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refusing to host pro-Zionist meetings and concerts. There was a recent case of a London Theatre that cancelled a pre-booked concert, on the pretext that one of the singing groups consisted of Israeli soldiers.
On a general non-Jewish level, Muslim sensibilities are beginning to affect mainstream politics. For example, British soldiers recovering in UK hospitals, having been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, are sometimes the subject of abuse. Even Army parades are being subject to heckling from Muslim UK citizens.
On an International level, NATO’s commitment to fighting alongside USA is being strained by European governments apparently reluctant to commit to fighting against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Therefore, if this is happening even now, how sombre are the prospects for the future Jewish life in Europe – a Europe anyway that has been both a sanctuary and a death trap for Jews through the Centuries.
To an outsider like myself, the situation in USA is also worrisome, although your threat is from the top down, rather than ours from the bottom upwards. President Obama makes no secret, now that he has become elected, of his partial Muslim background. You only have to read his speeches to the Muslim World in Cairo and Turkey, to become seriously concerned about his comparison of the Palestinian struggle to that of the blacks in USA, and South Africa. The apparent feeble response of your own Jewish Community, illustrates that you are as paralysed by the threat to Jewish identity , as we are in Europe.
The outcome of the above situation makes a full Jewish expression of life outside Israel, more and more problematical. This of course is the whole thesis behind Zionism in the first place, but the “memory” of the Holocaust protected us for 60 years from blatant anti-semitism. Regrettably this is no longer the case.
As a small minority group, we become afraid to express our true feelings, and to express support for Israel- which of course is the whole object of the hostility in the first place.
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