Jewish Life in Islamic Europe

Belgium, the land of the best waffles and the tastiest chocolates (yes, even better than Swiss chocolate), a country with beautiful landscapes and smiling people who are always happy to lend a helping hand whenever needed, a country I truly love and miss.

As an 18-year-old Sephardic Jew with origins in Georgia who was born in Belgium, I'm no stranger to antisemitism. Throughout my upbringing in Europe, I have been influenced and affected by rising hate against Jews. The antisemitism I faced in Belgium was due to mass immigration from Arab countries — but why did this immigration occur in the first place? 

War, famine and corruption are three existential threats that signal the upcoming destruction of any country. These three threats are almost always found in every Arab country, which creates immigration to other countries, specifically in Europe. The Arab Spring in 2011 caused protests en masse; Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, among others, were victims of the mass protests that erupted. These protests resulted in civil wars across three Muslim countries: Syria, Yemen and Libya, two of which are still at war to this day.

These civil wars have caused mass immigration from Arab-majority countries to Europe, especially Belgium, my home country. It is a widely held belief that if you import third-world people, you become a third-world country. In Belgium, we have seen this to be true: The new immigrants do not care about building productive futures in their host country; they only want to get money from the state and enjoy the present with no contribution to society whatsoever. Streets have become dirty, rapes and antisemitism have become more frequent and gang violence has never been at such a high level.

Too often I see videos of Jews being lynched or beaten by the newcomers as close as five blocks away from my house just because they wear kippot. Every day involves living in horror, fearing that you just might be in the next video. Your parents start to force you to not wear a kippah, but you secretly do and inside, there's doubt and weakness. It slowly became a habit for me to remove my kippah after entering a certain neighborhood or city, and after a year, I stopped wearing it completely, just because of that growing anxiety that I had strangely gotten used to.

The antisemitism in Belgium has increased vastly due to the justified war in Gaza. My mother got shouted at in the grocery store for wishing someone a “Good Shabbos,” and my sister had stones thrown at her by Muslim extremists on Shabbos because she was wearing a headscarf. During the walk back from our Shabbos meal one Friday night, we heard them shouting racial slurs at us and screaming “Free Palestine.”

Belgian society has shifted from a culture that imposes its superiority on others to one that opens its doors to other cultures too easily. That is how the culture in Belgium was shattered and completely broken. People became more politically radical and started to impose liberal laws that would treat newcomers better than Belgians. Immigrants have received free housing, monthly checks and free smartphones. These benefits give them the incentive not to work, but to merely enjoy the freedom they never had, basking in the ease of a sudden shift from a war-torn, authoritarian country to one filled with economic benefits and beautiful cities. While some use this opportunity to better themselves, many do not. Instead, they would rather be on the streets, harassing people in public and showing off their strength to assert power in their host country.

It works. The immigrants are highly respected due to the fear that they have imposed on the natives, using terrorist attacks, lynchings, verbal attacks and much more, just to intimidate everyone different from them. Belgians feel that they have given the radicals their country on a golden platter, just for it to return empty and crumbling. Many Belgians try to leave due to uncertainty and danger. Deep inside, Belgians feel like they are losing their country, but they need to keep this a secret before the mob will swiftly and surely destroy them.

Will Europe wake up?

It’s already too late.

Photo caption: Muslims praying in the Deira neighborhood of Dubai on a Friday

Photo credit: Levi Clancy