Europe's Jews looking rightward

The NYT discovers the large-scale selling out of European Jews. What, not all Jews are on the left? How can this be? The short answer is that the European left is getting at least as anti-Semitic as the European right. European Jews are not selling out, but have basically been driven out of the current European left.

Much of European Jewry considered the left its natural home in the 19th century and the early 20th century. The left supported Jewish emancipation and more liberal immigration policies in Western Europe, and Social Democrats and Communists opposed Russia's czars, who sponsored anti-Semitic pogroms, and Hitler.

Yes and no. Political anti-Semitism came from left and right alike. Socialist anti-Semitism was the rule, not the exception, in Europe. The populist, racist ideas surfacing in France in the 19th century weren't specifically left- or rightwing. The left was where the dreyfusards came from, but the left was not itself dreyfusard. (If Europe's Jews had always aligned themselves with things that sounded lefty, most Jews would have been National Socialists in 1930s Germany.)

In Antwerp, according to one study, at least 65 percent of those who were registered as Jews during World War II died during the Holocaust. According to another study, based on exit polls, at least 5 percent of the Jewish population there voted for Vlaams Belang last June, in the most recent elections.

Yes, and? It is equally absurd for Jews to be on the far left as on the far right. Not "these days" but since the 19th century. The far left has always been either anti-Semitic in the sense of associating Jews with all that's wrong with capitalism, or merely thinking (as Marx thought) that Judaism would be rendered irrelevant after the revolution. This is nothing new.

Henri Rosenberg, an Orthodox Jew whose Polish parents survived Hitler's camps, is unapologetic about his support. "Orthodox Jews are thinking in the same ways that non-Jews are thinking, that Vlaams Belang can protect them," he said. "Throughout the Middle Ages, Jews had to compromise with the societies in which they lived and this made it much easier for Orthodox Jews to go with the standard, 'Is it good for Jews or bad for Jews?' " he said. "Today, it seems it is good for Jews."

And Rosenberg is exactly right. And there's nothing wrong with Jews thinking this way, going back and forth between the "left" and the "right" depending on which side is welcoming to them. Liberal ideals, which tend to be "good for the Jews," are not necessarily going to be found on the left. That a few European Jews have gone to the far-right seems much less important than that many are moving to the center. That 5% of Antwerp's Jewish population (which is largely Orthodox and thus inherently conservative) voted for a formerly anti-Semitic party can hardly be called, as it is in the NYT, "extreme." I just don't understand how, when what "left" and "right" mean, not to mention what individual political parties mean, is continually changing, one can speak of a shocking move to the right on the part of European Jewry. Different groups are on the left or the right for different reasons. If things shift (i.e. as in this case, if the left becomes less favorable to Jews) then in time the voters will as well. This does not mean, let me repeat, that Europe's Jews have up and abandoned liberal ideals. This also does not mean that the time has come for American Jews to abandon the Democratic party. Different countries, different issues.

And, one final note, before I dive head-first into astro homework. This needs to be looked at: Why exactly might Jews in Antwerp or Paris care about Israel? They've got their lives in Western Europe, what do they care what's going on in Tel Aviv? Here's my guess: With the European left no longer looking appealing, and the European right having such a recent Nazi-sympathizing past, what's a Jew to do? The "compromise" Rosenberg speaks of starts to seem impossible, and leaving begins to look like the only option. Israel (or its friend America) start to look awfully appealing.