Anti-Semitism: The World Remains Silent Again

President Obama worries obsessively about anti-Muslim backlash in the face of extremism that he refuses to acknowledge draws its inspiration from the Islamic religion.  At last week's "violent extremism" summit, Obama lectured America on its need for tolerance toward Muslims.

His concern is detached from reality.  Statistics show that Jews, not Muslims, are more often targeted for assault and violence in increasing numbers worldwide.  Even the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently reported American Jews were ten times more likely to be targeted for abuse than Muslims.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, no political leader has confronted the president over his moral equivocation over anti-Semitism. Obama's hand-wringing over prejudicial statements about Islam, stands in stark contrast to his callous dismissal of attacks on Jews, both here and abroad.

Violent anti-Semitic assaults in the United States increased 82 percent in 2013, the latest year for which figures are available.  The numbers were provided by the Anti-Defamation League, a worldwide organization founded in 1913 to fight anti-Semitism.  The president's concern has been muted.

While the media has been focused on the recent killing of three Muslims near the University of North Carolina, significantly less news attention was showered on the cowardly murders of three Jews gunned down outside two community centers near Kansas City last year.  

But America's anti-Semitic incidents, while deeply disturbing, are a mere shadow of what is happening in Europe.  Those senseless murders of four people at a Paris kosher deli last month were just the latest ruthless attack aimed at Jews in France.

Last year, eight synagogues were attacked in Paris.  One synagogue, located in a Paris suburb, was firebombed by an angry mob of 400.  A kosher supermarket and pharmacy were smashed and looted as crowds chanted, "Death to Jews."

This frightening rise in aggression prompted 7,200 French Jews to emigrate to Israel last year, twice the number for 2013.  Despite this human flight, the apologetic European media has tried to downplay the wretched Jew-hating and attempted to blame the Jewish withdrawal on economic and social factors.  

Conditions aren't much better for Jews outside France.

The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United Kingdom reached the highest level ever reordered last year.  There were 1,168 cases of violence, property damage, abuse and threats against Britain's 291,000 Jews.   Britain's Home Secretary called the trend "deeply concerning."

In Germany last year, Molotov cocktails were lobbed into a synagogue, while a Berliner called on Allah to "destroy the Zionist Jews."  There also have been ugly incidents in Frankfurt and Hamburg as Germany has been hauntingly reminded of the grisly atrocities from its past.

Seventy years after the end of the Holocaust, Jews are being forced out of Europe again.  Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu urged Jews to repatriate to their home country after the most recent attack, a brutal killing of a Jewish man outside a synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Today 82 percent of the world's 16.7 million Jews live in either Israel or the U.S.  France has the largest European Jewish population (475,000), but as noted earlier their numbers are dwindling.  In 1939, there were 9.5 million Jews in Europe, compared to about 1.4 million today, according to Pew Research.

In Arab countries, Jews are leaving in droves.  As an example, in 1948 there were 265,000 Jews living in Morocco, but their numbers have shrunk to 2,500. In Algeria, once home to 140,000 Jews, there is not a single Jew residing within its borders. Muslims in these countries are openly hostile to Jews.

In the midst of this Jewish exodus fueled by intolerance, the world has remained closemouthed, particularly this U.S. president.  Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, once penned the following admonition about the Nazis' evil campaign to exterminate Jews:

"Who would allow such a crisis to be committed?  How could the world remain silent?"

World leaders today have no excuse for making the same mistakes governments did in the 1930's.  If you turn a blind eye to hatred, it oozes from every twisted misfit until it consumes the world. Silence only guarantees the inevitable human tragedy will follow.

It is time for leaders, beginning with President Obama, to speak up in defense of Jews.  The president can start by welcoming Benjamin Netanyahu with open arms to the United States on March 3 when he addresses Congress on issues facing Jews and Israel.

However, Obama has made it clear Netanyahu is unwelcome because of some silly protocol snit.  If Obama snubs the Israeli leader, then he sends exactly the wrong signal to Jews at perhaps one of the worst times in Jewish history.

Today's anti-Semitism demands that world leaders stand with Jews against the zealots of hatred.