December 8, 2011

A peek at hatred and indifference in Europe

For 10 days, 13-year-old Oceane Sluijzer didn't leave her house, terrified, afraid to go out.
"Until now I was never afraid to say that I'm Jewish, but it's different now."
This was the experience reported in YNet News for a Jewish girl in Belgium after five Muslim girls, her schoolmates, humiliated her in public and assaulted her, grabbing her hair and slamming her head against their knees, saying:
"Dirty Jew – go to your country."
The police were beyond indifferent. They advised she "keep quiet about the incident" and even "avoid going to the hospital." They suggested:
"Don't say that it's anti-Semitism."
The educational system's response was similar. For 10 days no one at the school bothered to check on her. When told that she would not be returning to a school incapable of protecting her, the principal acted as if it was the ideal solution. Oceane and her older sister are the only Jewish girls who attended the school.

Apparently, the abuse was nothing new. Once the girls of Moroccan descent had discovered Oceane's Jewish roots, they would regularly address her with exclamations of contempt. They told her:
"We're Arab. We don't want you to be part of our group."
According to Oceane, these girls created a balance of fear threatening everyone.
"I got used to not having the Belgian girls defend me, because I knew they were scared too."
The incident was not reported in Belgium and elected representatives, except a Jewish MP, were silent, illustrating the problematic situation in the country.

It's not just Jewish girls, however. Recently in the UK, a gang of Somalian women repeatedly kicked a young woman in the head. They shouted "kill the white slag." The incident was caught on video (see below) The women could have received five years in prison, but the judge suspended their sentences. They walked free from court after he heard they were "not used to being drunk" because they were Muslim.



There is also the proliferation of rape cases, such as in Norway.



Jews are singled out, however, across the continent, where multiculturalism dictates, yet freedom from discrimination does not seem to apply to Jewish minorities. In France, a young student was beaten into a coma for being Jewish, and in Switzerland three youngsters attacked a rabbi's assistant. In Norway, an independent, quantitative study (in Norwegian) was published on racism and anti-Semitism in Oslo high schools. It revealed that 33 percent of Jewish students reported harassment at least two to three times a month (compared to 5.3 percent of Muslim students). One news article said:
More than half of the students, 52 percent, said they’d experienced that the word jøde (Jew) was used to describe something negative. Fully 41 percent confirmed having heard jokes about Jews at school and 35 percent had noticed generally negative commentaries on Jews. As many as 5 percent had heard other students deny that the Holocaust occurred during World War II.
[...]
City government leader Stian Berger Røsland, who was among those ordering the overview after Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported on anti-Semitism in the schools last winter, said he was shocked and deeply disturbed by the findings.
The list is virtually endless. It's too bad that some wish to downplay it, like Ambassador Gutman, or fearfully stay silent. Others are so wedded to an anti-Israel ideology that they are blind to anything event that might damage the political cause. These supposedly principled, educated defenders of human rights loudly profess to defend values enshrined in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, yet engage in a selective, discriminatory application.

1 comment:

  1. Oh it's bad all right. The tendency to sweep it under the rug makes me crazy. Zero tolerance is the only way to deal with this stuff but good luck ever getting to that in Europe.

    ReplyDelete