NEW EXODUS

European Jews are concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism and are increasingly looking to immigrate to Israel or overseas - the USA, Canada and Australia. For example, according to the Jewish Agency, if in 2013, 3,293 persons moved from France to Israel, in 2014 this indicator rose to 7,231. Presumably, this year the figure could exceed 10,000 people.

The reason is acts of violence against Jews in a number of EU countries. According to the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, their number last year more than doubled. In the UK the number of anti-Semitic incidents has reached their highest level ever, writes The Guardian. We are talking about violence, property damage, insults and threats. The Community Security Trust, which monitors anti-Semitism in the UK, recorded 1,168 anti-Semitic incidents against 291,000 British Jews in 2014. Emotions after the January attack in France on the office of Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly, many employees of which were Jews, and the terrorist attack in a kosher supermarket had not even subsided yet, an incident happened in the capital of Denmark. On 14 February, an unidentified person fired at the Cruttenden Culture Centre, which hosted a seminar on the topic of religion and freedom of speech with the participation of the French ambassador and a Swedish artist and cartoonist Lars Vilks, who has been known since 2007 when he was at the centre of an international scandal after a number of publications published his cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Neither the artist nor the ambassador was injured in the attack, but one person was killed and three policemen were wounded. A few hours later, a shooting occurred in the Krystalgade synagogue, which claimed the life of one of the members of the Jewish community. The suspect Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, who was identified with the help of video cameras, was killed during a shootout near the railway station. Literally the next day, on 16 February, hundreds of graves in the Jewish cemetery in Sarre-Union in eastern France were desecrated. The obelisk to the victims of the Holocaust was damaged and was literally hacked into fine crumbs.

This is not a complete list of anti-Semitic acts in France, which includes attacks on Jewish sports clubs and even school buses. We must say that this problem is not new. For example, many people remember the terrorist attack in Toulouse in 2012, when fire was opened on the Jewish school Treasure of the Torah, which killed a teacher and three children aged 3 to 8 years. According to a study conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in 2013, a quarter of those surveyed admitted that they try not to wear in public symbols "indicating" their affiliation to a particular nationality and religion. Jews in Hungary (49 per cent) feel the least protected, and they are followed by France (40 per cent) and Belgium (36 per cent).

However, it is precisely now that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Jews living in Europe to immigrate to Israel.

"Extremist Islamic terrorism struck in Europe again. Jews are getting killed on European soil again just because they are Jews, and this wave of terrorist attacks, including bloody anti-Semitic attacks, is expected to continue. Jews deserve protection in any country in the world, but we are telling the Jews, our brothers and sisters: 'Israel is your home.' We present a new programme worth 180m shekels (47m dollars) to stimulate immigration (of Jews) from France, Belgium and Ukraine and will provide additional similar programmes later," the prime minister of Israel said.

These words of the Israeli prime minister caused consternation among European politicians. French President Francois Hollande promised to punish the guilty, and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve called it "another attempt on the values of the republic". French Prime Minister Manuel Valls once again stressed that "the home of the French Jews is France, and this is proved, no matter how gloomy it may sound in light of what happened, by the fact that there are their cemeteries there". "Therefore, we must do everything to protect the Jews, and we are already doing this. But our strength is in unity and in resisting the hatred we are faced with ... Every Jew leaving France is a part of France, which it loses. If 100,000 Jews leave the country, it will not be France, it will lose its soul - it will mean collapse," the French prime minister said. Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt promised to do everything possible to protect the Jewish community in the country after the terrorist attacks in Copenhagen and asked Jews not to leave the state. "Europe without Jews is not Europe," Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said. British Home Secretary Theresa May said that what is happening causes "deep concern" and expressed the need "to stop anti-Semitism in Britain". German Chancellor Angela Merkel said during an official speech in the Bundestag that anti-Semitism is a civic duty of Germany. European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans also expressed his concern. He believes that Europe faces a "huge challenge" to convince the Jews not to emigrate in response to anti-Semitism.

It is noteworthy that France was the first in Europe to give Jews civil rights - during the French Revolution in 1791. Napoleon gave the Jews freedom everywhere after the military victories of his army. When the Vichy fascist regime sent Jews to concentration camps, they were saved by ordinary French people en masse. Now the Jewish community in France is one of the biggest in Europe - about 550,000. The country has more than 300 synagogues, cultural centres, kosher restaurants and shops. There are many Jews in the political and cultural elite of the country. All in all, according to various sources, Europe is home to about 1.5m Jews.

According to one version, the ideological basis of the current surge in anti-Semitism is associated with the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict. This is not surprising, given the number of Arab immigrants in France and other European countries. Indeed, the recent killer from Copenhagen Omar el-Hussein comes from a family of Palestinian Arabs, who spent several years in a refugee camp in Jordan before moving to Denmark. According to his relatives and friends, Omar was unable to finish school, was homeless for some time and was in prison for an attack on public transport, but he was not a radical, although the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict always concerned him. Mohamed Merah, who attacked a Jewish school in Toulouse, was presumably associated with Al-Qa'eda, and it is known that before committing the terrorist attack, he spent some time in Syria and Iraq. In mid-February, the BBC website posted a clip showing an Israeli reporter wearing a kippah and walking the streets of Paris. He was insulted most of all in immigrant and Muslim neighbourhoods.

However, it is hardly worth ascribing all anti-Semitism to the Muslim community. Anti-Semitic prejudices can be equally inherent in any radical member of society - those who hold right and left views and even those who do not associate themselves with any political trends. For example, writer Michel Houellebecq, who is known for his critical attitude towards the Islamic religion (his new novel "Submission" is about the victory of a Muslim candidate in presidential election in France, and Charlie Hebdo magazine devoted its cover to the novel the day members of its editorial board were killed), sees the roots of anti-Semitism in the actions of "left-wing extremists". "Why are French Muslims more interested in Palestine than Muslims in Africa or Asia? I think this is because of the extreme left who designated Israel as an enemy and such figures as [Olivier] Besancenot or [Edwy] Plenel," Houellebecq told Pointe magazine. It is significant that on grounds of anti-Semitism, a public scandal occurred between two politicians - the current Prime Minister Valls and former Foreign Minister Roland Dumas. In response to the appeal of Prime Minister Valls to the Jews not to leave France, ex-Minister Dumas said Valls perceives the situation too dramatically and all because of the fact that "he has personal connections that make him biased. Everyone knows that he is married, among other things, to a very nice lady, who influences him." The French immediately realized that Dumas is hinting that Valls' wife is a Jew. The former minister's lack of restraint was condemned by the French media and companions from the ruling Socialist Party.

Thus, in this case, we should probably say that belief in the state, in this case, the French state, has been undermined in many citizens, not specifically in the Jews. The total list of problems ranges from not quite a competent policy of multiculturalism and financial and ideological crisis to the conflicts in the Middle East and the general deterioration of the terrorism situation in the world. This harms everyone - French people in the tenth generation, Jews, Muslims and representatives of any other nationality and religion. For example, the next day after the act of vandalism at the Jewish cemetery in France, The Guardian posted a homemade video, which shows Chelsea fans in the Paris metro pushing a black man out of the car. The young people screamed at full throat that they are racists and they like it. By the way, no one stood up for the man...

People, for the most part, tend to run away from problems, and intolerance and radicalism are often both causes and consequence of these problems. A vicious circle appears, which can be viewed from any area, in any angle and lighting, but that's what makes it dangerous. The theory of "running away from problems" is evidenced by the fact that in the recent period, a record for the outflow of the Jewish population was set not by France, but by Ukraine - with its war in the east of the country, crisis economy and uncertainty about the future. In Europe, the difference mainly lies in the fact that the Jews have somewhere to go - Israel, and many young Muslims from the Middle East see precisely France as a safe haven and run away from war, tents of refugees and the hopelessness of tomorrow precisely to Paris, Marseille and Nice. As a result, on the one hand, hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mostly from Arab countries, tend to go to Europe and on the other hand, thousands of Jews emigrate from the Old World. France is changing rapidly, and with these changes it is like a mirror for the whole of Europe. The upsurge of anti-Semitism against the background of these changes is only one part of a painful process.