Mark Steyn-Israele oggi, l'occidente domani 09/05/2009 Commentary Magazine, May 2009

ISRAELTODAY, THE WEST TOMORROW Mark Steyn Commentary Magazine, May 2009 On Holocaust Memorial Day 2008, a group of just under 100 people--Londoners and  a few visitors--took a guided tour of the old Jewish East End.... The tour was abruptly terminated when the group was pelted with stones, thrown by "youths"--or to be slightly less evasive, in the current euphemism of Fleet Street, "Asian" youths. "If you  go any further, you'll die," they shouted, in between the flying rubble. A New Yorker who had just moved to Britain to start a job at the Metropolitan University had her head cut open and had to be taken to the Royal London Hospital at Whitechapel, causing her to miss the Holocaust Day "interfaith memorial service" at the East  London Central Synagogue. Her friend, Eric Litwack from Canada , was also struck  but did not require stitches. But if you hadn't recently landed at Heathrow, it  wasn't that big a deal, not these days: Nobody was killed or permanently disfigured. And given the number of Jewish community events that now require security, perhaps Her Majesty's Constabulary was right and these Londoners walking the streets of their own city would have been better advised to do so behind a police escort. A  European Holocaust Memorial Day on which Jews are stoned sounds like a parody of the old joke that the Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz. " Israel is unfashionable," a Continental foreign minister said to me a decade back. "But maybe Israel will change, and then fashions will change." Fashions do change. But however Israel changes, this fashion won't. The shift of most (non-American)  Western opinion against the Jewish state that began in the 1970s was, as my Continental politician had it, simply a reflection of casting: Israel was no longer the underdog but the overdog, and why would that appeal to a post-war polytechnic Euro Left unburdened by Holocaust guilt? Fair enough. Fashions change. But the new Judenhass is not a fashion, simply a stark reality that will metastasize in the years ahead and leave Israel isolated in the international "community" in ways that will make the first decade of this century seem like the good old days.... The demographic energy not just in [ London 's] East End but in almost every Western European country is "Asian." Which is to say, Muslim. A recent government statistical survey reported that the United Kingdom 's Muslim population is increasing ten times faster than the general population. Amsterdam , Rotterdam , Antwerp , and many other Continental cities from Scandinavia to the Côte d'Azur will reach majority Muslim status in the next few years.... [T]he Islamicization of Europe entails certain consequences, and it might be worth exploring what these might be. There are already many points of cultural friction--from British banks' abolition of children's "piggy banks" to the enjoining of public  doughnut consumption by Brussels police during Ramadan. And yet on one issue there is remarkable comity between the aging ethnic Europeans and their young surging  Muslim populations: A famous poll a couple of years back found that 59 percent of Europeans regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace.... To be sure, there are occasional arcane points of dispute: one recalls, in the wake of the July 7 bombings, the then London Mayor Ken Livingstone's somewhat tortured attempts to explain why blowing up buses in Tel Aviv is entirely legitimate whereas blowing up buses in Bloomsbury is not. Yet these are minimal bumps on a smooth glide path.... [M]any Israelis...would brusquely reply: So what? Pity the poor Jew who has ever  relied on European "friends." Yet there is a difference of scale between the well-established faculty-lounge disdain for "Israeli apartheid" and a mass psychosis so universal  it's part of the air you breathe.... Do you remember the "road map" summit held in Jordan just after the U.S. invasion of Iraq ? It seemed a big deal at the time: The leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the U.S. president, all the A-list dictators of the Arab League. Inside the swank resort, it was all very collegial, smiles and handshakes. Outside, flags fluttered-- Jordan 's, America 's, Saudi Arabia 's, Egypt 's, Palestine 's. But  not Israel 's. King Abdullah of Jordan had concluded it would be too provocative  to advertise the Zionist Entity's presence on Jordanian soil even at a summit supposedly boasting they were all on the same page.... When Western governments are as reluctant as King Abdullah to fly the Star of David, those among the citizenry who choose to do so have a hard time. In Britain in January, while "pro-Palestinian" demonstrators were permitted to dress up as hook-nosed Jews drinking the blood of Arab babies, the police ordered counter-protesters to put  away their Israeli flags. In Alberta , in the heart of Calgary 's Jewish neighborhood, the flag of Hizballah (supposedly a proscribed terrorist organization) was proudly waved by demonstrators, but one solitary Israeli flag was deemed a threat to the Queen's peace and officers told the brave fellow holding it to put it away or be arrested for "inciting public disorder." In Germany , a student in Duisburg put  the Star of David in the window of an upstairs apartment on the day of a march by the Islamist group Milli Görüs, only to have the cops smash his door down and remove the flag. He's now trying to get the police to pay for a new door. Ah, those Jews. It's always about money, isn't it?... [I]f you look at it from the authorities' point of view, it's not about Jew-hatred; it's a simple numbers game. If a statistically insignificant Jewish population gets upset, big deal. If the far larger Muslim population--and, in some French cities, the youth population (i.e., the demographic that riots) is already pushing 50 percent--you have a serious public-order threat on your hands. We're beyond the anti-Semitic  and into the ad hoc utilitarian.... "It isn't silent majorities that drive things, but vocal minorities," the Canadian public intellectual George Jonas recently wrote. "Don't count heads; count decibels. All entities--the United States, the Western world, the Arab street--have prevailing moods, and it's prevailing moods that define aggregates at any given time."... Demographically, in Europe and elsewhere, Islam has the numbers. But ideologically, radical Islam  has the decibels--in Turkey , in the Balkans, in Western Europe. ... So it will go. British, European, and even American troops will withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan , and a bomb will go off in Madrid or Hamburg or Manchester , and there will be nothing left to blame except Israeli "disproportion." For the remnants of European Jewry, the already discernible migration of French Jews to Quebec ,  Florida , and elsewhere will accelerate. There are about 150,000 Jews in London  today--it's the thirteenth biggest Jewish city in the world. But there are approximately one million Muslims. The highest number of Jews is found in the 50-54 age group; the highest number of Muslims are found in the four-years-and-under category. By 2025, there will be Jews in Israel , and Jews in America , but not in many other  places. Even as the legitimacy of a Jewish state is rejected, the Jewish diaspora--the Jewish presence in the wider world--will shrivel.... There'll still be a Holocaust Memorial Day, mainly for the pleasures it affords to chastise the new Nazis. As Anthony Lipmann, the Anglican son of an Auschwitz  survivor, wrote in 2005: "When on 27 January I take my mother's arm--tattoo number A-25466--I will think not just of the crematoria and the cattle trucks but of Darfur , Rwanda , Zimbabwe , Jenin, Fallujah." Jenin? You can see why they'll keep Holocaust Day on the calendar: In an age when politicians are indifferent or downright hostile to Israel 's "right to exist," it's useful to be able to say, "But some of my best photo-ops are Jewish." The joke about Mandatory Palestine was that it was the twice-promised land. But  isn't that Europe , too? And perhaps Russia and maybe Canada , a little ways down the line? Two cultures jostling within the same piece of real estate. Not long ago,I found myself watching the video of another "pro-Palestinian" protest in central London with the Metropolitan Police retreating up St. James's Street to Piccadilly in the face of a mob hurling traffic cones and jeering, "Run, run, you cowards!"  and "Allahu akbar!" You would think the deluded multi-culti progressives would  understand: In the end, this isn't about Gaza , this isn't about the Middle East ; it's about them. It may be some consolation to an ever-lonelier Israel that,  in one of history's bleaker jests, in the coming Europe the Europeans will be the new Jews. (Mark Steynis the author of America Alone and a columnist for National Review.)