The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) agrees with former Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister (2018-19) and current Italian Senator and Federal Secretary of the Northern League Party, Matteo Salvini, who has observed that astonishingly high levels of anti-Semitism in Muslim societies means that Muslim immigration to Western countries results in increased anti-Semitism in those countries.
In an interview this week, Mr. Salvini said that “some academics and media are mobilized against Israel and they create hate of Israel to justify anti-Semitism.… There is, of course, anti-Semitism of small political minority groups — Nazis and communists.… But, now the massive presence in Europe of migrants coming from Muslim countries, among whom are many fanatics who are getting the full support of certain intellectuals, is spreading anti-Semitism in Italy as well.”
Repudiating the Left’s argument that the rise of far-right parties explains the spike in anti-Semitism, Mr. Salvini observed, “There is far-right anti-Semitism, and there is a far-left anti-Semitism, which is institutionalized.… Think of Jeremy Corbin, or the left activists in Germany, who didn’t want to be like the Nazis and ended up boycotting Israeli products. I am sure, however, that the high number of Muslims in Europe is the main cause for the current anti-Semitism.”
Senator Salvini noted that his party has shunned the far Right, with whom it has “no relations whatsoever.… Those who believe in Neo-Nazi and Neo-fascist anti-Semitism are our enemies as those who believe in the anti-Semitism of the radical left and radical Islam.… It’s an obligation to fight all those, who claim that the Jews are the Nazis of our time.… I spent nine years at the European Parliament and I can say that the European institutions — let alone the institutions [of] the UN — are no friends of Israel.… The European Parliament has today a majority that is not friendly to Israel,” (Thomas D. Williams, ‘Matteo Salvini: Muslim Immigration Is ‘Main Cause’ of Resurgent Anti-Semitism,’ Breitbart, January 19, 2020).
Mr. Salvini’s observations are corroborated by detailed surveys of Muslim opinion, which display stratospherically high levels of anti-Semitism in Muslim countries, which produce immigrants to Western countries.
The 2014 ADL Global 100 survey of anti-Semitism has also found alarming levels of anti-Semitism in Muslim-majority societies. In Egypt, for example, with whom Israel has been officially at peace since 1979, 75% of people harbor anti-Semitic attitudes, as do 69% of Turks, 81% of Jordanians, 92% of Iraqis, and 80% of Qataris and Moroccans. Among Palestinian Arabs, the result is even worse: 93% of Palestinian Arabs harbor anti-Semitic attitudes.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein and Chair Mark Levenson, Esq. said, “It is obvious that immigrants from predominantly anti-Semitic societies will inevitably cause levels of anti-Semitism to rise in Western countries to which they emigrate and which till now, at least, have harbored historically far lower levels of anti-Semitism.
“The tragic but undeniable fact is that, while anti-Semitic attitudes are a minority or fringe position in Western societies, they are the mainstream, dominant view in any Muslim society anyone cares to name.
“For this reason, it is a tragic error to assume that immigrants from all countries are basically the same. The fact is that an immigrant from Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq or Egypt is much more likely to be anti-Semitic than not, something which is simply not the case if one speaks of immigrants from European or South American countries.
“Vetting immigrants for anti-Semitic attitudes should be an integral part of the process of determining whether someone is permitted to be admitted to the U.S. as an immigrant.”
