The question has been asked by a prominent American magazine: "Is it time for the Jews to leave Europe?"
The Atlantic posed the question in its April cover story by Jewish writer Jeffrey Goldberg, citing the rise of right-wing fascists and radicalized Islamists on the European continent.
Of course, the article made no mention of the disturbing rise in anti-Semitism among leftists on college campuses. But Goldberg's inclusion of an anecdote involving U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is stirring a new debate that is causing some to ask, "Is it time for the Jews to leave America?"
Biden, according to Goldberg, made a comment last fall that struck those to whom it was addressed as strange.
The stage was a Rosh Hashanah party Biden hosted for senior American Jewish leaders in September.
According to Goldberg's report, Biden recounted his first meeting with former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, who told the then U.S. senator that the Jews' secret weapon in Israel's war for survival was that they had no place else to go.
"You understand in your bones that no matter how hospitable, no matter how consequential, no matter how engaged, no matter how deeply involved you are in the United States … there is really only one absolute guarantee, and that’s the state of Israel," Biden reportedly told the room full of surprised Jewish leaders.
Israel Today magazine took the position that Biden's comments may have been a type of prophetic warning to American Jewry, even if he didn't fully realize the significance of his statement.
After all, who is better suited to deliver such a hard message to the Jews of America than a Democratic leader, since Jewish Americans tend to vote overwhelmingly for liberal Democrats?
"Of course, it can and has been argued that Biden’s point of view is correct, and that ultimately even the Jews of America will have no choice but to flee to the relative safety of Israel," the magazine reported. "Much has been made of rising anti-Semitism in Europe, but the same is true of the United States of late. The annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents published by the Anti-Defamation League revealed a 21 percent increase in anti-Semitism incidents in the U.S. in 2014."
Biden, who is known for his verbal gaffes, could have had yet another case of that classic Biden disease, called open mouth, insert foot. Or, as Israel Today suggests, "They might also be a very prescient warning of things to come."
WND reported in February that the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe was not happening in a vacuum. It is happening in America as well.
A Common Core lesson plan required eighth-grade students in a California school district last year to question whether the Holocaust ever happened.
The eight-page assignment asked students to weigh arguments on whether the Holocaust was an "actual event" or a "propaganda tool that was used for monetary gain." It was justified as an exercise in "critical thinking."
The school district at first defended the exercise before finally pulling it.
At the University of California at Davis, just last month it was reported that Jew-hating thugs painted swastikas on a Jewish fraternity house. Jewish students on campus have also been harangued by Muslims screaming “Allahu Akbar,” the war cry of jihad.
Bible teacher and author/filmmaker Joel Richardson, whose latest book discusses anti-Semitism under the title "When a Jew Rules the World," doesn’t like what he is seeing on college campuses across America.
"Now you have this trend particularly in the youth that’s really trending back toward supersessionism and replacement theology, and it's cast as being justice for the oppressed and standing with the Palestinians," he told WND in February.
The most active player in fomenting hostility toward Israel on U.S. college campuses is the Muslim Student Association. The MSA has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned or suppressed in many countries including Israel, Russia, Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Yet the Brotherhood has been coddled by the Obama administration as a legitimate voice for all Muslims.
The rise in attacks on Jewish students, and the recent pressure by the MSA to have UC Davis divest of all companies that do business with Israel, led one member of the university’s student senate last month to proclaim that "Hamas and Shariah law have taken over UC Davis."
“They boycott Israel and call it divestment, not just of a nation but of an actual people, and they’re giving comfort and aid to some of the most genocidal hatred that the world has ever known in Islamic extremism,” Richardson said.
The extent of the foothold that radical Islamist groups have established on college campuses is also evident in two recent reports, one from Cornell University and the other from Barry University in Miami, in which university officials appear to condone student groups that wish to support the Islamic State, also called ISIS.
Agitation and propaganda attacks often precede physical attacks. That's what happened in Germany, Russia and other countries where European Jewry has come under the most vicious attacks – first it became trendy to make verbal assaults. Now it's happening in America. Maybe Biden's strange comment should be dismissed as just another slip of the tongue? Or, perhaps he knows something about what's coming to America in the years ahead?