Is France Safe For Jews?---France: Here comes the whitewash

The despicable murders in Toulouse, France, on Monday, March 19, 2012 that took the lives of Rabbi Yonatan Sandler (30), his two small children, Aryeh (3) and Gavriel (6), and Miriam Monsonego, the eight-year-old daughter of the Ozer Ha’Torah school’s principal by Mohammed Merah (24), an Arab-Muslim French citizen, has raised anew the question of whether France is a safe place for Jews.

When this writer asked Lyda Peltz, a French citizen born to Jewish parents who came from North Africa, if France is safe for Jews, her response was fast and furious, “France is no longer a safe place for Jews.” Lyda, who moved to Israel several years ago, joined thousands of other French Jews whose accented voices fill the streets of Netanya, Ashkelon, and Eilat. She contends that the influx of millions of Muslims into France enabled the anti-Semitism that already existed to rise above surface and become legitimatized.

A spate of violent anti-Semitic attacks on Jews throughout France during the 2008-09 “Cast Lead” Israeli operation in Gaza, aided in great measure by the French media’s anti-Israel posture, prompted the exodus of thousands of Jews from France. In the aftermath, terrorists crashed two vehicles, one loaded with firebombs, into the façade of a synagogue in Toulouse, France January 6, 2009, while a lecture was going on. Fortunately, there was only physical damage and no one suffered any injuries. This attack was, however, the second serious terrorist attack on Jewish targets in France in less than a week.

A 29-year old Jewish man was attacked on January 4, 2009 at a Paris subway station by a gang of 20 people who yelled “Palestine will win.” They hit the man in the face and filmed the scene. Three days later, a 15-year-old Jewish girl in suburban Paris (Villiers-le-Bel) accused a gang of ten which included three of her classmates, of an anti-Semitic assault. She had been thrown to the ground, kicked, punched, and the attackers told her that they were “avenging Palestinians.” On January 8, 2009, “Death to the Jews” was spray-painted outside a primary school in Nice. On that same day, the ORT Bramson High School in Marseille was attacked by vandals who threw aerosol cans soaked with flammable liquid at the school building.

Prior to last Monday’s calculated murders, the brutal murder of Ilan Halimi, a23-year-old Parisian Jew in 2006, was the country’s most shocking. Halimi had been lured to an apartment by a female gang member, and sadistically tortured to death by Arab and African Muslim Frenchmen. One gang member admitted to having put out a cigarette on Halimi’s face “because he did not like Jews.” The anti-Semitism of this gang of barbarians went much further. According to one witness the torturers recited verses from the Koran while Halimi was tortured.

On August 9, 1982, during the First Lebanon War, Arab terrorists used grenades and machine guns in an attack that targeted Chez Jo Goldenberg, the famous Jewish establishment located in the Marais district of Paris. Six people were killed and 22 wounded.

The work of the French media and academia reveals that a majority of members are not only leftist in their outlook, but anti-American and anti-Israel as well and, elements are allied with radical Islamists. Official policies of the French government since 1967 show they have sought cooperation with the Arab world at the expense of Israel. The actions of the media, academia and the government have all contributed to the rise of anti-Semitism. However, the multi-cultural and political-correct French elites, who have looked the other way rather than face the violent excesses of many of the Arab Muslim immigrants, and have not spoken out against the radical Islamic imams who preach hatred against all non-Muslims and Jews in particular, are ultimately responsible for the harvest of anti-Semitism being reaped in today’s France.

Maria Sliwa’s May 17, 2003 article France and its Jews written during the period when the Second Intifada was being waged against Israel, asserted that of the approximate Jewish population in France of 650,000 (there are 6 million Muslims in France) a quarter “Are considering leaving (France) in the wake of the attacks targeting the country’s Jewish community.” Sliwa quoted Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum as saying, “Anti-Semitism is not new in France. France never purged itself of anti-Semitism, it just hid it.”

The murder of the Jewish children and rabbi on Monday, March 19, 2012, made headlines throughout Europe and the world this week, and the French ambassador to Israel, Francois Bigot addressed the Israeli Knesset’s (Parliament) Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee last Tuesday declaring that “France will not rest until the perpetrator of the atrocity in Toulouse is found.” Bigot added that “Hate crimes went against the larger trend in France, which has seen a drop in local anti-Semitism over the past couple of years. He said that in 2011 there were 380 anti-Semitic incidents as opposed to 900 in 2001.”

On the day of the attacks MK Yaakov Katz (National Union) called on Jews to leave France, declaring “there is no Jewish future in France.” Katz added that only in Israel is there a future for the Jewish people, and that Jews should not entrust their fate to Sarkozy, Obama or other world leaders.

During WWII the pro-Nazi Vichy government of France helped deport 75,000 French Jews to their death in Nazi concentration camps. The French political right that included the Catholic clergy and monarchists persecuted Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus in the famous 1894 trial. Numerous expulsions and forced conversions of Jews occurred during the Middle Ages in addition to Jews in certain French provinces being forced to wear a badge following the edict of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. With these events as a partial background, it is no surprise that Jews are sensitive to acts of anti-Semitism in the land of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (France’s national motto). And, to reaffirm Jewish suspicions, the March 21, 2012 Los Angeles Times referenced results from an ADL survey that compared 2009 and 2012 attitudes towards Jews in France which indicate that nearly half of the French people surveyed hold “classical anti-Semitic notions.”

Former French president Jacque Chirac was reported by Israel Insider to have said on March 1, 2002 that “I would like to say clearly there is no upsurge in anti-Semitism in France.” Similar assurances have been recently made by President Sarkozy. Protecting the Jews of France requires, however, the protection of the Jews of Israel. And, as long as Israel is vilified in the French media, abused in academia, and betrayed by the French government, anti-Semitism will not abate, and Jews will continue to be vulnerable to such despicable attacks such as has occurred this week. And as long as Muslim radicals in France are not dealt with in the severest way, violence against Jews will continue, and France will not be safe for Jews.

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Murders in Toulouse should be wake-up call for France. A big story can draw attention to a broader social trend. By Reuters The murders in Toulouse should be a wake-up call for France. True, the attacks on Jews and French soldiers were three individual terror attacks perpetrated, perhaps, by one person. Yet they are among dozens of incidents that happen daily in French cities, in schools, and in all aspects of life. A big story like the Toulouse attack can draw attention to a broader, dangerous social trend. Or it can be treated as an isolated incident.

In the past, the mass media could be expected to present a debate on this issue, but now, all too often, they give a monopoly to the white-washers and the apologists. Phase one is to present any terrorist as a right-winger, neo-Nazi, or opponent of left-wing policies.

If the terrorist is a Muslim, however, his own explanations – citing dominant interpretations of Islam and the goal of furthering an Islamist revolution – are ignored.

Instead, he or they are presented as confused, psychologically disturbed individuals; victims of discrimination; or, in short, anything other than ideologically motivated revolutionaries.

Perhaps the leading “professional” apologist for France in this context is Justin Vaisse. In an article in Foreign Policy, “The ‘New Normal’ in France?” he claims that Mohamed Merah, the Toulouse terrorist, was sort of a Sad Sack character merely seeking to take his fate into his own hands and to emerge as the defender of oppressed Muslims in France. In other words, he’s sort of a combination of a self-help fanatic and a crime-fighting superhero.

There’s no problem, and few major attacks on Jews. Everything is just fine. No need to make changes; no need to demand that Muslims teach tolerance and fight against extremists in their own ranks; no need to provide more protection for Jewish institutions.

And no need for a real soul-searching about the constant demonization of Israel in the French media and, at times, schools.

Is this disgusting? Yes, and it’s also dangerous. The subhead on the article tells us the Toulouse attack is merely “a banal and fading version of extremism.”

To a Jewish ear, the word “banal” recalls the famous Hannah Arendt line about the “banality of evil” in the Holocaust, while the word “fading” means the problem is going away. It so happens that I have met Monsieur Vaisse and discussed these issues with him.

Vaisse had just written a book saying that there was no real political problem regarding Muslims in France. The book was quickly translated into English and published by a prestigious Washington research center.

According to Vaisse, the entire difficulty lay with economic and social issues. The problem was that Muslims were poor and badly treated.

If this were fixed then there would be no radicalism, Islamism, or terrorism. I asked him: Accepting your premise for the moment, why should we possibly believe that France can solve the economic and social problems involved? There aren’t good jobs; there is no prospect of better housing and higher living standards. Government regulations discourage entrepreneurship.

So in the context of your worldview, isn’t the prospect for more radicalization and violence? He simply gave no serious answer.

And this, I should add, was before the current international economic crash and the Paris riots.

But there’s more. A colleague asked Vaisse what sources he used in composing his study.

Only French-language sources, he replied. My astonished colleague said that nothing could be understood without looking also at the Arabic material that French Muslims were writing and reading. In fact, this person added, there was an Arabic-language bookstore within five minutes’ walk of Vaisse’s office and we could go there right now and see the radical, anti- Semitic child-raising manuals being sold there. These books, my colleague added, weren’t just sitting on the shelves, they were being bought and used.

Incidentally, in the Netherlands – in contrast to France – Jewish groups successfully protested the sale of these child-raising manuals telling parents to teach their kids that Jews were evil and should be extirpated. The Dutch government responded by ordering little strips of white paper be glued over the offending passages.

My host then showed me, with a flick of his finger, how easily these paste-overs could be removed and the sections calling for the killing of Jews be read.

Now consider this point. I am unaware of a single incident in Europe or North America when a non-Muslim attacked Muslims with guns or bombs in an attempt to kill the maximum number possible.

Probably, you could find a couple of such cases, but it won’t be easy and they won’t be many. It is the Jews who are being targeted as a group by many levels of violence and intimidation. This is a secret to nobody except Western governments, “experts” and much of the mass media.

I have listened in France to discussions among Jews over what parts of their cities were safe to live in and which ones were dangerous. The key factor is whether you are wealthy enough to move away from the threats. I’ve heard Jewish parents discussing the traumatic experiences of their children in the public schools. French Jews are either leaving France or at least buying homes in Israel.

Aside from reports in mostly Jewish media, I know about this because I hear more and more French being spoken in Tel Aviv’s streets. My real estate agent friend has had a growing number of French clients, some of whom leave their families in Israel and commute to work in France.

Der Spiegel, for example, interviews Daniel Ben-Simon, an expert on the subject who explains there are, “hundreds of anti-Semitic incidents” a year, committed mainly by Arab immigrants. Indeed, the teacher and his two children murdered in Toulouse were French Jews who had emigrated to Israel until he had been persuaded to return to France to work in the school.

So while we will be told to listen to Vaisse and such people, these reassuring lies have nothing to do with reality. Yet this is not just a matter of misinformation.

Such falsehoods encourage governments and institutions not to prepare, not to change their ways, not to learn from bloody experience.

And that means there will be more such tragedies, as well as hundreds of other incitements to anti-Semitism, blood libels against Israel, and acts of anti-Jewish hatred that you will never hear about. Hiding the truth only ensures that the problem grows and the tragedies are repeated.

The writer’s new book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. He is director of global research in the International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and a featured columnist at PJM and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

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2 posted on 03/27/2012 4:10:06 PM PDT by SJackson (I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes)

4 posted on 03/27/2012 4:29:03 PM PDT by Publius6961 (ItÂ’s easy to make phony promises you canÂ’t keep. - Obama, Feb23, 2012)

A few years ago, a former girlfriend called asking if I could sponsor her on a H1B visa. She said she wanted OUT of La Belle France. She inherited a house in a suburb of Paris but the local government and federal government told her that should could not move into the place. It seems that her being a Jew would upset their careful plans to let the neighbourhood “go Algerian”. They were ‘eminent domain’-ing her out of the property. She got a job with a US company, moved to Texas and worked hard to get her American citizenship.

"...Is this a trick question? How many chances do I get?... '

If you're dealing with the frogs you're gonna get warts! ....................................... FRegards

7 posted on 03/27/2012 8:47:20 PM PDT by gonzo ( Buy more ammo, dammit! You should already have the firearms ... FRegards)

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