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Nov. 8, 2005 0:38 | Updated Nov. 8, 2005 14:18 French Jews remain largely untargeted By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER As Muslim rioters continue to rage across France forcing the French government to authorize curfews under the state of emergency law, the Jewish community has watched as the fears it once trumpeted to French authorities have become reality. Still, Jewish leaders have breathed a sigh of relief that so far their community hasn't been targeted. Since 2000 "the Muslim people attacked the Jewish community and the Jewish community said to the government, 'Help us, help us. It's very important you help...

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was choked by tears and had to interrupt his speech for a few moments during a ceremony at the Vel d'Hiver memorial at Drancy to mark the 63rd anniversary since the big roundup of Parisian Jews. He read aloud a letter written by a child at the Drancy Detention Camp describing the horrendous conditions and the fears the Jews faced at the Nazi transit camp run by the French under the Vichy government. Ten years ago France proclaimed July 17th the official day to mark the deportation of the Jews. On July 17, 1942...

METZ, France, May 11 (AFP) - Scores of tombstones were overturned in a Jewish cemetery at Sarreguemines in eastern France, local police said Wednesday. The profanation, in which about 65 of the 500 graves in the cemetery were knocked down and piled on top of one another, occurred between Sunday and Tuesday and was discovered by a municipal employee. The cover was lifted entirely off one of the graves. Police chief Alfred Bickel said a forensic unit was seeking fingerprints and other evidence at the scene. In addition, a swastika was carved at the entrance to a Christian cemetery nearby....

The resounding slogan of “liberty, equality, fraternity,” leaves no room for racism in the French state, in theory. In practice, over the two centuries since that slogan was coined, rulers of France have tried with varying success to fit two peoples — Arabs and Jews — into their grand design for the French nation and for its standing in the world. Today, as long-held but misconceived ambitions collide, racism with its hates and fears increasingly plagues France, calling into question the relationship that the country’s Arab and Jewish minorities have with each other, that each has with the state, and...

Of the countries hardest hit by the current outbreak of anti-Semitism in Europe, France poses a particular dilemma. For contrary to much of what is said today about anti-Jewish sentiment in France, its roots are to be found not in any specific Israeli policy with respect to the Palestinians. Rather, they lie deep within the French body politic. For this reason, it is a profound error to argue, as many have, that the problem will be resolved through a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, or that any of the conventional methods--such as increased law enforcement or public-awareness campaigns--will succeed in...

Racist and anti-Semitic violence in France nearly doubled in 2004, hitting its highest level in a decade and showing no sign of slowing, according to a study to be published Monday. Jews and Muslims were the main victims of 1,565 recorded threats and violent attacks in 2004, up from 833 a year earlier, according to the National Consultative Commission of Human Rights annual report, which was being submitted Monday to Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. It was the highest recorded number of attacks since 1994, said the report, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. Anti-Semitic acts rose...

A stone wall engraved with the names of 76,000 Jews who were deported from France to Nazi death camps during World War II has been unveiled in Paris. The "Wall of Names" memorial is located at the entrance to the French capital's newly renovated Holocaust museum. Some 11,000 of those deported from 1942 to 1944 were children. Nearly all were killed - mostly at Auschwitz in Poland. French President Jacques Chirac will officially open the site on Tuesday, before flying to Auschwitz. Mr Chirac will be one of many world leaders present at ceremonies to mark the 60th anniversary of...

is not so easy to know when you’re deluding yourself and when you are finally seeing the light. When I look back at my reasons for leaving the United States for France in 1972, some seem to me as outmoded—and, in retrospect, as endearing—as Beatles haircuts and Vietnam-war protests. Others stubbornly persist. In any event, my career as a serious American novelist having been short-circuited, I opted for the improbable exploit of becoming a writer in French and a professional translator, and I succeeded. I am long settled in Paris; the three youngsters I brought there, tucked under my free-flying...

--The Jews' situation in France is indicative of the condition of French society. Substantial anti-Semitic violence in recent years underscores several of the country's major problems. --Under the Jospin socialist-led government (in power until 2002), the Jews became the country's scapegoat and safety barrier, being on the receiving end of the main attacks - which targeted French society at large --The French government affirms its determination to combat anti-Semitism while at the same time continuing to feed the anti-Semitic discourse at its origins. --The ongoing anti-Jewish aggression has created a trend toward mental and behavioral ghettoization of the French Jewish...

Dec. 9, 2004 7:03 | Updated Dec. 9, 2004 17:09 The Boeing aliya By DELPHINE MATTHIEUSSENT The intensified immigration from affluent France has given rise to a strange kind of commuter who keeps his family here and his job there Standing between his mother and his uncle, 17-year-old Alexis Haddad pours wine into a kiddush cup and hesitantly begins to say Kiddush, the prayer that is recited at the beginning of Shabbat and holiday meals, usually by family heads. Yet for more than a year now, this teenager has been saying Kiddush himself, except for every fourth weekend when his...

The commencement of the second Palestinian Intifada, in late 2000, ignited the most extensive outbreak of anti-Semitic violence in France since the Holocaust. It continues to this day. The crimes have been perpetrated almost entirely by the beur-Arab immigrants. The political alliances forged between Jewish and Arab leaders during the rise of the right-wing National Front have broken down. Marseille, France’s second-largest and oldest city, was initially not exempt. In September 2001, the Gan Pardes school in Marseille was set alight. The words “Death to the Jews” and “Bin Laden Will Conquer” were spray- painted on the walls. Over the...

Against the backdrop of continuing hate crimes against French Jewry, France's Broadcasting Authority had banned Hezbollah's Al-Manar viciously antisemitic and anti-Israel TV (see right and below) for violating French anti-incitement laws. Earlier this week, French Broadcasting Authority announced that it had reversed its ban thereby giving Al-Manar the license to continue broadcasting into France and elsewhere in Europe via French satellite television after the Beirut-based mouthpiece of the terrorist Hizbollah organization allegedly agreed not to broadcast any hate programming. The Wiesenthal Center has protested to French Broadcasting Authority President Dominique Baudis (click here to read) and we urge you now...

French Jews blast government decision to air Hezbollah TV By Reuters PARIS - Jewish groups have objected to a French government decision to allow the television arm of Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas to continue broadcasting to Europe using a French satellite operator. The CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish organisations accused the government of failing to protect citizens from broadcasts by Hezbollah's al-Manar TV, which CRIF says includes anti-Semitic films that incite Muslims to attack Jews. "We French citizens are under attack as Jews by this television," CRIF president Roger Cuikerman said on Friday. Arabic-language satellite television is popular with France's...

PARIS — Americans were busy electing the leader of the free world this week, but French Jews had a different foreign dignitary on their minds: Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian leader arrived in France last week, after President Jacques Chirac eagerly accepted Arafat's request for access to medical treatment. Chirac proudly framed the decision as an example of French humanitarianism, but local Jews were more cynical in their take on the situation. "This is another example of France sucking up to the Arab world," said Sonia Fellous, an expert on Hebrew manuscripts at the prestigious state-funded CNRS research center in Paris....

Nearly 100 graves were desecrated at a Jewish cemetery near the eastern city of Strasbourg, local authorities said on Saturday. The perpetrators daubed tombstones with anti-Semitic and Nazi inscriptions in black and blue paint in an attack that appeared to have taken place on Friday night at Brumath, 15 km north of Strasbourg, the local government prefect's office said. It was the third such attack in six months, and there have also been similar attacks on Muslim burial sites in the Alsace region that borders Germany. "Once again, what I have to say and say again are the same words...

French Anti-Semitism: A Barometer for Gauging Society's Perverseness An Interview with Shmuel Trigano The Jews' situation in France is indicative of the condition of French society. Substantial anti-Semitic violence in recent years underscores several of the country's major problems. Under the Jospin socialist-led government (in power until 2002), the Jews became the country's scapegoat and safety barrier, being on the receiving end of the main attacks - which targeted French society at large The French government affirms its determination to combat anti-Semitism while at the same time continuing to feed the anti-Semitic discourse at its origins. The ongoing anti-Jewish aggression...

France: Campaigns against anti-Semitism raise hell among Jews, Arabs -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michel Zlotowski and Khaled Abu Toameh, THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 23, 2004 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- French Jewish leaders were outraged when they discovered the posters for a planned campaign against anti-Semitism to be launched Monday by the French Union of Jewish Students, UEJF. The posters show representations of Jesus and of the Holy Virgin tagged "Dirty Jew" and "Dirty Jewess" with a catch line, "Surely Anti-Semitism concerns everybody". Roger Cukierman, President of CRIF, the umbrella body politically representing the French Jewish organized community, told the Jerusalem Post that the posters were "inappropriate...

Some 80,000 French Jews were killed in the Holocaust French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, on a state visit to Israel, has said France will do all it can to fight a growing anti-Semitism in his country. At a memorial for French Jews killed during the Holocaust, he said France would "never compromise" on the issue. In July, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon angered French officials by urging French Jews to move to Israel in the wake of several attacks. The French minister is due to meet Mr Sharon on Monday. "We will not compromise, we will never compromise," Mr Barnier...

Anti-Semitism is on the rise in their homeland. Philippe Goldenstein, 39, once a bodyguard for France's Grand Rabbi Joseph Sitruk, doesn't scare easily. So when his yarmulke drew hostility on the streets of his native Paris, where anti-Semitic attacks are escalating, he fought back. ''One Arab on his bicycle called me a dirty Jew,'' he said. ``I had to beat him up.'' But like many French Jews who have settled in South Florida recently, Goldenstein and his wife, Katia, began to fear for their children, now 2 and 3 years old. ''Since the intifada started [in 2002], things are degrading...

Vandals spray-painted red swastikas and the initials "SS" on four family tombs with Jewish-sounding names in a cemetery in eastern France, police said Monday. The attack on the small cemetery in Audincourt probably took place late Saturday or early Sunday, police said. There was no immediate information on who might have been behind the vandalism. France, which has western Europe's largest populations of Jews and Muslims, has experienced a recent upsurge in anti-Semitic and anti-Arab attacks.