French Anti-Semitism's New Look

...Chirac's emotional reaction to the television coverage of Palestinian victims reportedly had Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak seething during the abortive attempt to reach some kind of cease-fire in Paris on October 5-6...

...Unlike the period during and after the Gulf War, they are clearly aimed at the Jewish community, with perpetrators coming not from the ranks of Middle Eastern terrorists, as in the past, but from the French population...

...He warned that escalation of violence in the Palestinian territories endangered the very future of Israel...

...Wall for Peace" artist Clara Halter's husband Marek, who has tirelessly argued for an end to the conflict in the Middle East, disdains such semantic nuances...

...It's not the mosque-going Muslims who are a threat to us here," a rabbi in Paris said recently, "it's the youngsters who roam the streets...

...Malek Boutih, the president of SOS-Racism, and Ygal El Harrar, the leader of France's Jewish Students Union, have jointly avowed their "refusal to see a geographically distant conflict transposed to the banks of the Seine...

...Some of them equate the areas they live in with the "occupied territories" on the West Bank and see their night raids as fun versions of the "heroic" drama that in their view is being played out by stone-throwing Palestinian youngsters...

...A number of demonstrations have featured youths wildly shouting "Death to the Jews...

...And during a ceremony at which he decorated a senior Muslim citizen, President Jacques Chirac similarly recalled that tolerance was a pillar of French democracy...

...Many of these "associations" do valuable work, providing literacy programs for women and school guidance for parents and children, teaching youngsters and adults alike about their civil rights and duties...

...Halterretorted: "When someone calls me a filthy Jew, I don't care whether he's manipulated by real or phony anti-Semites...

...And some are controlled by self-styled imams who, while pretending to teach children the Koran, extol the "martyrdom" of Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists and feed them the kind of propaganda that young Palestinians are subjected to...

...French culture is potentially a unique meeting place for Muslim and Jewish writers...

...In their scheme of things, the oppressors are now the United States and, in the case of the Middle East, Israel, while the oppressed are the inhabitants of Muslim countries...

...Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin has stressed that the authorities would not tolerate any form of violence that threatened people's freedom to worship...

...A rally at Montpellier was organized by the teachers' union associated with the Communist Party, one of the biggest in the profession, and the Association of Workers from the Maghreb...

...The children were followed by their mothers and other women...

...France currently holds the presidency of the European Union, and that body's handling of the latest Middle East crisis once more illustrated the incapacity of its members to speak with one voice on foreign affairs...

...And that is conditioned by a pro-Arab Gaullist legacy and an anti-Israel front of Communists, Greens and extreme Leftists, some of whom are active in the Socialist Party...

...A high proportion of them are Sephardic, and their native communities coexisted in relative harmony with Africa's Muslims when the region was under French rule...

...It will take more than beautiful artwork and well-meaning rallies to heal that wound...

...The October 26 Paris Match contained an exchange between Halter and Leila Shahid, the Palestinian Authority's representative in France...

...Shahid responded: "Those youngsters may have been manipulated by neo-Nazis, who are the real anti-Semites...

...But the psychological damage has been extensive...

...Like Halter, many Jews have been upset by an overall tendency to try and play down the situation and draw parallels between, for instance, what seems to have been the accidental shooting of a child and the deliberate mob-lynching and mutilation of two Israeli soldiers...

...Despite such pleas for peace, pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been held in several towns, with both Muslims and non-Muslims participating...

...Such words are a balm to French Jews, even though they would prefer to hear them spoken loudly and clearly...

...The Simon Wiesenthal Center, strongly disagreeing, observes that the attacks in France represent half of all those carried out against Jewish targets outside the Middle East...

...For moderate French Jews, many of whom have long been calling for friendship between Israelis and Palestinians, the deep-rooted, atavistic hatred of Israel and indeed Judaism that burst into the open this fall is hard to come to terms with...

...It's time to speak up," declared actor Michel Boujenah, who attended the rally...

...Most seem to be teenagers of North African descent who live in suburbs where violence has become a way of life...

...Interior Minister Daniel Vaillant has increased police protection of public places...

...On the diplomatic front, though, he has not broken with the pro-Arab line that was fixed by Charles de Gaulle and endorsed by successive presidents...

...He was referring to the hundred or so attacks on Jewish synagogues, cultural centers and schools...

...A leading Jewish journalist I spoke to believes French public opinion is conditioned by a long tradition of anti-Semitism that has found a "respectable" outlet in pro-Palestinian sympathies...

...More recently, Chirac publicly recognized the involvement of Vichy France in the Holocaust and he refuses any form of political alliance with the far Right...

...Halter said he was shocked by attempts on the part of French journalists and politicians to minimize anti-Semitic incidents...

...Halter makes a point of noting that the structure, unveiled last spring near the Eiffel Tower, was inspired by Jerusalem's Western Wall and has slots for messages...

...Muslim and Jewish children have also been brought together in a number of places, to read statements of peace and love...

...For the first time since World War II, their confidence in their country has been badly jolted...

...In an editorial in Le Nouvel Observateur, Jean Daniel, who is himself Jewish, said of the attacks on French Jewish targets: "Had they wanted to try and equate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, they could hardly have been more successful...

...French Jews are deeply upset by what they fear may be a turning point in their relations with the Muslim community...

...Rabbis describe their communities as being "in a state of shock...

...As for Chirac, his hostility toward the far Right—said by intimates to be genuine—gives him a moderate image that appeals to centrist voters...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...

...Indeed one cannot help remembering how in the late '80s and early '90s it was some time before France's Left—including people like President François Mitterrand—could bring itself to admit that the Berlin Wall and Communism were crumbling...

...French politicians have generally been condemning the worst acts of violence against the Palestinians, while pleading in Munichlike tones forpeace...

...These imams are looked upon with suspicion by the rectors of many of the bigger mosques, who cultivate a responsible, tolerant profile and are anxious to be treated by the authorities on an equal footing with the leaders of the Christian and Jewish communities...

...But he coolly conceded that such a turn of events would only be possible after a few years of bloodshed, as in Kosovo...

...On the whole, France's large Muslim community has kept its cool...

...He is said to have told Chirac that "fortunately for France," he did not judge the country from what he saw on the news...

...Rectors of mosques in Paris, Marseilles and elsewhere have repeatedly called for restraint and mutual respect, in some cases jointly with rabbis of Jewish communities in the same neighborhoods...

...It offers a secular institutional framework that provides neutral territory as well as a common linguistic and literary heritage...

...The pro-Palestinian tilt of the media seems to reflect the public mood at large, according to an opinion poll published by Liberation in mid-October...

...It was led by a few dozen children who were obviously the offspring of North African or Arab parents...

...At the beginning, people said it was nothing...

...Keeping one's mouth shut never got anyone anywhere...

...If anything, it probably made the prospect of their doing so recede even further into the future...

...Anti-Semitic insults have been daubed on the fronts of Jewish shops, Jewish children have been intimidated, and an elderly couple were molested in their home...

...There were political gains to be had, of course: Mitterrand's unceasing denunciation of the far Right not only gave it publicity and made some aspects of its ideology attractive to ultraconservatives, it weakened the Center-Right, supplied the far Left with a cause, and earned him the votes of young "anti-racists...

...When they moved to France in the early 1960s,North African Jews brought with them a vibrant nostalgia that has colored countless songs, films and books...

...Many that have been received since October cite the renewed violence between Palestinians and Israelis and urge both sides to return to working for the day when, as one message put it, "Shalom = Salaam" Similar appeals were painted on a fabric wall erected nearby on October 23, during a rally organized by SOSRacism, an organization that has done much to fight anti-Arab bigotry in France...

...Prime Minister Jospin, who usually tries to compete with Chirac on most issues as he grooms himself for the 2002 presidential election, has been content to wash his hands of Middle Eastern diplomacy...

...Paris academic Eric Marty, in a column published in Le Monde, expressed a similar view and scathingly denounced France's lack of "political and intellectual maturity, its inability to face up politically to a dramatic, historical turn of events...

...That is no doubt why architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, who designed the "Wall For Peace" with artist Clara Halter, opted for a transparent design on which the word "peace" is calligraphically inscribed in 32 languages...

...In an internal Socialist newsletter, JeanLuc Mélanchon, the Secretary for Technical Education, warned in mid-October against the "anti-Semitic riffraff" that hide behind pro-Palestinian movements...

...Yet if France's secular outlook makes for religious tolerance, it can also foster a somewhat reductive hostility to all forms of religion...

...He earned the resentment and mistrust of the Palestinian leadership during a visit to Israel earlier this year, when he amazed French diplomats, and angered quite a few pro-Palestinians in his own camp by describing Hezbollah as a terrorist organization...

...Quite a few, though, are covers for the pro-Palestinian far Left, which denounces anti-Semitism only when it comes from the far Right...

...About 50 people have been arrested...

...Thirty per cent of those polled considered the explosive situation in the Middle East was Israel's "fault," 15 per cent the Palestinians' "fault," 21 per cent the "fault" of both sides...

...They wore white turbans bearing Arabic writing and carried large photos of the Palestinian youngster who was killed early in October in a crossfire near the Israeli checkpoint at Ramallah...

...More worryingly, 75 per cent thought the conflict would permanently affect Jewish-Muslim relations in France, in spite of the authorities' call for tolerance...

...Then the attacks went on...

...Many of the latter are members of far-Left movements...

...As Israel drew up contingency plans for a possible "unilateral separation" from the Palestinians that was immediately criticized by the French media, former Mitterrand advisor Jacques Attali was penning an idyllic picture of a united Israel and Palestine in L'Express...

...In this context, nonpracticing Jews close to the Socialist and Communist parties have sometimes been at pains to establish that they are not the prisoners of a faith and consequently endorsed anti-Israeli policies...

...It also attracts a younger electorate that his daughter Claude, who grooms his image, has been encouraging him to woo...

...He went on to point out that "no one has tried to bum mosques in France, no one has written 'filthy Arab' on shops belonging to people who come from North Africa...

...Read: calling for Israel to be more flexible...

...Others, according to the French media, have simply been organized by "associations from the banlieues"—the French word for suburbs that is generally used to denote alienating high-rise areas, where mostly immigrant populations grapple with problems induced by the combined effects of crime, drugs and unemployment...

...Anti-Semitism here seems to be considered unacceptable mainly when it comes from the far Right...

...At the same time he has tried to play down the incidents, describing them as "a passing trend" and the work of a few idle youths...

...Materially, much of the damage has been minor, though at least one synagogue was burned down...

...In a similar, albeit more subdued, vein, Denis Jeambar, editor of L'Express, recalled the frequently overlooked fact that Israel is the only democracy in the region...

...The profanation of a Jewish cemetery at Carpentras a decade ago provoked a national outrage, with Mitterrand himself leading a protest in Paris...

...Editorials equating the two incidents in Le Monde, Le Nouvel Observateur and Libération (although those papers, it must be said, also ran pro-Israeli and proPalestinian columnists) evoked an outraged reply from Henri Amar in La Dépêche du Midi...

...To this day, elderly Jews in Marseilles or Montpellier speak Arabic with their Algerian or Moroccan neighbors...

...Official and media attempts to play down attacks on Jewish targets in France pretty much mirror their handling of the crisis in the Middle East...

...The most striking gathering thus far, at Mulhouse, was so uncharacteristic of French street action and so well organized that it is difficult to believe it was "spontaneous...

...When the United Nations General Assembly called for a vote to censure Israeli violence, France unsuccessfully pushed for an alternative Palestinian motion...

...Swapping Judaism for a more acceptable Marxism, some of them have embraced a vision of the world that is further distorted by guilt over colonialism...

...prompting the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples (MRAP) to dissociate itself from what its leaders call "a dangerous drift toward ethnic division...

...This time, however, SOS-Racism was demonstrating against a wave of antiJewish assaults that is a direct consequence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Dozens of politicians, intellectuals, artists, journalists and others dipped their hands in paint and pressed them on the white background to denounce what they see as an unsettling upsurge of antiSemitism in the country...