Hong Kong. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Hong Kong is a city of nearly 8 million people. It is a modern metropolis that has good transit and bus service, reasonably good governmental public schools, and a reasonably honest government.

Beneath the surface, however, there are societal shortcomings. Acceptable housing is in short supply. Young adults, including those who maintain long-term relationships or marriages, live with their parents. People in extreme poverty live in cage housing — apartments subdivided into small spaces, formed by vertical steel rods. Each space has room for a mattress and some possessions. One toilet for a dozen or more people.Food is expensive. Many people work long hours in jobs that pay modest salaries.

And now we can add Jew-hatred to the list of societal shortcomings.

There is in Hong Kong, as elsewhere, the Jew-hatred of Mohammedism. That term is accurate, because “Islam” connotes a religion. Then there is Mohammedism — a militant totalitarianism that operates under the guise of a religion.

Picture a legitimate-seeming business that is a front for a mafia. The benign attributes of the front business do not change the criminality of the behind-the-front capo, his lieutenants, and his button men. In like manner, Islam is a front for Mohammedism.

In Hong Kong, Mohammedists express their Jew-hatred through insolence. Turning a back to a Jew who walks by. Cutting across the path of a Jew as he walks down the street. Spitting.

All Mohammedists who hang about on the streets are male. Some are in their late teens. Most are men in their 20s and 30s. No teenage girls. No women in their 20s and 30s. I don’t know where Mohammedist families live.

In addition, I have noticed, over the past six months, expressions of Jew-hatred among the general Chinese population. Young people, middle-aged people, old people. Low-income people and middle-class people (judging by their clothing). It has been across the board. Perhaps the expressions of Jew-hatred are spillovers from the evil BDS movement.

The expressions are varied. Covering the nose with a hand. Translation: Jews smell. Scratching the torso with a hand, under an arm. Translation: Jews are apes. Grasping the throat with a hand. Translation: We’ll murder you. Putting a finger into a nostril. Translation: ____ you.  Putting a finger into an ear. Same translation.

One day last week, I was honored with an arm and hand extended stiffly downward at an angle of 45̊ degrees. Translation: It was a 90̊ degree variation from the Nazi salute, in which an arm and hand are extended stiffly upward at an angle of 45̊.

The saluter walked as he saluted. He did not stand at attention, yet the salute was maintained at a constant angle. Clearly, the salute had been practiced. This budding Nazi was a Chinese kid. He looked 16 or 17.

Other forms of expression are unclear to me. Using one hand to pluck, several times, at a t-shirt. A complex movement of a hand across a stomach.

I see these expressions of Jew-hatred 30 or 40 or 50 times a day. Ignoring those expressions doesn’t reduce the number of them. Mimicking those expressions doesn’t reduce the number of them.

Multiple public expressions of Jew-hatred among the general Chinese population changed my life drastically. No more walks in the evenings. No more visits to this or that neighborhood to look around. I leave my flat only when necessary. Excursions are planned, so that as much as possible is accomplished through an excursion. That limits the number of excursions, and, consequently, limits my exposure to expressions of Jew-hatred.

Hong Kong is not Germany in the 1930s. Brownshirts do not patrol streets. There are no Jew-owned shops, so there are no smashed store windows. No sign-carriers stand on footpaths with signs that urge Hong Kongers to refuse commercial interactions with Jews. No one is beaten in the streets for the misdemeanor of walking while Jewish. No one is shot in the streets for the felony of being alive while Jewish.

My guess is that the circumstances of Hong Kong, for Jews, are more or less like those of London, and not as bad as those of Paris.

Yet, it’s time to pack my bags, and leave. My destination will be a haven for Jews, but havens are few. The growing anti-Jewish storm in the world will cause some of the contemporary havens to deteriorate, and will cause other contemporary havens to disappear.

The writer is a lawyer who lives and works in Hong Kong. Email him at kruger753rr@yahoo.com. A version of this article was originally published by The American Thinker.