Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
France has long had a history of anti-Semitism. There was the famous Dreyfus affair when a young French artillery officer was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris in 1894. Captain Alfred Dreyfus spent five years in solitary confinement at Devil's Island in French Guiana before it was discovered that a French Army major was the real culprit.During the Second World War, Vichy France under Marshal Petain collaborated with German occupying forces. Vichy authorities assisted in the rounding up of Jews. Tens of thousands of French Jews died in concentration camps established within France, while others were sent to concentration camps outside the country. The Vichy government promulgated its Statute on Jews as a special underclass of citizens; this statute was circulated to its colonies in Syria, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.
France has the world's third largest Jewish population, but it also has a much larger population of Arabs. There are 3.5-million Muslims living in France. Rising levels of anti-Semitism among French Muslims that include the desecration of Jewish graves and tensions between Jewish and Arab citizens have led to atrocities that drew worldwide attention. One of which was the mutilation and death of a young Jew, Ilan Halimi, tortured to death by the "Barbarians gang" led by Youssouf Fofana.
In 2012 a gunman fired at and killed four people, including three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse in an anti-Semitic attack. At that time, then-President Nicolas Sarkozy said: "I want to say to all leaders of the Jewish community how close we feel to them. All of France is by their side." Not, unfortunately, quite all.
In the years 2000 to 2009 over thirteen thousand French Jews moved to Israel. The anti-Israel bias of the French government and rising anti-Semitism by French Muslims has made life extremely difficult for Jews living in France. In acknowledgement of this, back in 2004, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon caused an international brouhaha when he advised French Jews to "move immediately" to Israel to escape "the wildest anti-Semitism" in France.
In 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a joint press conference with Socialist French President Francois Hollande said to the French Jewish community: "In my role as Prime Minister of Israel, I always say to Jews, wherever they may be, I say to them: Come to Israel and make Israel your home", alluding to Ariel Sharon's similar statement. 2012 was a particularly difficult year in France for the Jewish community.
A 58% increase in anti-Semitic incidents was highlighted by the Service de Protection de la Communaute Juive. There was a doubling of anti-Semitic attacks against Jews to 614 from the previous year's 389 such attacks. Attacks involving the use of a weapon, for example. A hand grenade was thrown inside a kosher supermarket in Sarcelles, wounding a customer. Islamist groups within the country target French Jewish organizations.
After the murder by Mohamed Merah of a father, his two children and a seven-year-old girl, there was an increase in anti-Semitic incidents throughout the country, despite the horror expressed after that slaughter of Jewish children, ages 4, 5 and 7. Jewish boys and girls are assaulted and taunted with "dirty Jews" calls. Jewish men in France are reluctant to draw attention to themselves by the wearing of yarmulkes in public.
Rock throwing, beatings, bullets, racial slurs, ambushes, theft, threats, tear-gas attacks, all represent incidents that French Jews have become wary of inspiring against themselves.
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Conflict, Controversy, France, Human Relations, Islamism, Prejudices
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, March 05, 2013
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