WhatsappWhat is necessary is something radical and unquestionably controversial: a ban on all immigration from countries in which more than 50% of the population is antisemitic.
The United States has, for all intents and purposes, never had an antisemitism problem. But it has imported one. Post-Holocaust Western Europe had largely overcome its antisemitism problem. It, too, imported one.
These terrible facts are, for various reasons, routinely elided. Nonetheless, the reality cannot be denied: Mass immigration from countries in which antisemitism is endemic and normalized has made Jewish life in the United States and Western Europe increasingly unlivable. If such immigration continues, it is unlikely that Jewish life on either continent can be sustained. The options will be collaborationism or mass aliyah.
However, there was a slight ray of hope last week when JNS reported that British Conservative Party members had called on the education secretary to deport antisemitic foreign students. The Members of Parliament sent a letter stating the obvious:
Too many institutions that have spent years suppressing legitimate free speech and debate in the name of “diversity and inclusion” have decided to turn a blind eye to genuine harassment and intimidation when it is directed against Jewish people. Failure to act sends a dangerous message to Jewish students and academics that their safety is not valued, and to perpetrators that they can harass Jewish students and staff with impunity. … We can, and must, do better. Enough is enough.
This is a good sign, but one must be pessimistic as to its feasibility. The majority of antisemitic students on campuses in both Western Europe and the United States are either leftists or Muslims. For various reasons, these communities enjoy cultural immunity on both continents. Moreover, most of those tasked with enforcing laws and codes of conduct on campus either agree with the campus antisemites or are too cowardly to face them down.
As a result, the antisemites are, for the most part, exempt from accountability for both their words and actions. When they unleash bloody mayhem, they almost always get away with it.
It is true that the Trump administration has taken halting steps towards deporting the worst of the campus racists. Unfortunately, enforcement has been sporadic and, generally speaking, stymied by authorities on campus and in the courts. The impunity could be ended, but those with the means lack the will, and vice versa.
There is also a larger issue: This is not only a campus problem. In fact, the campus is the most visible but, in many ways, the least dangerous of the antisemites’ arenas of combat. The real danger is in the massive antisemitic immigrant communities in America and Europe that can conquer and colonize the streets in their tens of thousands and unleash murderous violence on Jewish communities.
Indeed, we are only a few short steps—and perhaps less than that—from a full-scale pogrom such as already occurred in France and other European countries. Such a pogrom will likely come in New York City following the installation of Zohran Mamdani as mayor in January. Mamdani has already stocked his prospective administration with Jew-haters, and the idea that any effective action will be taken against an antisemitic riot is, quite simply, ludicrous.
It is clear, then, that the importation of antisemites, whether foreign students or immigrants, must be ended if the Jews are to survive on either continent. If it is not, then Jews will be trapped in a pincer movement between leftist and Muslim antisemites on one side, and the rising antisemitic far-right on the other. Jewish life of any kind will become, unquestionably, outright impossible. It will be the ghetto or the one-way El Al flight.
In such circumstances, the deportation of antisemitic foreign students can only be an initial, if essential, step. What is necessary is something far more radical and unquestionably controversial: a ban on all immigration from countries in which more than 50% of the population is antisemitic.
It’s not impossible. Statistics on antisemitic attitudes in various countries are readily available from organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, and selective bans on immigration from specific countries have already been enacted twice by the Trump administration.
Unquestionably, certain heads will explode at the prospect of such a policy, and charges of racism will inevitably follow.
In such cases, the responses should be obvious: 1) Such a ban is based not on race but on ideology. 2) There are more than enough antisemites in the United States and Western Europe already. 3) Authorities on both continents are under no obligation to import any more of them. 4) The harm done by current policies to already present Jewish populations is clear. 5) The Jews should not be sacrificed on the altar of liberal shibboleths about open borders, which were never sacrosanct until more or less yesterday.
Moreover, this is not just a question of saving American or Western European Jewry. It is also about saving America and Western Europe themselves. If history has proven anything, it is that modern societies cannot survive Jew-hatred. They either end benighted and backward, or outright destroy themselves. We need only look to the nations in which antisemitism is endemic today to see that this is an undeniable and universal truth.
If the United States and Western Europe want to save their Jews and themselves, the gloves must come off. Decisive and radical action must be taken. Ironically, if it is not taken, then the Jews will at least have somewhere to go. Americans and Western Europeans, by contrast, will be condemned by history and doomed to decline. There is no Israel for them. For this, if for no other reason, they should end the importation of antisemitism for good and then turn themselves to the daunting task of suppressing it at home.
