Europe Looks to Israel for Guidance on Global Immigrant Crisis

European ambassadors met with Israeli experts in Tel Aviv this week to discuss the security and national identity issues created by the mass Muslim immigration into Europe. 

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) hosted the leaders and presented a new study it compiled titled: “The Migration Wave into Europe: An Existential Dilemma.”

Fiamma Nirenstein, a senior fellow at JCPA and editor of the study, said that “the crisis is indeed existential for Europe, and this is precisely why ambassadors are searching for answers. The Jewish state deals with many of the same challenges, yet has prevailed in maintaining a clear national identity, while at the same time securing its own security interests,” according to the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS).

Nirenstein told JNS that “Israel has proven that it can export its knowledge on how to deal with difficult problems such as terrorism. Europeans recognize this and are now inclined to hear whether Israel can provide useful insights into this new problem, which threatens the very nature of Europe as a continent with Western ideals.”

Some of the Israeli experts in law, security, immigration and ethics who authored the JCPA study presented to the European officials included:

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, formerly director-general of the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs and head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence.

Dr. Ehud Rosen specializes in modern political Islam, focusing on the ideology and history of the Muslim Brotherhood. He received his PhD from SOAS, University of London. He is currently a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Ambassador Dore Gold served as director-general of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Previously, he served as foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations (1997–1999), and as an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Prof. Asa Kasher, Professor of Ethics and Philosophy at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Kasher is also co-author of the Israel Defense Forces Code of Ethics, “The Spirit of the IDF: Values and Basic Principles,” and in 2000 was awarded the Israel Prize for his work in philosophy and ethics.

In his presentation, Kasher addressed the need to maintain “proportionality” when deciding how many migrants to accept. He insisted that nobody should be “indifferent to human suffering, including the suffering of migrants, yet at the same time he said states have a national, cultural and sometimes religious identity that should be preserved,” according to JNS.

“States have a right to maintain their identity,” said Kasher. “That means they have a right to stop others from taking steps that jeopardize that identity.”

Is it too much to describe this event as “The Word of the Lord shall go forth from Zion?” Perhaps, but with all of their anti-Israel rhetoric and politically-correct slander toward the Jewish State, it is ironic, and appropriate, that Europe would now look to Israel to try and figure out how to cope with their own national security and identity crises.