When President Donald Trump asserts that the US “needs” Greenland, commentators scramble to decode his geopolitical calculus. They analyze the variables: rare earth minerals, Arctic shipping lanes, competition with Russia and China, and the role of climate change in redrawing the polar map.
Yet there is another aspect of Greenland worth noting, one unrelated to strategic value – it has virtually no antisemitism. This places the island in remarkable isolation. Greenland stands as perhaps the only place in the European sphere with essentially no history of anti-Jewish sentiment.
History of Jews in Greenland
This is not the product of enlightened multicultural planning. Rather, it reflects the near-total absence of a Jewish community. Throughout history, Jews appeared in Greenland as visitors or temporary residents. Historians mention Jewish sailors and whalers aboard Dutch ships in the 16th and 17th centuries.
During the Second World War and the 1950s, Jewish American military personnel stationed at Thule Air Base (now known as Pituffik Space Base) held Shabbat and holiday prayer services. Later, Jewish journalists, meteorologists, nurses, and others arrived for short stays. None of this resulted in the establishment of synagogues, schools, or permanent communal institutions. Contemporary reports mention a single Jewish resident in Narsaq, who lights Chanukah candles with family abroad via Zoom.
Antisemitism doesn’t exist in Greenland largely because it has no visible targets – no synagogues to vandalize, no kosher shops to boycott, no ready stereotypes to deploy. This stands in stark contrast to the continent Greenland formally belongs to.
Surge of antisemitism in Europe
Since the October 7 Hamas attack and the subsequent war in Gaza, antisemitism has surged across Europe. Synagogues have been shot at, Jewish schools require armed guards, streets carry their own threats, and political discourse frequently treats Jewish anxiety as overreaction rather than a legitimate response.
Herein lies the lesson. The problem is not that Europe has Jewish citizens, but that it fails to protect them as equals. Antisemitism does not stem from Jewish presence: It springs from conditions that leave Jews vulnerable and undefended. The historical pattern is unmistakable. When legal and political institutions guaranteed equality and security, Jewish communities thrived; when those institutions wavered or turned away, antisemitism took root.
One need not witness mobs with torches to grasp this dynamic. Official silence, institutional hesitation, and the treatment of Jews as probationary citizens are ample proof. The absence of antisemitism in Greenland is not a badge of honor: It is a non-test. Greenlandic society has never been forced to choose between protection and hostility, equality and exclusion. Europe has faced this choice repeatedly: How it responds gauges its moral seriousness.
The treatment of Jews is not a measure of grace, but one of integrity. When they are equal in law, safe in public, and entitled to ordinary civic life, society as a whole benefits. When they are exposed or silenced, citizenship itself becomes conditional.
Trump’s interest in Greenland is rooted in geopolitical strategy and economics, not human rights. Yet Greenland’s freedom from antisemitism holds up a mirror to Europe. The point is not to justify American territorial ambitions, but to ask an uncomfortable question: what has become of Europe’s values, and is it still willing to unreservedly defend all its citizens?
The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and a professor of European studies and international relations in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.