Justin’s studying World War Two stuff in school right now. Earlier this week he asked me what kosher meat was. I explained the process by which kosher food was processed (as well as I could with limited knowledge and welcome to anyone who can email me a link that describes it clearly), and asked why he was wondering. He told me that he had been looking up stuff on Hitler and one of the anti-Jewish things he’d done was ban kosher meat in Germany.

Huh. Didn’t know that.

Read Lilek’s Friday Bleat this morning (upper right hand corner, on the link bar), and picked up on a link near the end that mentioned a disturbing news bit: at least five countries have banned kosher food production, and one of them (Switzerland) is considering halting all import of kosher meat.

Neat. How is an orthodox Jew supposed to live in Switzerland?

Pretty obvious answer.

The latest nation to join the movement is Holland, where the ruling was drafted as a law concerned with cruelty to animals.

The article is quite biased on the topic, but amongst the rhetoric there are actual facts, and they are undisputed.

I know the U.S. is no angel when it comes to issues of hate crimes, but I live here so I’m sort of stuck with dealing with that fact. On the other hand, we’re going to England (where anti-Semetic hate crimes have risen by 400% since 2000) in February, and I have to admit this whole thing makes me less enthusiastic about the trip. Somehow it just feels like you’re condoning it by going to the trouble to visit and spend your vacation money in a country with those kinds of problems.

I don’t know. It’s early and I’m babbling, but there you go.

A simplistic guess:

The rising tide of hard to assimilate immigrants and illegals in Europe -- mostly Muslims -- in countries that do a crappy job of assimilating anyone has raised the general level of xenophobia.

European governments are afraid of irritating the oil producers and greed-giddy over the money to be made providing oil-rich regimes with, well, anything they want. Nuclear bomb making tools, for instance, or the microdust material recently supplied to Saddam to make his war gases more effective. Bashing the Israelis gets them cheap points with the Saudis and Iraqis and Iranians. The anti-Kosher laws may fall under this category.

Europe has a large reservoir of 'soccer-hooligan' types, natural fodder for fascist movements.

I've been around Europe and the Mid-East some and I read far too much geo-political and military history crap.

So here's my 2 cents.

Europe is moving towards an autocratic-federal system about like what the United States had during the Civil War and World War Two. Due to the low birth rates in Western Europe, there is a need to import immigrants to provide tax revenues for the social support systems. Right now Turkic and Arab nations have both a colonial history and geographic proximity to Europe so thats were the workers come from.

So you have a massive influx of peoples with no national or social ties to the nations they live in, and the nations with these imigrant populations are nervous of what could happen if an Islamic movement kicked in.

And who does Europe love to blame everything on? The Jews.

Europe has been sticking to the Jews since around the 800s. The UK isn't as bad as France, Poland, Russia, Spain, Italy and Germany have been though.

So you have Jew hating, nervous peoples and nervous governments coupled with a movement to autocratic governments, which Europe invented, and a twisted Political Correctness that makes criminals out of anyone that defends themselves.

http://www.cyber-kitchen.com/rfcj/kosherfaq.htm
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/gloss.html#k

"Proper" or "ritually correct"; kashrut refers to ritually correct Jewish dietary practices. Traditional Jewish dietary laws are based on biblical legislation. Only land animals that chew the cud and have split hooves (sheep, beef; not pigs, camels) are permitted and must be slaughtered in a special way. Further, meat products may not be eaten with milk products or immediately thereafter. Of sea creatures, only those (fish) having fins and scales are permitted. Fowl is considered a meat food and also has to be slaughtered in a special manner."

Islamic Halal is similar.

http://www.wponline.org/vil/Books/SH_SL/islamic_law_regarding_food.htm

Hate Crimes

It's hard to tell from a percentage if anti-group crimes are really getting out of control.

http://www.masnet.org/newsviews/2002-11/26/story1.htm

Anti-Muslim hate crimes went up 1600%. From 28 events to 481 events.

481 events in a population of 4-7 million (the numbers are all conflicting on Islamic populations in the US).

I bet if you go to any Indian Reservation, theres more Indian on Indian "hate crimes" in a year than on all of the Muslims in the US.

The tide of anti-semitism in Europe has been pretty discouraging. I will say that I think these sorts of bans are less meant as anti-semitism than that they have anti-semitic effect as a "happy coincidence."

The Europeans have been far more willing to outright ban stuff they think is Wrong (or impose things they think are Right) than the US is, largely because US law tends to be a competition of interests, and EU law tends to be the whimsy-du-jour of the Eurocrats and their heightened intellectualism.

Thus, animal cruelty laws are passed willy-nilly, without other balancing factors (religious freedoms, countervening scientific opinion -- or, yes, big-money cosmetic company donations) being allowed to get in the way.

On the other hand, if someone pointed out, as these rules were being drafted, that they would cause serious difficulties for observant Jews, I don't think it would have provoked many gut-wrenching reconsiderations. More likely some smiles in some quarters.