Re: >Sure, but who knows better, you and Sharon or the French Jews themselves?
Knows better about which issue? The article below confirms at least what I say.
Wrong... it confirms what I said: of all the Jews reported in your article who complain about France's allegedly rising anti-Semitism, only ONE lives in France --Mr Emmanuel Weintraub-- and he disagrees with his Israeli/American fellows on the gravity of the issue:
Weintraub - who is also a member of the executive committee of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) - does not agree.
"The French are not anti-Semitic, and France is no anti-Semitic country," he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Here's another snippet reporting Weintraub's interview by TIME Magazine on the same subject:
Despite the large number of assaults, police have managed so far to make just 10 arrests - all the suspects are poor, young, alienated and angry Frenchmen of Arab descent. That demographic group is particular to France, and could explain why the violence has flared here. "They are the people French integration has failed," says political analyst Alain Duhamel. "These are poorly educated French youths without jobs, with no hope or future, who feel shut out of a France their immigrant parents came to as a promised land. They feel utterly victimized by French society, and identify with what they see as the virtuous anger of their 'Palestinian brothers.'"
"It's foremost an identity problem - their anti-Semitism is an afterthought," says Emmanuel Weintraub, a board member with the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions. "The people attacking Jews in France today were born and raised French, but feel they've been denied and denigrated for being ethnic Arabs. They identify with the anger of Palestinians they see on their TVs and seek to mimic it by punishing 'their Jews.'"
Leaders of France's Muslim community - estimated at around 5 million - have denounced and discouraged the attacks, but stress the perpetrators in no way represent the nation's generally respectful, law-abiding ethnic Arab population. Weintraub agrees, noting that the assailants seem to be temporarily associating their habit of criminal behavior with the Palestinian cause. "Once the conflict in Israel ends," he predicts, "these people will return to petty crime."
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time.com |
