generalspeaking

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Courage, en Ami!

"We haven’t shown enough outrage."
"How can we accept that cries of ‘death to the Jews’ can be heard on the streets?"
"History has taught us that the awakening of antisemitism is the symptom of a crisis for democracy and of a crisis for the Republic. That is why we must respond with force. [The] first question that has to be dealt with clearly is the struggle against antisemitism."
"I say to the people in general who perhaps have not reacted sufficiently up to now, and to our Jewish compatriots, that this time [antisemitism] cannot be accepted."
"How can we accept that in France, where the Jews were emancipated two centuries ago, but which was also where they were martyred [during the Nazi Holocaust] 70 years ago, that cries of ‘death to the Jews’ can be heard on the streets? How can we accept that French people can be murdered for being Jews? How can we accept that compatriots, or a Tunisian citizen whose father sent him to France so that he would be safe, is killed when he goes out to buy his bread for Shabbat?"
"[There] is a historical antisemitism that goes back centuries. There is also a new antisemitism that is born in our neighborhoods, coming through the Internet, satellite dishes, against the backdrop of loathing of the State of Israel, which advocates hatred of the Jews and all the Jews."
"How can we accept that in certain schools and colleges the Holocaust can’t be taught? How can we accept that when a child is asked, ‘who is your enemy,’ the response is ‘the Jew?’ When the Jews of France are attacked, France is attacked, the conscience of humanity is attacked. Let us never forget that."
"The indignity of a serial hater having a full house on Saturday night, when the country was mourning for what happened [at the HyperCacher market] in Porte de Vincennes. Let us never pass over these matters in silence, and let justice be implacable with those who preach hate. And I say that emphatically here at the National Assembly."
"It has to be spelled out – the right words must be used to fight this unacceptable antisemitism.”
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls

Truly a noble speech, an oration vibrating with outrage and condemnation, in full support of the right to safety and security of an ancient segment of the French population, deserving of a standing ovation and a standing ovation is what the speech and its passionate defence of French Jewry received. But at the same time the conciliatory admonition that no one should assume that France is at war with Islam. French Muslims must be reassured of their place of respect and security in the French Republic.

What, then, is the solution? How can a country that has absorbed millions of Muslims, deferring to them, encouraging them, assuring them that their place is within the country, begin to convince them that their traditional loathing of Jews is unsupportable in the land of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity? Absent that as a possibility, to emphasize that French citizenship comes complete with the obligation of the citizen to respect the other and leave them to live their lives in peace, what can be done?

What cannot be undone, obviously, is the embrace of millions of Muslims in a secular society devoted to its values. Inviting within its midst a culture, religion and ideology that is simply not adaptable to Western values, freedoms and concerns. What could be more absurd than a country dedicated to freedom of choice, freedom of speech, freedom to be, inviting a heritage of hard-wired religious devotion whose faith revolves entirely around piety and rejection of others, to take its place in peace and brotherhood?

As in all such situations, it is the Jews who suffer first and most. Once the Jews are gone, though, all others will discover that it is their turn, next. The HyperCacher market atrocity was the last such carnage that Jews have been exposed to in France. A France that expresses its horror at such anti-life, anti-freedom, anti-Jewish atrocities, but which finds itself in the tight spot of appeasing Jewish anguish and the perceived need to reassure Muslims that their religion is not the least bit at fault.

For the simple fact is that France is "at war with jihadism and terrorism ... not against Islam and Muslims", the obligatory reassurance and back-tracking in a conflicted Western agenda of tolerance and forgiveness. While France is so understanding of the dilemma faced by its Muslim population, that a small percentage are psychopathic murderers, French Jews experience episodes of abduction, torture, murder, rape, and again mass slaughter; events that "did not produce the national outrage that our Jewish compatriots expected."

Not deserved, but expected. Violating the human rights of a Jewish population doesn't necessarily come with mass condemnation by a nation's populace. The relatively small voices of a relatively small number of Jews raise their voices in the anguish of betrayal of their trust, but the aggregate of the population remains unaffected; it is, after all, the Jews they pursue. And don't the Jews deserve it, haven't they done things that provoke those who hate them?

Particularly small schoolchildren, particularly rabbis, particularly young Jewish women and men who believe, fallaciously, they have a human right to live out their lives in tranquility and aspirational challenge for their futures. What futures? In the very wake of the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket, and police murders, French comedian Dieudonne M'Bala M'bala indulged in his usual hate speech, anti-Semitism and glorification of Islamist terrorism.

Oops, in France as elsewhere in the civilized world of Liberal Democracies it is terrorism, not Islamist terrorism. Oh dear, one does forget from time to time....