In Israel, the news of the considerable gain by the far-right extremist parties in Sunday’s 25 Iyar European Parliament election is a clear sign that it is time for the European Jewish community to head home to Israel.
Voters in 21 of the EU’s 28 nations went to the polls Sunday to elect their lawmakers to serve in the EU 751-seat legislature. The other seven countries in the bloc had already voted in a sprawling exercise of democracy that began Thursday in Britain and the Netherlands.
Making headlines is France’s extremist National Front party which took 26% of the vote, a staggering 4.1 million votes. Party leader Marine Le Pen called the success “the first step in a long march to liberty”.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called the win “a shock and an earthquake”.
Nigel Farage of the Euroskeptical UK Independence party was expecting a similar victory. If predictions prove correct, it will be the first time that an insurgent party tops the polls in that country.
In Denmark, with 95 percent of votes counted, the Social Democrats, the main government party, retained their five seats to remain the biggest party. But the big winner in the elections was the populist, opposition Danish People’s Party, which won three more seats, for a total of four.
In Germany, a year-old party that wants Germany to stop using the euro single currency reportedly won 6.7 percent of the vote. In Greece, the extreme right Golden Dawn party was third with 9.33 percent.
While the EU Parliament will not have a direct impact on day-to-day life for most, many feel it is a sign of the times and the extremist trend that is often associated with anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly head and for many, it is a clear sign that the good days for European Jewry may be a thing of the past.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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One Response
“In Israel, the news of the considerable gain by the far-right extremist parties in Sunday’s 25 Iyar European Parliament election is a clear sign that it is time for the European Jewish community to head home to Israel..”
…Where they can all live peacfully as Jews with rockets from Gaza falling on them, missles from Lebanon aimed at them, daily terror threats and frequent attacks and an armed Iran threatining to annihlate them r”l.
Bottom line it is still probably a whole lot safer for a Jew in western Europe than in the State of Israel.