On Thursday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about the recent synagogue shooting in Germany and the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. Video and partial transcript below:
Over Yom Kippur, there were a bevy of anti-Semitic incidents — as we have become used to. In the United States, there [was] apparently a fire set on the grounds of a synagogue in Brooklyn, which has become sort of rote, frankly. We’ve seen a bunch of these sorts of attacks in New York, this Brooklyn synagogue was apparently — again somebody who set a fire, right there on the front steps during Yom Kippur, according to the police. New York City has seen a massive surge in hate crimes, many of them have been targeting Jews.
Also over Yom Kippur, there [was] an attack on a shul in Germany. The attack on the shul in Germany was by a white supremacist, who [livestreamed] this thing on Amazon. It was hideous, obviously. According to the UK Daily Mail:
A gunman in a German synagogue rants about feminism, immigration and the Holocaust before he shot two people dead in a live-streamed, anti-Semitic rampage on Judaism’s holiest day.
The shooter killed a man and woman, threw a grenade into a Jewish cemetery, and left explosives near the synagogue in Halle after failing to force his way inside while worshipers prayed on Yom Kippur …
[The suspect] was later arrested after trying to flee in a taxi, according to German media.
Germany’s interior minister said it appeared to be an anti-Semitic attack, possibly motivated by right-wing extremism, while Chancellor Angela Merkel offered her ‘deep sympathy’.
[The suspect] was wearing military fatigues and a helmet camera, and he shot a woman dead in the street after she confronted him outside the synagogue where about 80 people were praying.
Now I happen to be in Israel right now, and I will just note that many of the same people who claim that Israel is the rationale for anti-Semitism — the reason people hate Jews is because of Israel, because Israel is so cruel and terrible, and because of how they treat the Palestinians and all of us — these are the same people, where if Israel didn’t exist, people would still be shooting Jews, there would just be no place for Jews to go. The fact is that thousands of Jews every year are leaving Europe, and good for them, because Europe is becoming a hellhole for Jews.
Everybody knows this. The Wall Street Journal has reported on it, the New York Times has reported on it. It is not safe for Jews in places like France. It is increasingly not safe for Jews in places like Sweden, places like Germany, [and] places like Great Britain. People are leaving en masse, [and] where they are going is to the state of Israel because the state of Israel is still a safe haven for the Jewish people. And the same people who are claiming that it’s only Israel’s presence that is causing anti-Semitism seemed to forget that Jews were killed in the millions when Israel didn’t exist, specifically because no country would take in the Jews, and because the Jews had no place to go. The British Empire was banning the Jews from entering the nascent State of Israel, before it was the state of Israel — from entering British Palestine during the actual holocaust itself.
So for all the talk about why Israel was bad, why it shouldn’t exist, why Israel is terrible and horrible and all of us; the reason that Israel exists is because of stuff like this. It’s because Jews have been the victims of anti-Semitism, will continue to be the victims of anti-Semitism, and so long as people keep maintaining the absolute stupid fiction that if Israel didn’t exist everybody would be nice to the — you know how historically accurate you’d have to be to actually believe that, if Israel didn’t exist, everyone would be nice to the Jews?
Within living memory, three-quarters of the Jewish population on planet Earth was slaughtered. So I’m going to go “no” on that. The state of Israel wasn’t there then. It’s a “no” on that. It’s just it’s absurdity at the highest level. Israel is not the cause of anti-Semitism; Israel is a place where people are fleeing anti-Semitism, and that continues to be the truth, certainly in Europe.
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