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European Ambassadors Seek Insights from Israel on Coping with Migrant Crisis

(JNS) Alex Traiman - Ambassadors to Israel from across Europe met with Israeli security and legal experts in Tel Aviv this week to gain insights on how to cope with the migrant crisis that has severely impacted Europe over the past decade, at an event hosted by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of the IDF Military Intelligence Research Division, addressed the security implications of the immigration wave. He noted that many Muslims adhere to an Islamic doctrine that calls for them to be less aggressive while living under the sovereignty of non-Muslims, with the belief that they will later become the rulers themselves. "Just because they currently live as a minority in Europe does not mean that Muslims have given up the idea that Islam should one day be in the majority," he said. Hungarian Ambassador to Israel Levente Benko noted that European governments' inability to come up with suitable answers on the immigration issue is giving rise to political extremism in Europe. "If the mainstream is unable to deal with this issue, that will give rise to parties on the extreme left and the extreme right," he said. Ambassador Martin Stropnicky of the Czech Republic said problems are arising in large part because "most of the people that are immigrating [to Europe] now do not want to accept our cultural milieu, but want us to accept theirs, and that is not acceptable." Israel Prize laureate Professor Asa Kasher, co-author of the IDF Code of Ethics, said nobody should be indifferent to the human suffering of migrants, yet at the same time, "states have a right to maintain their identity. That means they have a right to stop others from taking steps that jeopardize that identity." Kasher suggested that a more appropriate humanitarian approach might be to invest effort and money in the countries migrants are fleeing. "Maybe it is more effective to spend the money building a hospital or a school, that will help encourage those who are suffering to stay and not to emigrate."
2019-07-05 00:00:00
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