"Go Back to Europe"

 "Go back to Europe" or "Go back to Poland", it's one of the most common and idiotic slogans you'll hear at anti-Israel protests and in anti-Zionist rants. It paints Israeli Jews as nothing more than white Ashkenazi invaders from 20th-century Europe, colonial outsiders crashing an "ancient Palestinian land." That's a blatant lie, total historical ignorance, and above all, thinly veiled antisemitism. Because if you look at the facts, over half of Israel's Jewish population has zero roots in Europe, they're Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews whose families lived in the Middle East and North Africa for centuries or millennia, only to be expelled or forced to flee Arab countries after 1948.

This chant is so detached from reality it's laughable, like telling Americans "go back to England" or Palestinians "go back to Saudi Arabia." It's selective, hypocritical, and disgusting – it only demands that Jews "return" to places most of them never came from.

Let's break it down from the ground up. The slogan really took off after Israel's 1948 War of Independence, when Arab leaders and Palestinian propaganda pushed the narrative of Israel as a "European colonial project." They zeroed in on the massive Ashkenazi immigration post-Holocaust, hundreds of thousands of survivors from Poland, Romania, and Germany arriving in the land. But that completely ignores the real demographics.

In 1948, out of about 600,000 Jews in the land of Israel, tens of thousands were already native-born (sabras), alongside Sephardic and Eastern Jews. After statehood, the biggest wave wasn't from Europe – it was the mass expulsion of around 850,000 Jews from Arab countries and Iran. Operation Ezra and Nehemiah airlifted 120,000 Iraqi Jews in 1950–1951 after pogroms and anti-Jewish laws. Operation Magic Carpet brought 50,000 Yemenite Jews. Jews from Egypt (post-Suez Crisis), Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Syria, all expelled, their property confiscated, many arriving penniless in Israel.

Today, in 2025, more than half of Israeli Jews are of Mizrahi or Sephardic descent, descendants of those refugees. Only about 30–35% are purely Ashkenazi, with the rest mixed. So when someone yells "Go back to Europe" at an Israeli Jew of Iraqi or Moroccan heritage, they're just exposing their own cluelessness. "Europe"? Their ancestors never set foot there! They lived in Baghdad, Sana'a, or Cairo for thousands of years, long before Islam even arrived. It's exactly like telling African-Americans "go back to Africa", racist and absurd.

And the ancient Jewish connection to the land of Israel? Thousands of years deep. From the Bible, through the First and Second Temples, the Babylonian exile, returns with Ezra and Nehemiah, to communities in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias under Muslim and Ottoman rule. By 1860, Jews were already the majority in Jerusalem. The First Aliyah in 1882 even included Yemenite Jews. This wasn't "European colonialism", it was an indigenous people returning home after exiles.

The chant surged again after October 7, 2023, in American and European university protests. Students shouted "Go back to Europe" at Jews, sometimes with extra racist slurs. At Princeton, a Jewish student was told "go back to Europe" and called a "pig." This isn't policy criticism – it's pure antisemitism, denying Jews the right to self-determination in the one place they can be a safe majority. Why don't they yell this at other nations? Turks "go back to Central Asia"? Syrians "go back to the Arabian Peninsula"? Because it's only aimed at Jews.

The real nastiness is the hypocrisy and implications. Europe? The continent that murdered 6 million Jews in the Holocaust? That expelled Jews in pogroms for centuries? Arab countries? The ones that drove out a million Jews after 1948, confiscating billions in assets? No Israeli Jew is "going back" there – hatred awaits. The slogan ignores the double Jewish refugee crisis: from the Holocaust and Arab expulsions. It's part of a bigger effort to delegitimize Israel, framing it as a "white colonial state" in a "brown" world.

Culturally and politically, in BDS groups and far-left circles, this chant blames Israel alone for the conflict. They ignore how many Palestinians arrived in the 19th–20th centuries as Arab labor migrants from Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. But only Jews get accused of "colonialism." This is modern antisemitism: not "Jews control the world," but "white Jews oppressing indigenous peoples." Yet Jews aren't "white" in that sense, they're a Middle Eastern people who faced racism too.

Scholars like Yosef Gorny or Anita Shapira cover this in books on Zionism. Groups like the AJC documented spikes in such incidents in 2024. In the UK, similar remarks even popped up in Parliament. It fuels violence: a 300% rise in hate crimes against Jews in Europe since 2023.

But let's mock it properly. If "go back to Europe," why not "go back to Babylon" for Mizrahi Jews? Or "go back to Rome" since the exile started there? It's absurd. The chant reveals the haters: they don't want peace, they want no Jews. Because what about the millions born in Israel? "Go back where?"

Ultimately, "Go back to Europe" is a stupid, false, and dangerous slogan. It's rooted in ignorance, feeds hate, and denies ancient Jewish history. Anyone chanting it outs themselves as an antisemite, not a "peace activist." Time to drop the nonsense and face facts: Israel is home to a diverse Jewish people, refugees from the Holocaust and Arab expulsions, with every right to exist like any other nation.

Sources and Further Reading Jewish Exodus from the Muslim World

The Forgotten Jewish Refugees 'Go Back to Europe' - Antisemitic Slogan in Protests Go Back to Poland - Historical Context Demographics of Israel - Mizrahi Majority