the new jews © Baron Frankal
Non-discrimination and respect for fundamental human rights are central tenets of the European Union and the stabilising foundation underpinning the prosperity and rights of all its citizens.
As a bomb scare causes the evacuation of a major European institution, a rather senior manager recalls that he saw six Islamic men on the pavement when he came back from lunch. No-one raises an eyebrow.
They look different, they smell different, they’re everywhere and they don’t come from here. In the world of the war on “terror”, suspicion is not a far-right monopoly: everyone is a little edgy, a bit wary. New europe is reminded of being on a bus in Jerusalem at a time of real bombs and real body parts being blown onto tv screens every night. An Arab youth, probably late for a date, runs suddenly off the bus. Instinctively the driver stops the engine, and every single passenger bends down to look under the seat, behind the bins, in the racks. Nice liberal new europe included. Years later, high up on a climbing frame with young son, a large and rather strange winged insect lands nearby. Despite the greatest respect for life of all kinds, the first instinct is to kill it. The urge to protect one’s own is overwhelming, and giving the benefit of the doubt to this exotic creature may end up with a child stung, bitten or worse.
Without the inevitability of what was to come, it is not difficult to find strong parallels with the Jews of Europe in the 1920s. The elders, first generation, dress in strange clothing, don’t mix, have their own shops, language, music and culture. The youth, for the most part, assimilate, insidiously, speaking the local language, blending into their European surroundings, climbing the middle classes. The Jews were some 10% of Poland’s population then, and are some 10% of France’s now, although they provide a full 50% of its convicted criminals. And if it’s not North Africans, it’s Indians, Pakistanis, Turks, Albanians, Chechens or so many other Muslims throughout our continent. The unity and threat of these others was shown then by the stab in the back, and now by 9/11 – and those Spanish trains 911 days later. Suddenly, it’s us and them, and though we’re all for live and let live, shockingly normal people don’t really want too many of them in their son’s school class, or a mosque opening too close to home. And as for the headscarf, well isn’t it a bit repugnant to women’s rights ? However for such women, across swathes of Italy and France now, they simply can’t go out dressed as they wish. European streets are dangerous places. Schools closed to them. In this polarised world, extremists find open minds everywhere: both the radical immams and the Istvan Csurkas of this world. Jörg Haider, Jean-Marie le Pen and Christoph Blocher are all Parliamentarians if not members of government.
For some of its citizens, nothing that any colomnist in this or any other newspaper writes relates in any way to their lives. For some of its citizens, Europe is a dark place.
First published in the budapest sun, 14 october 2004,