Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Roundup of Anti-Semitic Attacks in Europe

The war in Gaza continues to be used as a pretext for violence (or attempted violence) against Jews in Europe. Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated a series of articles from various Dutch-language news sources in Belgium and the Netherlands.


Belgian synagogue attacked, tensions are rising

Because of the fighting in Gaza tension is rising between the Jews and Arabs in the Belgian cities of Antwerp and Brussels. During demonstrations in recent days there been destruction. Also an attempt was made to set a synagogue on fire.

This is reported by various Belgian media. [here and here]


Arson attempt on synagogue in Vorst, Brussels

Unidentified people have tried to set fire to the synagogue of the Brussels municipality Vorst [the synagogue Beth Hillel]. The damage was confined to scorched front doors, local police report. The perpetrators and their motives are still unknown.

Access door on fire

The incident at the synagogue in the Vroegegroentenstraat [by the Wallonian colonizers called “Rue des Primeurs”] occurred around 8:30 pm Monday when a fire was detected at the heavy front door of the synagogue. The fire was quickly extinguished and caused little damage, except that the entrance door was scorched black.

Arson

The initial findings showed that the door was deliberately set on fire, though it is still not clear how that happened. It was first thought by a Molotov cocktail, but that now seems out of the question. The local police suspect that gasoline was poured and lit or that a pile of paper was set on fire. The perpetrators and their motives are still unknown, but a link with the Israeli offensive in Gaza is not excluded.


Illegal Gaza demonstration in Antwerp

Today [Wednesday] at 15:00 in the vicinity of the Antwerp Central Station [note: that means right next to the “Diamond District”, also known as “Jerusalem of the North”], an unpermitted demonstration by pro-Palestine youngsters will take place. This is what press agency Belga was told by a “reliable source”.

Islamic youngsters would have sms’d each other today to demonstrate. It is not impossible it will come to riots after an attack today on a refugee camp in the Gaza strip, in which forty people died.

The police report that are ready to intervene, if incidents occur. The AEL (Arabic European League) would have nothing to do with the demonstration.


Turkish basketball fans jeer at players Israeli team

The conflict in the Gaza Strip has now also moved to the sports arenas. A match in the Basketball Eurocup games between the Turkish “Turk Telekom” and the Israeli “Bnei Hasharon” in Ankara was canceled after Turkish supporters threatened the Israeli players. The police, who were present with around 1500 troops, had to intervene to restore the calm. [see pictures]
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The offenses occurred when the two teams went into the arena to greet the fans. Suddenly the supporters of the home team, of whom some carried Palestinian flags, started to berate and threaten the Israeli players. They screamed, among other things: “Israelis murderers, leave Palestine.”

The “fans” also threw coins and lighters and tried to get into the arena. The police intervened and the Israeli players escaped to the dressing room. A few minutes later it was decided to cancel the match.


Increase of violence against Jews in Europe

Attacks on Jews and arson at Jewish meetings seem to increase in European cities since Israel began the attack on Hamas in the Gaza strip. Such incidents occurred in Belgium, France, Sweden, Denmark and Great Britain.

Arson at Jewish meetings

Last night a burning car rammed the door of a synagogue in Toulouse in the South West of France. A group of people were inside the building taking a course, but nobody got hurt. The damage to the building where the meeting took place was “limited” to a scorched black door.

In the Swedish city of Helsingborg yesterday, a meeting by Jews was disturbed when someone destroyed a window of the building where the meeting took place, and threw in a burning object. The rescue service arrived in time and was able to get the fire under control.

Shooting in Denmark

Last Wednesday, in a shopping center in the Danish city Odense, two Israeli citizens were shot. They were repeatedly harassed in the pervious days. The police arrested a 27-year-old Danish citizen of Palestinian descent.

Dozens of incidents in Great-Britain

In Great Britain, some twenty to twenty-five anti-Semitic incidents occurred. Amongst those was an attempt to set fire to a synagogue in North London. […]

The Belgian government asked the police to be extra alert after resent pro-Palestinian demonstrations resulted in violence and arrests. A letterbox of a Jewish residence in Antwerp was set on fire, and in Vorst [Brussels] a synagogue was set on fire.

France wants unity to prevail

The prime minister of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, said today not to tolerate violent acts in connection with the situation in the Gaza strip. Monday the minister of internal affairs Michèle Alliot-Marie held a meeting with important representatives of Jewish and Muslim groups, hoping to maintain national unity.

France has the largest Jewish and Muslim communities in Western Europe. In the past, anti-Semitic violence occurred more often when the tensions rose in the Middle East. In 2002 about 2,300 Jews left France, because they didn’t feel safe there anymore.

12 comments:

Orlando said...

Sarkozy is more pro-Hamas than many Palestinians. Has he admitted yet to being a Muslim?

no2liberals said...

Excellent piece.
Israel acts because the world won't defend it.

"The scenes from Gaza are heartbreaking. But the whole conflict could be avoided if the Palestinians said one small thing."

spackle said...

So tell me the difference between Muslims/Islam and a common street gang? MS-13, Crips and Bloods in California are the same, have the same rules and are equally offended as their counterparts in NJ or VA and act accordingly. In the above case the rival (and unwilling) gang members are the Jews.

Even those who are not active gang members in the immediate family are sympathetic to the gangs cause. These would be the "peace loving" gang members.

babs said...

I don't know Spackle - The overriding cause of the Cripts or the MS-13 is business. They are drug,arms dealers and smugglers first and foremost. I don't think they have the religious zeal or the grievance of a Muslim to the rest of the world. They just want to control the illegal business taking place in their (extended)territory.

spackle said...

Babs-

I know. But my point still stands that besides different ends Islam is nothing more then a common street gang with a supernatural belief system.

. said...

I don't suppose, Baron and Dymphna, that you have seen fit to place this article in your news feed?

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12868180

A Muslim country freely allowing conversion to Christianity? And Kosovo, the "gangster state" no less? Talk about off message!

Let me know if you've already linked to this story, and I will humbly apologize for my sneering.

spackle said...

Gordon-

Wow. A Muslim country actually "allowing" Christian conversions? Something that any rational country in the world would do (and does) as easily as breathing? Stop the presses. I guess we were wrong about Islam all along.

This is a bit like thanking someone for calling an ambulance after you have been hit by a car.

spackle said...

Although I suppose this is good news for all 12 Christians in Kosovo. And if they can find a church that hasnt been desecrated they will live happily ever after free from harassment in the new inclusive utopia that is Kosovo.

Baron Bodissey said...

Nodrog --

I didn't link to that specific article, but I most certainly did cover the topic, in a separate post, back on Nov. 17.

See: Reverting to Christianity in Kosovo

laine said...

Remember the Yuri Bezmenov interview when he said that after leftist useful idiots have served their purpose, they are the first to be exterminated by the new totalitarian regime they helped put in place?

Diaspora Jews reside largely on the political Left. 80% in the USA voted for and funded the Dems. Many anti-Christian initiatives like the ACLU in the US and the misnamed Human Rights Commissions in Canada have a strong Jewish contingent as does the marxist professoriate at our universities.

Two totalitarianisms, cultural communism and Islam have been making common cause against western institutions but clearly this can't last. As both are currently in the ascendancy, are we beginning to see the first attacks on the Left who facilitated the PC multicult immigration policies that are now bearing poisoned fruit for their sponsors?

Hatred of Jews appears to be fed into Muslims with their mother's milk and the Koran but as most Jews outside Israel are leftists, there may be a second impetus for colonizing Muslims to eliminate Jews first in the new host societies according to the Bezmenov theory.

The Christian bulwark that managed to repel the Islamic advance centuries ago including the title of this blog has been gravely weakened. It is unclear that there is a secular version that can hold with the same tenacity.

Therefore, it seems the plan to sideline Christians from power and the public space was not well thought out but of course Muslim backwaters were not on anybody's radar even as late as Sept 10, 2001.

Those who drive staring too much into the rearview mirror instead of at what's coming up ahead will end up in the ditch. Jewish leaders sweeping the world of the last vestigial nazis missed the new threat on the block entirely. In fact, most in the West are still doing kumbaya with the "religion of peace" which is the liberal in them trumping even survival instinct.

That intransigent leftism will be the death of the Jew and possibly the rest of us infidels too.

Czechmade said...

Laine,

maybe we should add that the Jewish experience throughout centuries led them to be antiChristian... a good additional reason to be leftist, US democrat...etc. - but in a way blind in the long term. All more or less Christian people promoting the Jews and Israel are not that welcome as they might think.

The Christian thought or dogma still abrogates the Jewish one and we should be intellectually brave and sharp enough to sense it.

Speaking to the Jews as a Czech I can sense I am no threat as a Pole, a Russian or a Greek might be.

Still I might admire most of the Christian stuff...but I am not "embedded" in it by nature. Sort of free to think?

Zenster said...

spackle: So tell me the difference between Muslims/Islam and a common street gang?

Zer-effing-oh. One is merely ideology writ larger than the other. Both spread themselves by violence and both depend upon terrorism to cow their opponents. The only difference is scale and most certainly not ethos or method.

laine: Remember the Yuri Bezmenov interview when he said that after leftist useful idiots have served their purpose, they are the first to be exterminated by the new totalitarian regime they helped put in place?

As I am sure you are attempting to highlight, the most incredible notion is that of the Leftists who think that once their destructive pet Muslims have wrought sufficient havoc upon "The System" (of White Male Christian Free Enterprise), somehow in the succeeding power vacuum these Liberals will handily be able to step into place.

Whereas, the only place that awaits them in a society deconstructed by Islamic aggression is that of the chopping block. In fact, the Liberal love of homosexuals, atheists and other societal misfits will send them straight to the head of the ax-man's line.

It is unclear that there is a secular version that can hold with the same tenacity.

This remains the ultimate challenge for modern civilization. Many times, I have already suggested that all branches of the Christian church must find common cause with every other non-Muslim faith in order to present a united front against Islam.

The challenge is no less critical for all secular groups to find a similar unity against that which will tolerate neither. Islam is a unipolar negative force against all human liberty and personal freedom that no other group has the luxury of ignoring.

That Leftists have deemed themselves so morally superior as to enjoy any sort of entirely undeserved relief from concern over Islamic totalitarianism speaks volumes about its own unjustified articles of faith that it has in a dystopic world unbound by traditional moral or ethical strictures.

That intransigent leftism will be the death of the Jew and possibly the rest of us infidels too.

If the lot of them cannot find it within themselves to unite against Islam, it most likely will. Only the simple leverage of Western nuclear arsenals mitigate against such an outcome but only in the most horrific way.

As always folks, remember:

ISLAM WOULDN'T HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY.