The European Migration Crisis

The world is presently experiencing a wave of migration of a magnitude unseen since World War II. In Europe, thousands – sometimes many thousands – arrive by land, sea, and air each day from war zones and failed or failing states in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The International Organization on Migration reports that more than 430,000 migrants have reached Europe by sea so far in 2015, and more have likely entered undetected. This figure represents twice the number of migrants who reached Europe in all of 2014. Germany, France, Sweden, and Italy are receiving the majority of applications for asylum. German officials have raised the expected total of new immigrants there to 1 million. The crisis is far from over, as migrants and refugees continue to enter Europe, primarily from Greece and Italy, and to transit through countries including Macedonia, Serbia, Austria, and Hungary in search of protection.

Migrant Casualties

The death toll of migrants in or seeking to reach Europe has surpassed 2,500 this year alone. The IOM estimates that over the past year, an average of 10 migrants have died each day. That figure is likely an underestimate, as the total number of those who have perished at EU land borders is still unknown. The IOM has warned of a likely spike in deaths to come, projecting that 2,000 or more additional migrants will perish by the end of the year.

Who are the Migrants and Refugees?

The biggest driver of the crisis by far is Syria. Four million people, nearly a fifth of Syria’s population, have fled the country since the war began in 2011.

It’s not hard to understand why Syrians are fleeing. Bashar al-Assad’s regime has targeted civilians ruthlessly, including with chemical weapons and barrel bombs; ISIS has subjected Syrians to murder, torture, crucifixion, sexual slavery, and other appalling atrocities; and other groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra have tortured and killed Syrians as well. Most of these Syrian refugees have ended up in under-funded and crowded camps in neighboring countries. (Millions fled to Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.) But seeing little future for their families in the camps, and knowing they may never be able to return home, many have decided to set out on the dangerous and uncertain journey for a better life in Europe.

But it’s not just Syria. Older, longer-running conflicts have displaced, for instance, some 1.1 million refugees from Somalia and 2.59 million from Afghanistan. Political and sectarian repression in other countries has contributed as well. Many families in Eritrea, for example, are fleeing dictatorship; Nigerians are fleeing Boko Haram violence and weak governance. Finally, there are a great many economic migrants who quit their homelands and travel to wealthy countries in search of better opportunities for themselves and their families. Some of these migrants are European, seeking opportunities in countries with stronger economies and more developed social welfare systems. While not all those who are fleeing meet the threshold definition of an asylum seeker or refugee, they all must be properly screened to make that determination.

Political Reactions

In the European Union, there is no universal standard for asylum. There is no agreed-upon list of countries in conflict, and there are no centralized EU processing centers where asylum seekers can be housed, fed, and screened to determine eligibility.

The gravity of the crisis and public concern have mounted to such levels that an EU emergency meeting took place September 14. EU interior ministers, however, failed to reach unanimous agreement on a plan for binding quotas to relocate 120,000 refugees and take the strain off Greece, Italy, and Hungary,

Several European governments, including Germany and France, want to come to an agreement to create quotas, distribute refugees and establish additional “hot spots” or “welcome centers” in Greece and Italy where migrants can be housed, fed, and screened.

If the EU member states are unable to adopt concrete measures that can be implemented to ease the burden on already exhausted countries and to provide the proper protection owed refugees and asylum seekers, the migrant death toll is sure to continue increasing.

In the meantime, the crisis is testing European unity. Several countries have tried to restrict refugees from getting to, or staying within, their borders. Hungary has erected a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia in an effort to prevent refugees from crossing into Europe over land. It also announced new laws that will make it a crime to damage the fence or cross it, and will make illegal border crossing punishable by up to three years in prison. The Hungarian government also shut down train service to Germany in an apparent effort to discourage refugees from using Hungary as a transit country on their way to seek asylum there; it resumed train service under growing public pressure.

Austria has now introduced border checks along its internal border with the rest of Europe to search for refugees and other immigrants being smuggled into the country. Although the government claims that the checks are a humanitarian measure intended to prevent tragedies, like the recent death of 71 people who suffocated in the back of a smuggler’s truck, critics have charged that they constitute a violation of the EU’s open-border policy.

“It is inappropriate to talk about mandatory quotas, calculated on an extremely bureaucratic basis, almost like an accountancy exercise, I might say, without consulting member states,” said Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. His views echoed those of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, who said he did not “want to wake up one day and have 50,000 people here about whom we know nothing.”

Danish police announced September 10 they would no longer detain refugees aiming to travel through the country to Sweden, after days of chaos at its borders with Germany as security forces tried to curb the rising inflow. In the week following September 6, some 3,200 people entered the country as a wave of migrants, many of them Syrian, pushed north through Europe in the hope of refuge. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven attacked Denmark’s “unfortunate decision” to send trains onward to its neighbor without attempting to register anyone on board, as the pressure of the greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War pushed EU asylum rules to a breaking point.

The EU Commission has proposed cutting EU funds to countries rejecting the quota system, and Germany gave support to the idea, with Interior minister Thomas de Maiziere quoted as saying, “We need to talk about ways of exerting pressure.”

Civil Society Reactions

Reactions by civil society differ from country to country. Thousands of ordinary Germans have volunteered to help the refugees. Some have filled up their cars with relief supplies, and distributed clothes, food, diapers, and toys to the new arrivals. Others have offered German lessons, translation, and babysitting.

In other European countries, there have been warm responses as well, such as a demonstration in Paris called Refugees Welcome, in which more than 10,000 demonstrators participated; in London, a “Solidarity with Refugees” rally September 12 drew tens of thousands. Ten thousand people in Iceland offered up their homes to refugees after their government said the country would only accept 50 refugees. The Bulgarian Red Cross is renting houses for refugees. The project, which is being implemented alongside the State Agency for Refugees, exists for those who have been granted refugee status or humanitarian protection in Bulgaria.

But there have also been populist and nationalist voices, some with overtly religious and ethnic appeals. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban defended his government’s harsh treatment of refugees by calling them a threat to Europe’s Christian identity. “We shouldn’t forget that the people who are coming here grew up in a different religion and represent a completely different culture. Most are not Christian, but Muslim,” he said. “Is it not worrying that Europe’s Christian culture is already barely able to maintain its own set of Christian values?”

Worse, there have been physical attacks – in particular, in Germany – against refugees. This year alone there have been some 200 arson attacks on refugee centers. The scenes of hostile right-wing demonstrators in Heidenau, in eastern Germany, who engaged in street battles with police just weeks ago made international headlines.

Selected Responses of European Jewish Communities

France

The Crif has generally kept a low profile on the issue, but issued a press release asking European governments to demonstrate compassion and humanity.

The Great Rabbi of France, Haim Korsia, in a September 6 speech commemorating the deportation of Jews from Nazi-occupied France, made a plea for solidarity. “France is a land of asylum and hospitality; France, the cradle of human rights, cannot ignore these women and men who fall at the gates of our borders, with the only hope – that of living,” said Korsia. “France, which radiates around the world through its values of humanism, universality and sharing, cannot be silent while facing the trial of its fellow human beings.”

Germany

Josef Schuster, the President of the Zentralrat der Juden, made the following statement: “The massive refugee flows are a major challenge for Europe. It now has to come not only to an equitable distribution of the newcomers, but also to long-term assistance. With the approaching of winter the refugees need solid quarters. Tents or pretzels and stuffed animals are not enough.

“Those who cannot return to their homes for the time being must be familiarized with our Western fundamental values. In Germany, that means to respect the constitution and to recognize that the security of Israel belongs to Germany’s raison d’etat, just as the remembrance of the Holocaust.”

United Kingdom

“The world has a unique opportunity to show that the ideals for which the European Union was formed are still compelling, compassionate and humane,” said Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi, who called on Britain to admit at least 10,000 refugees, in an echo of the Kindertransport that rescued Jewish children from Nazi Germany. All the great faiths suggest a different paradigm – one which gives priority to the widow, the orphan, and the alien. Rabbi Sacks’s successor, the current Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, Ephraim Mirvis, has underscored this by refusing to make a distinction between “genuine refugees” and economic migrants. What should govern our response, he says, is the immediacy of the need of the stranger knocking at our door.

Italy

Many of Italy’s Jews, sensitive to the fate of another dispossessed people, are deliberating their next steps, or already actively working to aid the newly arrived migrants. Among them is Milo Hasbani, one of the presidents of the Jewish Community of Milan. “Doing something for these migrants is very important to us, also considering that so many members of our community fled Arab countries and found a better life in Italy,” Hasbani said, recalling how he himself left Lebanon with his family in 1956 when he was only eight.

During Israeli President Reuven Rivlin’s recent visit, Ruth Dureghello, president of the Jewish community of Rome, said her city is often used as a way station for the migrants, whose goal is to reach Germany or Scandinavian countries. For those who are settling, however, Dureghello would like to introduce programs to acculturate the immigrants, through language instruction and general education. “It is much more important to give them the chance to be introduced into society than continue to be different,” Dureghello was quoted as saying. “We are a people of refugees. For us Jews, it’s an experience we have had in the past.” But she emphasized that aiding the migrants is “not just a Jewish responsibility, it’s a human responsibility.”

Belgium

While urging “generosity” toward the refugees, Henri Gutman, president of the Belgian Jewish group CCLJ, said Europeans must adopt “imperatives of defense” against Islamism. “Some of these new immigrants – the Syrians and Iraqis especially – have been taught to hate Jews,” he wrote recently on the organization’s website. “We risk further increases in antisemitism.” In

Brussels, Menachen Margolin, a Chabad rabbi and director of the European Jewish Association lobby group, said he was preparing to lead a delegation of rabbis to deliver food and nonperishables to the refugees.

The Netherlands

The Central Jewish Organization of the Netherlands, where two elderly Holocaust survivors were hospitalized recently following an assault by robbers who appeared to be Middle Eastern immigrants, spoke to a similar tension in a statement from its chairman, Ron van der Wieken. While “aware that some Middle Eastern refugees harbor very negative feelings toward Jews … Jews cannot withdraw support from those in need and fleeing serious violence,” he wrote. He urged Holland to devise a “charitable” refugee policy.

Hungary

“As Eastern European Jews, we carry the knowledge of how it feels like to flee our homes,” said Zoltan Radnoti, the newly elected chairman of the rabbinical board of the Mazsihisz umbrella group of Hungarian Jewish communities. “Still, I help the refugees with fear that I am helping send danger to other Jews in Europe. I know some of the refugees may have fired on our [Israeli] soldiers. Others would have done so in a heartbeat. I know. But I am duty bound to help.”

In Hungary, a principal point of entry for a wave of recent refugees, approximately 150 Jews are involved in a relief operation mounted by local Jewish communities. Mazsihisz set up three collection depots in Budapest Jewish institutions from which it delivered approximately half a ton of food, clothes and other necessities to migrants. The community also collected $5,000 to buy diapers, medicine, and water.

European Jewish Students

Karin Flieswasser, policy director for the Brussels-based European Union of Jewish Students, an AJC International Partner, visited a Brussels refugee camp and delivered donations. The group’s Facebook page “encourages you to find out what’s happening in your country and take action! Europe hasn’t felt such a large refugee crisis since World War II.”

AJC Perspective

As Jews, we know what it is like to be refugees. As European Jews, especially, we know what it means when doors are closed. It is the essence of Jewish identity to reach out to those who suffer. As we read in Deuteronomy, “You should love the stranger as you love yourself, you have been foreigners yourselves in Egypt.” AJC is heartened by the examples set by some European leaders, by some countries, and by individual citizens in many countries in what they say and what they do to welcome and help new refugees. Apropos, in partnership with the Greek Jewish umbrella organization KIS (an AJC International Partner), AJC is pleased to play a role, in coordination with the Israeli relief agency IsraAID, in providing emergency assistance to newly arriving refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos.

AJC is concerned about growing populist voices in Europe inciting xenophobic attitudes toward migrants and refugees.

AJC acknowledges that migration of the scale now envisioned will have a long-term impact on Europe’s demography, and may tax its capacity for integration. In the past, many European nations have failed to adequately absorb and acculturate migrants, which, in turn, has contributed to growing radicalization within parts of Muslim communities.

The security dimensions of the crisis are profound. Border screening to pick out jihadist fighters or potential jihadist recruits among the many thousands of desperate families and individuals fleeing Middle East violence, chaos and hopelessness will pose formidable – perhaps insuperable – challenges. Further, the settlement in European cities and suburbs of refugees from societies traditionally antagonistic to Israel and rife with antisemitism could raise an array of public safety and political concerns, setting the stage for another chapter in the sorrowful half-century history of largely failed integration of substantial numbers of Arab migrants in Europe.

A comprehensive, sustained, managed and realistic program of integration should, we earnestly hope, include the inculcation of European values of democracy and pluralism, with a special emphasis on women’s and minority rights.

AJC, with nearly 110 years of experience in immigration, integration, and identity issues in the U.S. and abroad, as well as offices throughout Europe (located in Berlin, Brussels, Paris and Rome), stands ready to be of assistance.

Europe cannot shoulder these responsibilities alone. The international community, including the Arab Gulf states, should be part of the answer.

In that spirit, we applaud the U.S. government, as part of a global response, for announcing that it will increase the number of global migrants it will accept, with appropriate screening mechanisms, in 2016 (85,000) and 2017 (100,000).

This document was prepared by Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, Director of AJC Europe, with the help of Felice Gaer, Director, and Shoshana Smolen of JBI, as well as the AJC European Directors and teams, and Rabbi Andrew Baker, Director of International Jewish Affairs.