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Denmark’s experience with Palestinian arrivals — 33 Comments

1. As the grandson of four grandparents who all emigrated to America from Eastern European countries prior to WW I, allow me to offer a few observations. My grandparents came here when America offered nothing except an opportunity to work hard to live a life free of irrational government tyranny. They came from places where they could be rounded up and/or their meager possessions confiscated at the whim of the government. My maternal grandfather left one step ahead of the Tsar’s press gang who were looking for more cannon fodder in Russia’s war with Germany. When they got to American shores, they had to pass physical exams or risk being sent back. They had to prove the ability to provide for their own welfare and not become “wards of the state.” They either found a job or went hungry. Contrast that with today’s migrant invaders, whose arrival triggers a cascade of material benefits for which they have paid nothing and for which they show no gratitude. It is a shame that they can’t be patriotic and productive members of their natal lands, but that does not make them America’s problem. Controlled immigration is appropriate when a country needs more citizens and has both room and economic oppportunities that need to be met, but not when foreigners seek to come in merely take the jobs and tax dollars of those already here and displace them. I don’t blame the migrants for wanting to do so, but we need not accede to their demands. I do blame the globalist elite who benefit from the destruction of social cohesion and cultural solidarity that throwing open the gates to foreign invaders causes.

2. Gaza is a failed society and culture.

   Trump had the right idea. Remove all the people and send them to some other ME countries that will have them. Turn the real estate into a resort.

   There are no more Carthigians or Trojans any more. Failed and defeated city-states.

3. https://notthebee.com/article/dutch-girl-murdered-during-bike-ride-home-cops-arrest-migrant-who-raped-woman-days-earlier

4. When it comes to immigration it’s the relative numbers that make the difference, as well as does the host society incentivize assimilation.

   There’s no magic dirt. If 500 million Chinese immigrate tomorrow, then the US might as well be China not too long afterward. If 500 million Chinese immigrate 100,000 a year over 5,000 years, probably not an issue.

   Immigration to the US over the last 30 years has looked a lot more like the first case than like the second case.

   We have the same % of immigrants as the period 1860-1920 but without a frontier for them to settle and without institutions that incentivize assimilation.

5. @Cornhead:Remove all the people and send them to some other ME countries that will have them.

   Ethnic cleansing. Let’s be mindful of the principles we seek to establish–if that’s on the table, then we need to be prepared for where else it’s going to be applied.

   In comic books The Good Guys are designated as such and what they do is Good because The Good Guys do it. In the real world, The Good Guys are defined by what they do. There’s a limit to what The Good Guys can do before they cease to be The Good Guys, and ethnic cleansing is one of those things that, if it isn’t quite over the line, is certainly straddling it.

6. “Well, one thing you can say is that in Denmark it didn’t go as badly as it did in Jordan and Lebanon…”
   Yet

7. You have less bad behavior when your welfare state, penal system, immigration policy, and education policy are ordered in such a way as to discourage it and when freedom of contract and association are respected. I’m going to wager that the performance of the Danish government is spotty in these areas. Just a guess.

8. Well there was that egyptian cleric that touched off the whole picture mohammed brouhaha that turned violent in 2006

   https://www.tcj.com/cartoons-of-mass-destruction-the-whole-story-behind-the-danish-12/

   There was a twist to this 5 years later in libya among other places

9. The governments should stop all welfare for the migrants, while allowing NGOs & charities to support them, if they choose, with their own limited budgets. (Now much smaller without USAID).

   Assimilation of Language Learning & job self sufficiency should be required. Criminal convictions should include automatic deportation.

   Denmark today has tougher restrictions, as do more other EU countries. None know now what the next 5 years will be like.

   @Niketas is importantly right about Gaza, if it is involuntary. But the Gazans willing to go somewhere else voluntarily should be encouraged to do. Under capitalism, there is an extremely simple way to get voluntary action—pay them. I’d guess many poor Gazans would prefer $10,000 & life somewhere else, than tough rebuilding life in Gaza under benign Israeli occupation.

   But internal anti-Bibi Israelis haven’t yet supported any clear post-war Gaza govt, so none know the near future.

   But MAGA lovers understand that America is Great when, and because, it is Good. In Reality.

10. Agree Gaza is a failed society, everything is given to them by the hundreds of millions, only work is probably digging tunnels.
    Denmark if let in the Muslims in the % of England, France or Germany would get ran over.

11. @Tom Grey:But MAGA lovers understand that America is Great when, and because, it is Good. In Reality.

    As Chesterton observed

    To one who loves his fatherland, for instance, our boasted indifference to the ethics of a national war is mere mysterious gibberism. It is like telling a man that a boy has committed murder, but that he need not mind because it is only his son. Here clearly the word ‘love’ is used unmeaningly. It is the essence of love to be sensitive, it is a part of its doom; and anyone who objects to the one must certainly get rid of the other. This sensitiveness, rising sometimes to an almost morbid sensitiveness, was the mark of all great lovers like Dante and all great patriots like Chatham. ‘My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’ No doubt if a decent man’s mother took to drink he would share her troubles to the last; but to talk as if he would be in a state of gay indifference as to whether his mother took to drink or not is certainly not the language of men who know the great mystery.

    That Israel is falsely accused of ethnic cleansing is a problem, that the US should help it to become accurately accused of ethnic cleansing is certainly one method of solving it, but I believe it would introduce another and worse problem, likely more than one.

12. Well, one thing you can say is that in Denmark it didn’t go as badly as it did in Jordan and Lebanon…

    I’ve been chuckling about that line off and on all afternoon.

13. Niketas Choniates:

    “Ethnic cleansing. Let’s be mindful of the principles we seek to establish–if that’s on the table, then we need to be prepared for where else it’s going to be applied.”

    Isn’t the principle we would be seeking to establish is stopping Gaza folk from murdering all the Israelis? It is their stated goal, is it not?

14. Denmark passed an integration law in 1999, seven years after it granted residency to the Palestinian refugees. It mandated a three-year introduction program for refugees that includes language lessons.
    ==
    These were people who had already been in the country unlawfully for in excess of seven years . If the Danish government were serious, they’d have had the Danish language shoved down their throat as soon as they were granted asylum.

15. “Trump had the right idea. Remove all the people and send them to some other ME countries that will have them.” Cornhead

    No other ME country is willing to accept them…

    Niketas Choniates,

    The principle to be established is that when people repeatedly demonstrate a commitment to killing you and everyone you hold dear… you remove the threat. Whether peacefully or… permanently… is up to them.

16. It adds a whole different spin to danegeld

    European writers have little understanding of this except bruce bawer for understandable reasons

17. I knew a West Bank Christian family, many whom were already living in the US before the Six Day War of 1967. IIRC, one family member was born in Bethlehem on December 24. The patriarch of the family worked for the Jordanian civil service. Based on his experience, he told his children to leave. He told his children that Muslims would always be promoted before Christians. So many of them left–like I previously wrote—before the 1967 Six Day War.

    His children in the US were STEM graduates with graduate degrees. Bright, accomplished. One of his grandchildren came to the US to get a STEM doctorate. He readily got jobs in US universities after completing his doctorate, but ended spending a lot of time in political activism for Palestine. (I once read some scuttlebutt online that his daughter had a Jewish boyfriend…) He ended up back in the West Bank, continuing both his activism and a fair number of publications in his field.

    (One irony about the grandson’s anti-Israeli activism is that he had a cousin on the other side of his family who repeatedly pointed out that Muslims discriminated against Christian—just like the grandfather said 40 years previously.)

    The patriarch continued to send Christmas cards to my parents. In the last Christmas card he sent before my mother died in 1988, he wrote that he and his wife were living in Kuwait with one of their daughters. Several years later Saddam invaded Kuwait, and the Palis once again messed up, like they did in Jordan and Lebanon, and got booted out of Kuwait for having supported Saddam’s invasion. By that time I had lost contact with the family, so I didn’t know where they went after they got booted out of Kuwait.

    I hope that Israel can finish the job in Gaza City. A friend has a nephew who has served in the IDF in both Gaza and in the border with Lebanon. I met him, years ago.

18. Hello. I followed the links to the 3-page report from the Danish ministry. I was particularly interested to learn where in Denmark these Palestinians were living. It didn’t really say except to note that none of them were residing in Korsør, which was the only municipality specifically tabulated. (Probably most of them were in Copenhagen, but to see the actual distribution would have been of interest. Maybe some were placed in Aarhus, for example, who knows.)

    I take it that Korsør was specifically enumerated because the MP who was making the official inquiry had his or her district there. I can’t well imagine what Palestinian migrants would have done in Korsør, anyway, even had they been domiciled there in any numbers. (If I haven’t shared my little story about my experience there last year, that’s okay, I won’t burden you with it. It wasn’t particularly bad, just a little bit odd. But anyway, it’s why I will never forget the place.)

19. I can’t well imagine what Palestinian migrants would have done in Korsør,
    ==
    Killed family dogs, sexually assaulted local women, and been pushy in a tactile way in cinemas and other public venues.

20. @Whosher:Isn’t the principle we would be seeking to establish is stopping Gaza folk from murdering all the Israelis?

    That might be the motivation, but a good motivation isn’t sufficient to justify any possible approach. Why not ethnic cleansing? Why not neutron bombs, or arsenic in their drinking water, or just famine?

    Would dispersing Gazans even work, if they’re as bad as you say? Isn’t it just as likely to make the problem far worse by making it harder to contain? Is the only safe Gazan a dead Gazan?

    It is their stated goal, is it not?

    Who is stating any goals on behalf of all Gazans? Hamas? You know what Hamas does to Gazans in order to stay in power in Gaza, right? But even if you had a magic crystal ball and could see into the heart of every Gazan, and could see that they all down to the very toddlers wanted to kill Jews without exception, that wouldn’t justify any and every possible means of dealing with them.

    @Geoffrey Britian:The principle to be established is that when people repeatedly demonstrate a commitment to killing you and everyone you hold dear… you remove the threat. Whether peacefully or… permanently… is up to them.

    Please tell me you were stroking a white cat or twirling a handlebar mustache while you typed this. You’ve seen as many bad movie villains as I have…

    That there are many Gazans who will put killing Jews as their highest priority in life, and should be stopped from doing that, is not disputed in this comments section. That ethnic cleansing is the appropriate means to do that is I hope something we say out of frustration. A theatrical use of euphemism and ellipsis undercuts that hope.

21. Some cultures are incompatible with law and order and there are no social programs that can fix this.
    The nations these migrants flee are total shit holes because the people who live there – or certainly enough of them – simply do not accept the concept of law and order. It’s basically help yourself by screwing over everybody else.

    Many of these poor nations have had billions of $$$ poured into them over the last 60 years !!! to help them get their act together and it is all for naught. The $$$ are just stolen by those in power and other criminal elements and the general socio-economic level of the citizenry never improves.

    Sweden is now the murder capital of Europe and almost all of it is due to muslim migrants from N. Africa and other Muslim nations, so Denmark is not the only nation facing this criminal onslaught.
    And the migrant situation in Germany and the UK is also a big problem.
    No matter where these migrants go, they bring crime and trouble; this is what they did in their homeland and this is what they will do wherever they go.

    I have never understood who determined that bringing in migrants into Europe was a good idea, though Merkel of Germany seems to be one of the ringleaders of this insane policy.
    Of course, she is now retired, receiving a good pension and living far removed from the criminals she has foisted upon ordinary Germans.

    Here in the USA I can understand the motivation to do this because the demonkrats realize that illegal will be counted in the census which will give more seats in the US House of Representatives to the Democrats. (Proof positive that the demonkrats hate the Constitution, our system of government and seek absolute power).

    It’s too bad that those politicians in Europe (and here in the USA) that are all for immigration from third world sewers are not forced to live in those neighborhoods where all the migrants are housed; paid for by the taxpayers. If this were the case, the insane immigration policies would be terminated faster than white on snow.

22. The Geneva conventions have an entire article devoted to expulsion of an implacably hostile group on a nation’s border. After 70 years of internationally brokered attempts at peaceful settlement, I think we are there…

    We can also note – before we overindulge in righteous handwringing – that the Arab nations have never signed or honored the Geneva conventions – they only know how to use them against the West. They have a centuries-old tradition of ethnic cleansing and forced conversion to expand “dar el Islam”.

    And the Palis have elevated the military use of radicalized “civilians” to a fine art – actually, their only contribution to the world besides the aerial hijack and the bomb belt.

    Israel will not lose its soul by defending itself from such barbarians. On the contrary – like much of the West, it lost its moral clarity due to Marxist mau-mauing, victimhood politics, and misplaced mercy.

23. Because Ethnic Cleansing is not of the same degree or magnitude of evil as extermination of a group (tribe, religion, ethnicity)? That Ethnic Cleansing can lead to genocide is not in dispute.

    Virtue signaling is being displayed here.

24. @BenDavid:Israel will not lose its soul by defending itself from such barbarians.

    No one here is saying that it will. But ethnic cleansing goes well beyond “defense”. And if it is going to be done without a lot of killing, what’s that going to look like? How many Israelis are going to die trying to accomplish it, since we’re working from the assumption that Gazans are killbots?

    The people assuming this can be done peacefully are assuming that there is something you can offer Gazans that they will put ahead of killing Jews, which is the opposite of the premise used to justify the ethnic cleansing in the first place.

25. If the leaders in Denmark had actually read and understood the fundamental texts of Islam, plus been aware of the history of Islam and it’s dealings with the West, and been honest with themselves and not blinded by ideology, they would have known exactly what was going to happen if they introduced Muslims into Denmark.

26. They were maybe expecting something else ?

27. Richard Aubrey–I expect that they did not want to take the time to inform themselves, perhaps thought that the negative things about Islam they had caught wind of were just “Islamophobia,” or just really didn’t want to look into or know certain things.

    They were going to exhibit their virtue to the world, and that was it.

28. I’m not convinced that the elites care about the impact of immigrants on their domestic populations. It may be a straightforward power calculation.

    These elites may even consider the immiseration and terrorizing of their middle/working classes a benefit.

    Or so it seems to me.

29. Huxley
    I think Occam is on your side.

30. If I recall correctly, quite a few Israelis “died” on 10/07/2024 at the hands of Gazamites. A “few” here don’t want to acknowledge what “From the river to the sea.” means in this world, as opposed to his land of virtue.

31. @huxley:These elites may even consider the immiseration and terrorizing of their middle/working classes a benefit.

    I don’t think our elites have that much moral clarity and perception of reality. While they gaslight us about the blessings of immigration, I think they are high on their own supply. I think they think they are doing us good and that we’re children who don’t want to take our medicine.

    In my academic days I met a lot of people from around the world, and all those people traveled quite a bit. But they were always going from one academic milieu to another. They weren’t really meeting different kinds of people. They were meeting people who are well above average, compared to their own countries, in intelligence and in ability to at least outwardly conform to Western norms. Why would they object to more such people here?

    Of course there are two problems with it: the outward appearance of Western norms is not necessarily how they actually are, and those people don’t come by themselves but enable a chain of relatives to come after them who may be very different from ones that were sought out.

    I think our elites appreciate more ethnic restaurants and lower payroll expenses. They insulate themselves from the negative consequences of their policies very well. To them, immigration presents a purely hypothetical set of drawbacks which would only bother low-class people, and to take those kinds of opinions seriously would be social and career death.

32. It’s a mistake to conflate objecting to a set of behavior adopted enthusiastically by a culture, on the one hand, with a genocidal attitude toward the practitioners of that culture, on the other, merely because the practitioners also are identified with an ethnicity.

    We are always entitled to insist on behavior that suits our system of civilization. We should naturally guard against the temptation to attribute bad behavior to people who have not actually demonstrated it individually, merely because it requires less effort to categorize them by ethnicity than to judge their individual behavior fairly. In arresting or prosecuting people who behave badly, we have to be careful not to apply different standards of evidence or justice on the basis of their ethnicity than we would apply to ourselves. But we should be blind to arguments predicated on disparate effect, if the effect stems from differences in behavior that happen to be embraced by many or most members of an ethnicity.

    It makes sense to cut people some slack when they show up without money, jobs, or language skills. Pretty quickly, though, we should expect overt signs of serious effort coupled with improvement.

33. It makes sense to cut people some slack when they show up without money, jobs, or language skills. Pretty quickly, though, we should expect overt signs of serious effort coupled with improvement.
    ==
    Why are they in Denmark and not on the West Bank, in Gaza or in one of the neighboring countries?
    ==

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