French Antisemitism

Congress Bi-Monthly - August 2002

 

There has been much discussion of antisemitism in France and reportage of individual incidents. Many have recalled the historic antisemitism in France. After all, it was slightly before the dawn of the 20th century that the Dreyfuss Trial exposed the imbalance between the aspirations of France for liberty, equality and fraternity and the actual achievements of France, where a French captain, the first Jew to serve on the General Staff was charged with treason and, even after the falseness of the accusations were exposed, he was only offered a pardon -- not an exoneration -- while in the streets of Paris French citizens are chanting death to the Jews. And many have also recalled the clash between the French myth of Resistance and the reality of the close collaboration between Vichy France and Nazi Germany. Jews were better off under fascist Italian occupation than they were under the Vichy regime, not to mention the role of the French police in the deportation of Jews under German-occupation.

 

Still I think some clarity is sorely needed on the current situation in France.

 

  • There is a direct correlation between the situation in Israel and attacks on Jews in France; the more intense the violence in the Middle East, the more vehement the attack on the Jews;

  • The assaults against the Jews are related to the significant demographic changes in France; namely the emergence of a significant Islamic underclass minority that maybe one tenth the French population and France is doing little – precious little – to address the root of the problem;

  • The more assimilated the Islamic population is in France, the more accepting it is of French norms, which includes the full participation of Jews within French society;

  • As the government was slow to perceive the nature of the danger, no other segment of French society came forward to recognize the pattern of assault on the Jews; there was virtual silence from political leadership, the media, the Church, the opinion makers and even the Jewish community;

  • The most vulnerable Jews have been the least affluent, those who immigrated by Islamic societies and those who live alongside Moslems;

  • There are three elements in the Islamic community living in France, the assimilationists, the separatists and those in-between. The separatists are the most numerous and the least exposed to French culture and French norms. They are nourished directly by extremist elements in Islamic culture, by Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein;

  • The French government, French elite and public opinion comfortably distinguish between Jews in France who they warmly welcome as fellow citizens and whose presence in French society and French culture is venerated, and the policies of the State of Israel, which are abhorred.

  • The vehemence of the attacks against Israel must raise the question that Richard Bernstein recently asked in The New York Times [Ugly Rumor or an Ugly Truth 8/04/02) “Does the ferocious moral condemnation of Israel mark a recrudescence of that most ugly of Western diseases, antisemitism? Or is it a legitimate, if crude, criticism of a nation's policies? Where does one draw the line? How does one judge?”

 

From Jerusalem to Paris:

 

The number of incidents against Jews in France is under dispute. Estimates vary widely. French journalist Michel Gurfinkiel writing in Commentary reported that the CRIF, the umbrella organization of French Jewish community, recorded 500 antisemitic incidents since October 2000. David Suissa, editor of Olam, recently used a figure of 400-800.  Both numbers are unacceptable, but still there is a wide difference between 400-800.

 

Yet, there are no differences as to the timing of the incidents. They occurred with much greater intensity in three periods, October 2000, just after the start of Intifada II; post September 11, 2001, after the bombing of the World Trade Center; and in April 2002, following the bombings of Passover and the massive Israeli response to an intolerable bombings of its civilians. There can be no doubt about the correlation, but there can be considerable doubt as to whether the spur to violence comes directly from the Middle East or whether the intensity of French condemnation of Israel coupled with the conspiracy theories prevalent in France that blamed the 9/11 attack on the CIA, which led to a best selling book that will now be published in its English edition by the publishing arm of The Nation, is seen as license of Moslems in France for attacks against the Jews. They do not differentiate as easily as their French counterparts between French Jews and Israel.

 

This correlation is painful to Jews who for years held the comfortable belief that Israel was the answer to antisemitism. We saw in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War and the oil embargo crisis that followed, and again in recent months, that Israel can also fuel the flames of antisemitism.

 

But who said that the Jewish situation in our time – or anytime -- is simple and being Jewish at this moment in time is anything but comfortable.

 

Demographics:

 

Mark Twain once said, “There is truth, lies and statistics.”

 

The statistics are simple, the truth more complex.

 

There are 600,000 French Jews constituting 1% of the population; there are 6,000,000 Moslems living in France constituting 10% of the population.

 

Six hundred thousand Jews living in France makes France the fourth largest Jewish community in the world. With size also comes capacity – schools and synagogues, Jewish culture and creativity, books and museums, music and art. One can see Jewish neighborhoods and Jewish shops, Jewish schools and the emergence of Jewish centers. The French Jewish community consists of those long native to France and of immigrants from French colonies in North Africa, who left these colonies with the decline and collapse of French Colonialism and their descendents. They tend to be more traditional, perhaps more assertive and certainly more intensely linked to Israel, but in recent years they have blended well with the French Jewish establishment and have contributed to the vitality of French Jewry, most especially as compared with its staid counterpart in Great Britain.

 

There may also be one third as many French men and women of recent Jewish origin who have Jewish relatives and who take an not insignificant interest in Jewish affairs.

 

French Jews are Jews but also very deeply French, participating in French society and enjoying the collapse or weakening of barriers that restrained their advancement. They are proud of their dynamic community and mindful of their achievements in French society. Jacques Chirac, France's current President and the former mayor of Paris loves these Jews as fellow citizens and admires them as successfully integrated Frenchmen (and women); his views on Israel are another matter.

 

The Islamic community is rather different. Demographic information seems to indicate that it is far more numerous than formal census figures reveal, and it is growing rapidly. It may have doubled within the past decade.

 

There is a long established Islamic minority in France, who like the Jews have assimilated and adopted the values and attitudes of their fellow countrymen. On the whole they get along well with the Jews and can comfortably differentiate between French Jews and the policies of the State of Israel.

 

Far more numerous -- and far less French -- are the recent arrivals who constitute an underclass and tend to want to maintain themselves as a separate community. They share many of the anti-Western, anti-Jewish attitudes current in the Middle East and are agitated by the suffering of their brethren under the policies of Israel. They despise the State of Israel whether led by Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres, Benjmain Netanyahu or Ariel Sharon. 

 

France has been very slow to recognize the permanence of this ‘non-French” population and government leaders all too comfortably maintain that antisemitism is not of France even while it occurs within France. Since these people are “non-French” even as they live in France, the leaders of France are not lying when they make the exonerating claims – merely misleading.

 

What happens to this separatist underclass is neither in the control of the Jewish community nor is it likely that outside political or moral pressure from the United States or the American Jewish community will have a large impact on the development of French policy.

 

The attitude toward the other, the transformation of more or less homogeneous European societies into heterogeneous, multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-religious societies is a large – very large – question in contemporary Europe. The European Union, the Euro and the free exchange of populations coupled with the atmosphere created by globalism are dramatically reshaping France and all of Europe. These changes will loom large in the 21st century. Suffice it to say that the separatist Islamic community is of great concern to the future of the French Jewish community. Their participation in French society and the assimilation of values and moderation that follows are important and things do not bode well at this time.

 

Again, the changes in the Middle East will directly impact these developments. When tension is high and France condemns Israel, and the media piles on these statements are perceived as license to attack.

 

The least prosperous, the least influential and the least assimilated French Jews live adjacent to these separatist communities and hence their vulnerability took a long-time to be recognized.