Are these the darkest days for Europe’s Jews since the Holocaust?

[Behind the Aegis]

Today French Jews live in fear. The day after Yohan Cohen, Yoav Hattab, Philipe Braham and Francois-Michel Saada were slaughtered while doing their Shabbat shopping, Paris’ synagogues were half empty. Many congregants were too scared to show up. This week, some kosher delis and restaurants in the city’s Jewish quarter remain closed while those open are unusually empty.

Some 5,000 French police and soldiers have been posted outside Jewish schools, guarding against the next evil – perhaps a repeat of the 2012 attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse, which left three children and a teacher dead.

Or last month’s gang rape by Muslims of a 19-year-old woman in Paris, who was told she was being attacked “because you are Jewish”.

Before the term “Je suis Juif” (“I am a Jew”) was coined in defiance of the supermarket attack, “Juif, la France n’est pas a toi” (“Jew, France is not yours”) was the chant of choice. Before Parisians held pens aloft to honour free speech, fans of French anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonné made the Nazi quenelle salute.

For French Islamists, it's open season on Jews. Rather than live among mad men violently opposed to their existence, the country’s 500,000 Jews are upping sticks in record numbers. Some 7,000 left for Israel in 2014 with 10,000 predicted in 2015, bidding adieu to a country that's struggling to protect them.

more: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/are-these-the-darkest-days-for-europes-jews-since-the-holocaust-9978034.html