Avrum Burg's parabola of life and his eulogy for enlightened Europe

To understand better the Haaretz article The worst time for Jews to abandon Europe, penned by Avraham "Avrum" Burg, one must take a look at the colorful biography of this illustrious gentleman. Even the sketchy Wiki entry provides enough food for stupefying amazement.

Son of a consummate politician and one of the sharpest minds in Israeli politics, Yosef Burg, little Avrum started from a leftist Peace Now, gradually going over to the left wing of the mainstream Labor party. His self-serving instincts worked hard for him, and his career, peaking at the chairmanship of the Jewish Agency, was meteoric during this period. Albeit already slightly marred by behavior like this:

After his term as chairman of the Jewish Agency, Burg continued to use a car and driver provided by the agency for 10 years.

Strangely (or not), his first major disappointment in and break-up with Zionism comes after his first major political failure: loss in the elections of the Labor Party leadership and his removal from the post of the Knesset Speaker was followed by a revolting article The end of Zionism in the Guardian, where our subject proclaims his final break with the ideology that hitherto served his personal goals just right.

After a row of doomed to failure business ventures, sordid enough to require police involvement, little Avrum (little again, in a political sense) made a few attempts to return to political limelight, each attempt requiring a more extreme and more outrageous anti-Israeli outburst, such as his call on all Israelis who could to obtain foreign citizenship and similar.

The political career was going nowhere, however. And eventually, in 2015, after seeing the demise of his political aspirations, little Avrum (by now politically microscopic) joined the Israeli Hadash party - a mostly communist and mostly Arab gang of anti-Zionist rabble-rousers. The act, mostly symbolic, will lead the gentleman nowhere, being rather a pathetic attempt to get some attention, but more of a full stop at the end of (political) biography. The parabola has come to its end indeed.

Looking at this rather loathsome political biography, one couldn't be surprised when even a perfectly anti-Zionist author of a perfectly anti-Zionist +972, one Yossi Gurvitz asks about Burg:

Has he realized he's politically toxic?

Indeed. And now this politically toxic gentleman uses readily available to him Haaretz pulpit to preach that right now it is... The worst time for Jews to abandon Europe! Imagine that. The anchor statement of the article is, probably, this one:

Even though less than 1.5 million Jews live there, the European Jewish community is no less important than the younger, American and Israeli Jewish communities. Not only because of the thousands of years’ of Jewish history in Europe, or the languages, or the religious and national ties to European culture, but because after hundreds of years of bloodshed, horrible wars and crimes against humanity, after colonialism and religious wars, Europe has done the unbelievable. It destroyed its swords, and became the most important continent in terms of freedoms, reconciliation, equality and secularism.

Frankly, I don't want to get into detailed arguments about this load of shite. Fortunately, I happened on a simple article (later on an amazing Haaretz' "debunking" of it) Brussels Jewish kindergarten can't find insurance.

An insurance company in Belgium refused to insure a Jewish kindergarten, claiming it is too risky amid recent growth of anti-Semitic attacks on Jewish institutions across Europe, the European Jewish Association (EJA) said Wednesday.

You can interpret and reinterpret, present and mis-present, but you cannot argue with an actuary of an insurance company, no sir/madam. These folks are not driven by no politics and no sentiments, they use pure ink for blood and they don't lie. Unlike the wayward son of a great man, who is definitely turning in his grave at the sight of this travesty of a heir.

Enough said, only to mention that we here in Israel are grumbling about the property prices steadily raising for a few last years, in good part due to European Jews purchasing flats and houses at a steadily increasing rate. It is not an avalanche yet, but the trend is clear for all to see. Probably these folks didn't read the passionate call by Avrum Burg...

That's it, more or less, dear reader, but not before I pay homage to the unbelievable hardheadedness of Haaretz. The Ynet article about the Belgium insurance company linked above was debunked by the leftist newspaper in an absolutely unique way. The fairly long article No proof Belgian insurer discriminated against Jewish school, watchdog says is an example of a curios mix of political temerity and idiocy. Here is how it starts:

There is no proof that a Belgian insurance company refused to insure a Jewish kindergarten because it was deemed too risky, a Brussels-based watchdog on anti-Semitism said.

Here is the "body of debunking":

“I spoke to Rabbi Margolin,” Rubinfeld wrote about the insurance issue. “He confirmed that the insurance company did not provide a document on the reason for the refusal, which an employee delivered orally.”

So no document equals no proof these days. How quaint... And here is the unforgettable finale:

He also said the kindergarten found a competitor willing to insure it.

So they found a competitor, thus there wasn't a cause for complaint in the first place. Great.

The article in question comes with a becalming picture:

A Belgian paratrooper keeps guard outside a private building in the Jewish area in central city of Antwerp, January 17, 2015. Photo by Reuters

 The final proof of validity of your impassioned call, Avrum Burg, ain't it?