Europe’s Lost Jewish Communities Underscore Why Israel Must Defend Itself

by Paul Driessen, ©2026

(Jul. 26, 2026) — My recent Sephardic Balkans Jewish Heritage Tour took me from Bucharest, Romania north along the Carpathian Mountains, then west and south into Transylvania and Hungary, and finally to Belgrade, Serbia. We enjoyed fine company and dining, toured historic palaces and churches, and explored Bran Castle, legendary home of Vlad the Impaler and Count Dracula.

Mostly, we visited overgrown Jewish cemeteries and once-thriving synagogues, some restored to their pre-WWII glory, many just a shadow of their former splendor. The now silent holy places reminded us how Jewish communities were slaughtered by Nazis and Nazi-aligned Europeans.

In my wife’s grandmother’s hometown of Iasi, 13,000 out of 50,000 Jews were murdered in the streets by fellow Romanians; survivors were sent to death camps in Poland. In Sighet, a majority-Jewish town before 1940 and birthplace of Elie Wiesel, just 2,300 of 10,000 Jews survived the war. Only in Bucharest – thanks to the King, Queen Mother, Chief Rabbi of Romania and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau – were Jews not deported.

In the Middle East, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini worked to bring Hitler’s Final Solution to Palestine. Formerly Judea but renamed Syria Palestina by the Romans, it was a post-WWI remnant of British and French “mandates” that carved new nations out of the once-mighty Ottoman Empire.

By war’s end, two-thirds of all Europe’s Jews, and 90% of all Jewish children, had been exterminated by Nazis and their collaborators. Some 400,000 Romanian Jews had been murdered; 200,000 of the survivors emigrated to Israel over the next 40 years.

Jews and the world promised Never Again would genocides be allowed to happen. But today we witness commemorations and memorials to dead Jews – while the world’s oldest hatred once again spreads its venom globally, demanding the obliteration of more Jews.

Husseini’s Jew hatred and Islamic supremacist ideologies flourish again in the Middle East and have spread globally. Genocides are erupting in multiple regions.

Israel was born out of Europe’s crematoria ashes in 1948. As Arab states tried but failed to destroy it, some 700,000 Arabs were displaced, while 800,000 Jews were driven out of Muslim countries. Israel was again victorious in 1967 and 1973 wars – but endured repeated suicide bombings, rocket and missile attacks, and murderous “intifadas” throughout the next half-century.  

On October 7, 2023, thousands of Hamas terrorists, accompanied by thousands of Gaza civilians, committed bestial rape, mutilation, murder, decapitation, looting and kidnapping in Israeli communities largely populated by the most pro-Palestinian, pro-coexistence people in Israel.

Within hours, even before the Israel Defense Force responded militarily, rabid crowds of professors, students, politicians, journalists and other antisemites were excusing, even applauding the atrocities. Their “From the River to the Sea Palestine Will be Free” chants echo Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian mullah demands that Israel and its Jews be eradicated – followed by Christians, Bahais and other non-Muslims. “Globalize the Intifada” slogans encourage the murder of Jews everywhere.

“We will repeat the October 7 attack time and again until Israel is annihilated. We are victims of the occupation. Everything we do is justified,” Hamas leader Gazi Hamad proclaimed. “Israel has no place on our land. Nobody should blame us for the things we do on October 7, October 10, October 1,000,000.” 

It has become a war to the finish. Israel has no choice. It has every right and obligation to root out and destroy Hamas and Hezbollah.

The IDF’s ground war against Hamas’s entrenched terrorists has meant attacking every building in Gaza – because every one of them housed terrorists, weapon stashes, observation and sniper posts, rocket and missile launchers. It’s meant invading and blowing up hundreds of miles of tunnels under the same office buildings, homes, hospitals, schools and mosques – because they contain access shafts, rocket factories, retractable rocket launchers, command centers and living quarters.

Before almost every attack, Israel uses leaflets, loudspeakers and cell phones to warn civilians to get out. It’s used more precisely targeted munitions than any other army in history.

These IDF actions prevented countless civilian deaths, while increasing Israel’s own wounded and death tolls. In fact, the civilian-to-combatant death toll in Gaza is the lowest of any recent urban war – far below what UN and allied forces inflicted in recent wars in Syria and Iraq, for example.

When Israel targets doctors, journalists, UNRWA employees or soccer players for capture or elimination, it’s because they are Hamas or Hezbollah operatives.

And yet Israel is repeatedly accused of genocide. It’s a baldfaced lie.

Real genocide is what Hamas intends to do until Israel is extinguished. It’s the Islamist butchery in Nigeria, where jihadis gave no warning before slaughtering 150,000 Christians, raping and kidnapping thousands more, and driving millions into neighboring countries. Iran-backed Islamist butchers have committed the same crimes against humanity in Sudan and other northern African countries.

Real genocide is the massacre, enslavement and forced exile of 60% of Afghanistan’s Hazara Shia minority by Sunni Muslims in 1888-1892 and their continued ethnic and religious persecution today.

It’s what China is doing to destroy Uyghur and Tibetan language, culture and religion.

The other baldfaced lie behind this hatred is that Israel has no right to exist. That there were no Jews in “Palestine” until Jewish “colonizers” began showing up in the late Nineteenth Century. That the “Zionist entity” is an “imperialist, colonialist, racist” “occupier” of lands that rightfully belong to Palestinians. This false history cannot stand.

Abraham and the Israelites arrived in what was then Canaan and is now Israel around 1575 BC/BCE: 3,600 years ago; 2,210 years before Muhammed’s armies conquered Jerusalem. They’ve been there ever since. The Koran calls Jews “the people of the Book.” The Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque were built on the plateau where the First and Second Jewish Temples once stood.

The Jews defeated the Amorites, Canaanites and Philistines, created the Kingdom of Israel, fell to Assyrians and Babylonians, returned as a people under Cyrus the Great of Persia, lived under Greek rule, established the Hasmonean dynasty, were slaughtered and dispersed by the Romans, and lived under Muslim, Christian Crusader and Ottoman rulers, before having their own state again in 1948.

At no point did Jews entirely disappear from the Promised Land. At no point was there ever a Palestinian state, empire or people. Today’s Palestinians called themselves Syrians, Jordanians or Egyptians just a few decades ago. No other people on Earth can trace their history back so far to a single place of habitation than the Jews and Israel. No other people has a stronger claim to their land.

Extensive archeological evidence and historical accounts confirm all of this. (See here, here and here.)

Today, Israel and its people are again fighting for their very existence, against terrorists and their patrons who want to annihilate them. Under the Abraham Accords … and realizing that Israel is here to stay and could be a superb ally and trading partner … more Arab, Muslim and other nations are recognizing Israel’s right to exist in peace.

May Divine Intervention via the original Abraham bring that recognition to a lasting worldwide reality.

Paul Driessen has been to Israel multiple times with the Jewish National Fund, Shurat Hadin and on his own, including visits to sites of the October 7 massacres. He is the author of articles on energy, environmental, human rights and Israel issues.