Here’s the least surprising news story of the still-young year: Jewish immigration to Israel from Western Europe reached an all-time high in 2015.
According to the Jewish Agency, as a link to the global Jewish community, 9,880 European Jews left their homes for Israel — the vast majority, close to 8,000, from France. That’s twice the level of just two years ago.
The reason’s obvious. Much of Western Europe has seen a definite and disturbing rise in anti-Semitism over the past 15 years. And nowhere more so than France — scene of a growing number of anti-Jewish attacks.
Just last week, in fact, a machete-wielding teen attacked a Jewish teacher in Marseille. And last year saw the attacks on a kosher grocery store and the magazine Charlie Hebdo in which 17 died.
Jews make up less than 1 percent of France’s population, yet 51 percent of all hate-crime attacks there last year targeted Jews.
It’s reached a point where some officials have suggested that Orthodox Jews not wear a yarmulke, or skullcap, in public.
Most of the predators are Muslim extremists, but anti-Jewish rhetoric also regularly comes from the growing ultra-nationalist ranks.
Other countries, including Britain, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, have seen similar anti-Jewish targeting.
Europe didn’t see a mass migration of Jews even in the face of Hitler’s vow to annihilate them, and it’s unlikely to see one now.
That doesn’t change the ugly fact that — 70 years after the end of the Holocaust — Jews no longer feel safe in the streets of democratic Western nations.