By Henry Srebrnik, [Calgary] Jewish Free Press

On December 5, 2016, I published an article, “The ‘No-Go’ Bastions inside European Cities,” in the Journal Pioneer, a Prince Edward Island newspaper, describing the ever increasing number of so-called “no-go” areas in European cities. 

These are neighbourhoods with largely Muslim refugee populations, places where even the police fear to enter.

Not surprisingly, I was lambasted by local politically correct people who refuse to accept the truth.

One notorious Israel-basher who never fails to attack the country called my piece “dangerous, disappointing and misleading,” and maintained that it “suffers from stereotypical biases and other inaccuracies.”

Another writer seemed to think that I considered all European Muslims responsible for the acts of a few who engage in violence. Of course not. Clearly, the vast majority are law-abiding people who want to get on with their lives.

But when comes to no-go areas, it looks like I was right, because now even Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who has admitted more than a million asylum seekers to the country since 2015 has acknowledged their existence. 

Merkel waited until this February to publicly refer to “no-go areas,” high-crime, largely Muslim immigrant neighborhoods across Europe where state authorities fear to tread, and the very existence of which have long been furiously denied by liberals as an Islamophobic invention. 

“There are such areas and one has to call them by their name and do something about them,” Merkel said.

She also denounced “another form of anti-Semitism” emerging in Germany. “We have a new phenomenon, as we have many refugees among whom there are, for examples, people of Arab origin, who bring another form of anti-Semitism into the country.” Her comments were broadcast by Israel TV's Channel 10 on April 22.

Merkel also made a statement on January 27, Holocaust Memorial Day in Germany. “It is inconceivable and shameful that no Jewish institution can exist without police protection, whether it is a school, a kindergarten or a synagogue,” she remarked.

In fact Germany has become a very dangerous place for Jews. Over the past year, the country has witnessed an increase of anti-Semitic attacks. In April, video of a Syrian refugee attacking a man wearing a kippa, or Jewish skullcap, while calling him a Jew in Arabic, prompted outrage in Berlin. 

Merkel condemned it as a “disgrace,” while thousands of Germans of different faith groups, including Muslims, marched in solidarity with the Jewish community across the country.

Since then, other disturbing stories have emerged in the German news media: an Afghan boy greeting his teacher with “Heil Hitler” and proclaiming that he, too, was Aryan, and a group of Syrian refugees calling the Holocaust “a Jewish conspiracy,” explaining that they had learned that in school back home.

Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, stated that the incidents “are more aggressive, more pronounced, and directly affect Jewish people with insults or attacks.” 

Many of those who arrived in Germany came from nations where anti-Semitism is widespread, including Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. But officials, analysts and Jewish and Muslim leaders say Germany has been slow to recognize the risks.

Christian Democratic legislator Stephan Harbarth told Die Welt that the government must be able to wield the ultimate threat of deportation. “Anyone who incites anti-Semitic hate and rejects Jewish life in Germany cannot stay in our country,” Harbarth contended. 

Sawsan Chebli, state secretary for federal affairs for the city of Berlin, a Muslim of Palestinian background, has suggested that young migrants who have chanted anti-Israel slogans in demonstrations in Germany should be required to visit a concentration camp memorial.

It was the sight of Arab immigrants, including Palestinian-Germans like herself, burning an Israeli flag underneath the Brandenburg Gate in December while chanting “Death to Israel” that moved Chebli to speak up.

The German government has now appointed a commissioner for anti-Semitism. Felix Klein is the first person to hold the job, which was created by Germany’s Bundestag this year.

“We’ve seen anti-Semitic cases recently all over Germany,” he told the Washington Post’s Berlin bureau chief, Griff Witte, in an April 25 interview. 

He pointed to “the great influx of refugees and people who came to Germany that were raised and educated in countries that are still in the state of war with Israel, or that have been brought up with certain perceptions of Jews in Israel that are totally unacceptable to a German society.”

Klein stated that “to a certain extent, the cultural dimension that is linked with the influx was underestimated. Now we have to deal with it.”

It’s beyond ironic that the country responsible for the Holocaust has now, in a manner of speaking, “imported” new forms of anti-Semitism while it was trying to alleviate the plight of refugees fleeing civil war in Syria and elsewhere. It’s certainly a demonstration of the law of unintended consequences.