To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (120583 ) 11/27/2003 3:28:40 PM From: Nikole Wollerstein Read Replies (1) | Respond to Anti-Semitism in France:A Report and a WarningMichel GurfinkielThere is currently an upsurge of anti-Semitism all over Europe. In France,the European country with the largest Jewish community, it is reachingalarming proportions. According to a recent poll, one French Jew out ofthree feels threatened enough or unsure enough about the future to beconsidering leaving the country or advising his children to leave thecountry.A few preliminary remarks:1. The French crisis is not a case of petty anti-Semitism, as we may haveknown it for about fifty years in North America and in most of WesternEurope. It is not a tale of marginal incidents being carried on by fringeextremists but a development that affects the entire nation.2. It is not a case of mere anti-Zionism either. Jews and Judaism, notZionists, are explicitly targeted as such by the contemporary Frenchanti-Semites. There is no decoupling, neither in their doctrine nor in theiraction, between the Jewish people at large or the Jewish community in Franceor Europe and the State or the government of Israel.3. This is not a case where anti-Semitism is derived from a lack ofinformation about Judaism and the Holocaust. On the contrary, Judaism hasbeen playing an important and visible national role in France throughout thelast decades of the 20th century; and Holocaust awareness or pieties aboutthe Holocaust are deemed to be part and parcel of the contemporary nationalculture of France. The Sixteenth of July, the anniversary of the infamousround-up of Parisian Jews in 1942, is now a National Day. Every school whereJewish pupils were arrested either by the German Gestapo or the Vichy Francepolice has been turned into a national landmark. Yet, it doesn't prevent thenew anti-Semitism from gaining ground day by day.What are the facts?Since 2000, anti-Semitic violence is rampant in France. According to theInterior Ministry, anti-Jewish violence has dramatically increased, from ayearly average of about ten incidents throughout the nineties to a yearlyaverage of about one hundred twenty incidents in the 2000-2002 period.
