Sharon Urges Europe’s Jews to Immigrate to Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in Italy for a three-day official visit on the heels of attacks on Jewish temples and schools in nearby nations, is urging Europe’s Jews to immigrate to Israel as the best way to fight anti-Semitism.

But Sharon’s comments, made in a meeting with the heads of Italy’s centuries-old Jewish communities, waded into the long-standing debate between those Jews who hold that all Jews should live in Israel and those who believe that it is just as important to foster Jewish life in Europe.

“The best solution to anti-Semitism is immigration to Israel,” Sharon told the Italians in a meeting Monday night. “It is the only place on Earth where Jews can live as Jews.”

Tullia Zevi, the former head of Rome’s Italian Jewish community, disagreed.

Zevi, whose family fled Benito Mussolini’s Italy in World War II, said she refused to be made to feel guilty for choosing to return to her homeland and help reconstitute its Jewish community.

“I had an urge, a nostalgia, a duty to return,” said Zevi, who was present at the meeting with Sharon. “Since I’d had the luck to survive the Shoah [the Holocaust], my duty was to return to my homeland and help rebuild a Jewish community in shambles.”

Zevi said she was not surprised by Sharon’s comments but hoped that Israel and Jews in the diaspora can agree to disagree.

“My family has been in the diaspora for 2,000 years,” Zevi said. “So I believe that the diaspora is a reality and a side of civilization that has given great fruits and cultural values to the countries where Jews have been embedded.”

Sharon’s comments came at a time when the Jewish community in Europe is reeling from twin car bombings of two synagogues in Istanbul, Turkey, that killed six Jews and 19 others, including the two bombers. Jewish community leaders there vowed that they would not be driven from their ancestral homes and said the perpetrators clearly hoped to divide Turks -- Jews and Muslims -- something they said they would not permit.

Sharon’s aides said his remarks were not meant to offend European Jews.

“He didn’t say ‘give up’ and move to Israel,” Israeli spokesman Ofer Bavly said. “He said Jews will never feel safe unless they are in their home.”

Sharon went on in his speech to joke with members of the audience that they didn’t seem to be rushing to the door to move to Israel, Bavly said, and he urged them to at least send their children there for a year of studies.

The former army general and head of the right-wing Likud Party has repeatedly made his desire to bring an additional 1 million Jews to Israel a central platform of his government.

Sharon last year told French Jews they should move to Israel. Shortly after terrorist bombings in Casablanca in May, Israeli officials pressed Moroccan Jews to abandon that historic community and go to Israel.

Some Israelis find such a potential influx troubling, given that the desert nation’s natural resources, such as water, are already strained to accommodate the current population of 6 million. Some worry that Sharon’s vision would, inevitably, relocate Jews to settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, lands claimed by the Palestinians.

Sharon is in Rome to solicit support from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for Israel’s efforts to deflect criticism from the European Union over the Jewish state’s dealings with the Palestinians. Sharon declared Italy to be Israel’s “best friend in Europe.”

Berlusconi has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, even when it has meant contradicting European Union policy -- this as the Italian prime minister holds the presidency of the EU. The European Union has criticized Sharon’s building of a wall in portions of the West Bank to block potential suicide bombers and insists on a continued recognition of the Palestinians’ elected president, Yasser Arafat.

Unlike most visiting dignitaries, Sharon is not scheduled to meet with Pope John Paul II, who on the eve of the Israeli visitor’s arrival criticized the building of the wall. “The Holy Land doesn’t need walls, but bridges,” the pope said.

No one disputes the rise of anti-Semitic incidents in Europe, although Zevi and others say it’s hard to know where opposition to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians ends and anti-Semitism begins. The burning of a Jewish school in Paris over the weekend was the latest example.

Sharon has said that foreign criticism of Israel’s tactics in handling the three-year Palestinian uprising amounts to a new type of anti-Semitism that denies Israel’s “birthright to exist.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, who toured the wrecked synagogues in Istanbul over the weekend, blamed the attacks in part on anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe. A recent poll of Europeans listed Israel as the No. 1 threat to peace in the world, a survey that shocked and outraged Israelis.

Sharon said “a great wave of anti-Semitism” threatened Jews; weakening Israel, he cautioned, will prevent Jews from living “the lives they live today.” The only answer is to move to Israel, he reiterated.

Other Jews in Europe took exception to Sharon’s remarks.

Edward Serotta, who runs a research center in Vienna, noted that, while anti-Semitism is real and must be monitored, Jewish communities are thriving in many parts of Europe, especially in countries of the former Soviet Bloc, where they were repressed for years but now have thousands of Jewish children in Jewish schools and summer camps.

Interest among non-Jews, he said, has also grown, as witnessed in ticket and book sales involving Jewish theater, history, music and literature.

“With the EU about to expand into 10 more countries, with 10 more Jewish communities, you would think Sharon might applaud these small but really spunky and proud Jewish communities, rather than telling them to pack their bags and jump on the first El Al flight to Israel,” said Serotta, director of the Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation.

Said Rome’s Zevi: “I think Jews have a responsibility and duty in the countries where we live.

“It is not wrong for the diaspora to continue to promote the crosscurrents of culture. For Israel, the existence of a diaspora is a guarantee.”