murder, in Israel (in fact if there is once thing the Genocide in Gaza proves beyond doubt is that some Jews have the capacity of the most horrific behavior - same as everybody else).
Without that prejudiced assumption, then as Jews are equally involved in crime as everybody else the fraction of Jews that end up dead due to that should be the same as everybody else and thus have equal impact on both the rate of Jews being victims of murder and that of the general population, leaving us once again with only anti-semitic violence to explain any higher rate of Jews being murdered.
Frankly, the only thing that I would expect would impact the number to yield a lower rate of Jewish victims of murder compared to the broader population would be that in Europe Jews tend to be Middle Class or above - mainly because they're well established, compared with for example immigrants from poorer countries - and the probability of being murdered is affected by one's social status (basically poorer people tend to be murdered more than middle-class people) and even then, if Jews in Europe tend to die less than average because they're well established and prosperous, that de facto means they're safe in Europe (certainly safer than the average person), which disproves your original statement - my whole point has always been that Jews can in fact be safe elsewhere than Israel, not that anti-semitism does not exist.