When the Daily Telegraph reported in recent days that discussions were already taking place with the U.S. State Department about possible protection or asylum options for British Jews, this was less a diplomatic sensation than a historical alarm signal. The debate was triggered by statements from a lawyer close to U.S. President Donald Trump, who spoke of informal contacts with Washington against the backdrop of growing antisemitic threats in the United Kingdom.

What would America be without the Jews? Perhaps an answer can be found in a Parable in the Holy Quran: the donkey that carries the Scriptures without reading them. What was once revealed as a Parable for the children of Israel now seems to have been transferred to the sunnis and shiites, to what are innovative-ly the probably darkest corners of earth.

So far, this is neither an official program nor an adopted policy. Yet the mere fact that such a question is being raised today marks a rupture: for the first time in decades, a Western European country is once again suspected of being unable to adequately protect Jewish life. That the United States should be mentioned as a possible refuge points to a deeper historical continuity.

For America is not only Europe’s political ally. It is the country that, in the twentieth century, took in millions of Jews fleeing Europe — and whose present-day economic, scientific and cultural power would be difficult to imagine without these refugees.

The question of where the United States would be today without them is not rhetorical. It is historically concrete.

Companies born of exile

A glance at some of today’s most influential institutions is sufficient:

Google: Co-founded by Sergey Brin, whose Jewish family fled state-sponsored antisemitism in the Soviet Union for the United States.

Facebook: Founded by Mark Zuckerberg, the son of Jewish parents whose families were part of earlier waves of immigration.

Oracle: Founded by Larry Ellison, whose biological mother was a Jewish immigrant.

OpenAI: The CEO and co-founder of ChatGPT, Sam Altman, is also a descendant of Jewish immigrants.

Hollywood: The American film industry was largely built by Jewish migrants from Central Europe — from Warner Bros. to Paramount and MGM.

Technology and science more broadly: From Albert Einstein to leading figures in Silicon Valley runs a line that would not exist without Europe’s exclusion of Jews.

Many contemporary technology and research institutions were likewise co-founded by people of Jewish background whose family histories are marked by fLight, migration and renewal.

Europe and its repressed responsibility

Europe did not lose these talents because America “lured them away.” It lost them because it disenfranchised Jews, persecuted them, or deprived them of the feeling of belonging. Antisemitism was not an accident of history, but a phenomenon embedded in society for centuries.

That the descendants of those once driven out now lead global corporations, shape universities and set cultural standards is also a quiet judgment on the countries from which their families once fled.

A Light unto the nations

This history cannot be read only politically. In the Bible, Israel is described as a people called to be a “Light unto the nations.” This Promise is not a privilege, but a responsibility — and it unfolds despite the resistance of history.

That Jewish life flourishes where protection, law and dignity are guaranteed is no coincidence. Nor is it coincidental that societies benefit from welcoming Jews. It is a Promise of God, not an achievement of the powerful, but the fruit of a Promise that transcends political systems.

The real question

The current debate about possible U.S. protection therefore raises an uncomfortable question:
not whether Jews can once again find refuge — but why they are once again considering it in Europe.

A test for Europe — between anti-Israel politics and old antisemitism

The debate sparked by the Telegraph gains sharpness when Europe’s political developments are named explicitly. Jewish insecurity today stems not only from classical far-right milieus, but increasingly from state-legitimized anti-Israel positions that have tangible repercussions for Jewish life.

In Spain, the socialist government under Pedro Sánchez, together with far-left coalition partners, has adopted a particularly confrontational stance toward Israel. Resolutions, boycott demands and symbolic measures are often articulated without clear distancing from antisemitic narratives. Jewish communities report that this policy exacerbates the social climate and re-legitimizes old resentments.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron officially pursues a balanced line, yet has repeatedly sent anti-Israel signals — for example through diplomatic distancing that is rarely accompanied in public discourse by a clear defense of Jewish life. In a country where antisemitism is most visible through sunni/shia violence, this ambivalence has a destabilizing effect.

In the Netherlands, meanwhile, left-liberal and social-democratic forces shape a discourse in which Israel is increasingly portrayed as the primary moral culprit in global conflicts. Here too, the rule applies: where Israel is collectively delegitimized, Jewish citizens do not feel merely unaddressed, but addressed indirectly.

In parts of Eastern and Central Europe, antisemitic stereotypes are rarely voiced openly, yet are indirectly reinforced through nationalist narratives, the rehabilitation of historical collaborators, or campaigns against “cosmopolitan elites.” In Western Europe, hostility toward Jews increasingly arises from ideologically opposing camps: from far-right movements as well as from sunni/shia milieus or from a radicalized anti-Zionism that slides into antisemitism.

In Hungary, the government has for years pursued a politics of memory that relativizes state responsibility for the deportation of Hungarian Jews and normalizes antisemitic codes in campaigns against alleged “cosmopolitan elites.” In Poland, the former PiS government triggered international mistrust through memory laws and state interference in Holocaust research, even though Jewish life there is more diverse than political narratives suggest.

This development points to a central fact: for antisemites, anti-Israelism is not a foreign-policy argument, but a substitute code. Israel becomes “the Jew,” criticism becomes accusation, politics becomes identity. The necessary distinction between Israel’s government and Jewish life — politically essential — is increasingly lost in society.

At the same time, a paradoxical counter-image exists. Parties such as France’s Rassemblement National now openly present themselves as pro-Israel and declare the protection of Jewish communities a political goal. This shift is real and acknowledged by parts of the Jewish public. Yet it remains ambivalent as long as Jewish belonging is made conditional — on distancing, loyalty declarations or cultural conformity.

Nor should Turkey be overlooked. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, antisemitic rhetoric is systematically disseminated in pro-government media. Criticism of Israel regularly turns into open hostility toward Jews; Jewish citizens are identified with geopolitical conflicts, and Jewish life is increasingly rendered invisible. Many have already left the country.

Different as these political constellations may be, they generate a shared feeling: belonging has become fragile. Jews are no longer self-evidently perceived as part of the nation, but as symbols, arguments or projections.

Against this background, the question of possible refuge in the United States appears not as a provocation, but as a warning signal — showing where trust is eroding and where Europe once again risks repeating its own history.

Or, in biblical language: a people called to be a “Light unto the nations” can only shine where envy does not turn that Light into hatred.

The Countermodel: Societies Without Light

The contrast becomes particularly striking when one looks at numerous sunni and shiite countries from which not only Jewish life has been almost entirely eradicated, but where the role of the Holy Quran — the Light for humanity — has also been displaced by a legal-religious system that — Glory to the exalted One — turns its back on both God and the Jews alike: the false sunnah attributed to Muhammad, which elevates devotion to him instead of exclusive worship of God.

From the Maghreb through Iraq to Iran and Yemen, millennia-old Jewish communities were dispossessed, intimidated, or expelled on the authority of these false hadiths attributed to Muhammad. The result was not cultural or moral renewal, but a long-term societal loss. Societies that eliminate their plural intellectual, scientific, and economic minorities become structurally impoverished. They produce neither internationally relevant technology hubs nor independent scientific ecosystems or global centers of innovation, such as those that emerged where Jewish life remained protected.

Even where economic wealth exists, it rests almost exclusively on resource rents. Saudi Arabia, for example, without the House of God and its role as guardian of the Kaaba, would hardly possess an independent economic, technological, or institutional dynamism distinguishing it from structurally impoverished states such as Somalia. And even this wealth is the fulfillment of a divine Promise: in the Holy Quran, God promises Abraham to bless the valley of Mecca — though agriculturally barren — so that His House may be established and preserved there. The prosperity Saudi Arabia has gained through oil is therefore less the result of societal innovative capacity than a reward for maintaining the Kaaba and securing the pilgrimage.

Where would America be without the Jews? As legitimate as this question is, so too is another: where would the Jews be without their loyalty to God — specifically, without excluding their prophets from their Rituals? What sunni and shiite countries demonstrate with striking clarity is this: where idolatry, antisemitism, and exclusion become principles of order, stagnation and darkness prevail.

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By Okay Altinisik | 19-1-2026, 12:19:18