Danish Jews turn down Netanyahu’s plea for immigration

Danish Jews have turned down a plea by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to immigrate to the occupied territories saying that they want to remain in Denmark.

“We are Danish and we’re staying in Denmark,” the spokesman for the Jewish Community in Denmark, Jeppe Juhl, said in response to Netanyahu’s call which was made following an attack on a synagogue in the capital, Copenhagen.

The death of a Jewish man in the weekend attack made Netanyahu use the opportunity to once again call for the immigration of the Jews to the occupied Palestinian lands. This is the second time in less than a month that Netanyahu makes such a call, with the first one coming in the wake of deadly attacks in France, which killed 17 people including four Jews.

Netanyahu’s call embarrassing

The Israeli prime minister’s call, however, has been met with criticism inside the Jewish communities in European countries with Jews describing Netanyahu’s repeated pleas embarrassing rather than calming.

Director of the European Jewish Association sharply criticized such calls last month, describing them as severely weakening and damaging for the interests of the Jewish communities in Europe.

Rabbi Menachem Margolin (pictured above) told nrg.co.il following Paris attack in early January that “a large majority of European Jews do not plan to emigrate to Israel,” saying that “every such Israeli campaign severely weakens and damages the Jewish communities that have the right to live securely wherever they are.”

Denmark was the scene of two deadly cases of hate crime in the weekend. The first attack came on Saturday with a gunman firing at a café in central Copenhagen, where the Swedish ant-Islamic cartoonist, Lars Vilks was holding a meeting. A man was killed and three policemen were injured in the attack.

That was followed by a separate incident, in which a man was shot in the head and killed near Copenhagen’s main synagogue in the city center. Two policemen also sustained injures in the shooting during the early hours of Sunday. Copenhagen police later claimed it had killed the main suspect behind the twin shootings.