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News :: Civil & Human Rights |
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France battles anti-Semitism |
Current rating: 0 |
by Chicago Tribune
(No verified email address) |
12 Jul 2004
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They thought she was a Jew. So they sliced open her blouse with a knife and drew swastikas on her stomach with a marker. Then they cut off tufts of her hair as a "souvenir." |
They thought she was a Jew. So they sliced open her blouse with a knife and drew swastikas on her stomach with a marker. Then they cut off tufts of her hair as a "souvenir."
The attackers were young men, about six them, described by police as North Africans ranging in age from 15 to 20. The incident occurred Friday on a crowded commuter train north of Paris. None of the passengers who witnessed the attack intervened. Perhaps they were too afraid. The attackers escaped.
The 23-year-old victim, whose name has not been released, was not Jewish, and was not hurt in the attack. But the incident has become Exhibit A in a nervous national debate on whether Jews can live safely in France.
A surge in the number of anti-Semitic attacks and a spike in the number of French Jews moving to Israel have unnerved the government of President Jacques Chirac.
Last week, a day before the train attack, Chirac traveled to Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, whose residents rescued thousands of Jews during World War II, and used it as a backdrop to warn against the spread of anti-Semitic violence.
"These acts reflect the darkest side of human nature. They are unworthy of France. I will do everything to stop them," Chirac said.
But while acknowledging that France has a problem, Chirac and other senior members of his government insist that France, at its core, is not an anti-Semitic country.
Most French Jewish leaders tend to agree.
"The institutions, the political parties are not anti-Semitic. Nothing in the machinery of the state discriminates against Jews in any way," said Nelly Hansson, director of the French Judaism Foundation.
`New anti-Semitism'
The problem, according to French officials and Jewish leaders, is what they have labeled the "new anti-Semitism." Unlike the old form of anti-Semitism, deeply rooted in Christianity's historic enmity toward Jews and kept alive today mainly by the extreme right and neo-Nazi fringe, the new anti-Semitism flourishes among Arab immigrant groups who see Jews as surrogates for Israel.
"The new anti-Semitism is the denial of the existence of the Jewish state, where the Jew himself becomes a substitute for Israel," said Serge Klarsfeld, France's renowned Nazi-hunter.
The phenomenon is hardly unique to France, but it is more noticeable here, perhaps because France has Europe's largest Muslim population--about 5 million--and its largest Jewish population--500,000 to 600,000.
Europe's new anti-Semitism began to rise to alarming proportions with the outbreak of major Israeli-Palestinian violence in 2000.
Last year, a report commissioned by the European Union (news - web sites)'s Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia blamed anti-Semitic violence on Arab and Muslim immigrant groups. But the monitoring center was uncomfortable with this finding, believing that it unfairly singled out a group that was itself a victim of discrimination. It disassociated itself from the report and commissioned a new one, released earlier this year, that blamed the rise in attacks against Jews on "young, disaffected white Europeans."
In France, at least, the evidence suggests otherwise. According to Jewish groups and unofficial police estimates, 90 percent of the attacks are carried out by young Arabs, mainly from France's large and impoverished North African immigrant community.
The French Interior Ministry, which tracks violence against minorities, reported that the number of anti-Semitic incidents peaked in 2002 with 932 incidents of actual or threatened violence--a six-fold increase since 1999. The numbers declined last year, to 588 incidents, but appear to be increasing again this year.
Last year, 21 people were attacked--the highest number since 1993, according to the Interior Ministry. Several of these incidents were stabbings.
"It's a miracle that nobody has been killed," said Raphael Drai, a Jewish writer who has published several books on French anti-Semitism.
Anxiety rising
The anxiety within the French Jewish community is palpable, and it can be measured by another set of statistics: Between 1999 and 2001, the number of French Jews immigrating to Israel averaged 1,173 per year; in 2002, it nearly doubled to 2,035 and has continued to climb.
In the first six months of 2004, the number was 685, but officials in Israel say they are planning for an influx of 500 this month. While Israel is happy to have the newcomers, leaders of the French Jewish community are disturbed.
"It's a catastrophe for France's image in the world, and it's destabilizing for the Jewish community in France," Drai said.
"If they are going to Israel for spiritual reasons, fine," said Jean-Pierre Allali, a member of the executive board of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France. "But if they are going to escape anti-Semitism, it's very bad."
Allali suggested that despite the increase, the number of Jews leaving France was not significant. "It's not a tidal wave. It's a very small minority," he said.
But Jean-Jacques Wahl, director of a Jewish educational foundation in France, said he sees many French Jews, especially younger ones, hedging their bets.
"Among young people, fewer are choosing professions like the law. Instead they are studying business or computers, because these skills are more transportable. For me that's the most important change," he said.
French Jewry is a multi-layered mosaic that dates to the Roman Empire. From the Middle Ages until the last century, Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition and the pogroms of the czar found a haven in France.
During World War II, while many Jews fought in the French Resistance, the darkest chapter in the nation's history was being written by the Vichy regime, which collaborated with Nazis in the extermination of about one-third of France's Jewish population.
In the early 1960s, another wave of refugees arrived on France's shores. These were Algerian Jews, holders of French passports who had been uprooted by a colonial war. They numbered about 30,000 to 40,000.
Today, it is these Jews from North Africa, living among Muslim immigrants from North Africa in the economically depressed suburbs that ring the cities, who are the most frequent targets of the new anti-Semitism.
"Their lives are hell, and they don't understand why their security isn't assured on an everyday basis, or why the non-Jewish French people seem to be indifferent," said Hansson of the French Judaism Foundation.
Youths affected most
The frictions occur most often among young people in schools where the slur "dirty Jew" has seeped into the vernacular even when the target is not Jewish.
Although the majority of the attacks are carried out by Muslim youths, most Jewish leaders say the French media are partly to blame because of their hostile coverage of Israel.
"We are presented with constant images of violence, gratuitous acts, as though it's the mission of the Israeli Army to kill women and children and old people," said Drai, the writer.
Surveys indicate Europeans, by a 2-to-1 margin, blame Israel for the conflict with the Palestinians. Polls also show that while Israel's "favorability" rating among Europeans is usually in the low 20s, Palestinians are viewed with sympathy.
French Jews felt this most acutely in the lead-up to the Iraq (news - web sites) war, when protesters in large anti-war demonstrations carried banners that conflated the Star of David and the Nazi swastika, and equated Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) with President Bush (news - web sites).
"When the anti-war demonstrations became anti-Jewish demonstrations, that was the psychological turning point for us. We felt very isolated," Hansson said. |
This work is in the public domain |
Comments
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Re: France battles anti-Semitism |
by ijustkrushalot
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
12 Jul 2004
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what is sad about this is that jews are being forced to flee to ISRAEL to excape anti-semitism.... |
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Re: France battles anti-Semitism |
by nytimes via gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
13 Jul 2004
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Unfortunately, there's more to the story.
--------
July 13, 2004
Frenchwoman Says She Lied About Anti-Semitic Attack
By ARIANE BERNARD
PARIS, July 13 β A Frenchwoman whose report of an anti-Semitic attack on Friday had transfixed the nation admitted today that she had made up the story, the police said. The admission came after the police began to publicly express doubts about her story.
The woman's report on how she had been attacked caused a public outcry in France, which has been seen a sharp increase of anti-Semitic incidents in recent months.
The woman, identified in the French press as Marie L., 23, was taken in for questioning after the police failed to verify any of the information she gave into the attack. She admitted to have fabricated the story, the police said today.
On Friday, Marie L. reported that six men had attacked her on a suburban train north of Paris after they mistakenly identified her as a Jew. She said the attackers slashed her clothing with knives, lightly wounding her in the process, and marked three swastikas on her stomach with a marker. Before the group got off the train, she said, the assailants overturned the stroller of her 13 months-old child, who fell to the ground.
But a police examination of the video surveillance of the train platform where the attackers reportedly got off did not show the presence of the group of assailants, while the police's tip hotline received never received any calls. The police had also raised questions about the woman's 's history of filing complaints for assaults that were never proved.
President Jacques Chirac had harshly condemned the attack on Saturday, calling for a thorough investigation of what he called a "shameful act." Most French politicians and human rights organizations also swiftly reacted, with the French Communist Party called for a demonstration to denounce anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia in Paris on Monday. Newspapers strongly condemned both the attackers and the fact that none of the reported 20 witnesses to the attack had come to the woman's help.
The right-of-center daily Figaro on Monday led its edition with "The Train of Hate" and published an op-ed article today that drew a parallel with the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964, in Queens. The left-leaning Liberation described the reported attack as "monstrous" in its Monday editorial.
Today, reports that the attack had been fabricated led to questions over rushing to political declarations before the incident had been verified.
"It's quite unfortunate that we didn't check before this information was circulated. It shows a climate, which affects weak minds β this woman is sick β she is influenced by the climate of violence and of intolerance that reigns," said Roger Cukierman, the head of France's leading Jewish organization, CRIF.
But Mr. Cukierman didn't condemn the media frenzy over the case.
"I think it was legitimate, since the information was out, that the media and politicians would react. The problem today is that we have attacks by the hundreds. To us, that's the real problem," said Mr. Cukierman, who thought that the fabricated report wouldn't necessarily lead to the playing down of potential future anti-Semitic incidents. "There are so many anti-Semitic aggressions, you can't deny them all," he said.
Mr. Chirac's office reported there would be no immediate reaction but indicated that he might address the topic in a television interview on Wednesday for the French national holiday.
For having fabricated the attack, the woman could be placed under investigation and charged for lying to magistrates, an offense which carries up to six months in jail and a 7,500 euro ($9,241) fine.
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