Numbered Days for French Jews

Anti-Israel Protesters Rally Across France, Defying Ban Imposed After Synagogue Clash    Protesters run by a fire barricade near the aerial metro station of Barbes-Rochechouart, in Paris, on July 19, 2014.  AFP

"From 2012 through 2016 France has suffered from a significant increase in the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes and their severity; part of an increase in anti-Jewish attacks across most of Western Europe and increased expressions of anti-Jewish racism and bigotry. France has Europe’s largest Jewish population, estimated at between 500,000 and 600,000 individuals. Attacks against Jews in France have been particularly violent and more frequently so than in other European countries. This climate of aggression against Jews remains ongoing and at high levels without precedent in the post World War II era. "
"The report [by Human Rights First] explains that the rise in anti-Semitism is fueled in part by the marginalization of French Muslims, immigrants, and French citizens hailing from the Middle East, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa who, 'also suffer from hate crimes, prejudice, and discrimination that arises in an environment in which racist, xenophobic, and antisemitic discourse is on the rise.' The report notes that social media directed at marginalized French Arabs and Muslims scapegoats Jews, depicting them as powerful, wealthy, domineering, and evil, and the cause of Arab and Muslim marginalization. It also acknowledges that traditional media plays a role in exacerbating the pejorative anti Jewish stereotypes and incitement to hatred against Jews found in social media. The report states, 'The impact of this antisemitic content is further intensified by certain media coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as well as fierce anti-establishment and far left-wing criticism of Israeli policies in France'."
Noam Schimmel, senior fellow, Oxford University: French Responses to Anti-Jewish Racism, Bigotry and Discrimination: The 'Loneliness' of French Jews -- published Humanity in Action

People participate in a unity rally after the murder of French Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll in Paris. (photo credit: GONZALO FUENTES / REUTERS)

"What you've got to understand is that there is a sort of obsession, fantasized around the position that Jews hold in the French republic, that develops as a kind of resentment, a jealousy."
"And then there is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which gives the whole thing its energy."
Rachid Benzine, French-Moroccan political scientist 

"Antisemitism is not a Jewish affair, it is everyone’s. [France has] become a theater of murderous antisemitism."
"When a prime minister at the National Assembly declares, with the applause of every country, that France without Jews is no longer France, it does not feel like a beautiful, consolatory phrase, but a solemn warning [February speech by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on the floor of the French parliament after the assault of an eight-year-old Jewish boy attacked for wearing a kippa] France is experiencing] a new form of brutal and violent antisemitism."
"Why the silence? It is because radical Islam is considered exclusively by some of the elite French parties as an expression of social revolt... because the old antisemitism of the extreme Right is added to the antisemitism of the radical Left, which has found anti-Zionism as their alibi for transforming the executioners of Jews as victims in society."
"[Verses of the Koran advocating violence against Jews should] be struck from the theological authorities... so that no believer may rely on this sacred text to commit a crime."
"We ask that the fight against the democratic weakness that is antisemitism will become a national cause before it is too late. Before France is no longer France."
Manifesto penned by 250 French intellectual signatories

The Marais neighbourhood in Paris. Nearly 40 percent of racially or religiously motivated acts of violence were committed against Jews in 2017, though at 500,000 people they make up less than 1 percent of France’s population.  Credit Guia Besana for The New York Times

On the streets of the 17th Arrondissement in Paris there is a new assortment of kosher grocery shops and restaurants. Only a few synagogues existed there two decades earlier, but now there are fifteen. This part of northwestern Paris has become, for French Jews, a tactical retreat toward safety and security, a haven for French Jews who face harassment in areas they once populated but which now host growing Muslim populations. They move to the 17th Arrondissement from Paris suburbs where "anti-Semitism is pretty high" in the words of 28-year-old Joanna Galilli.

The "new anti-Semitism" has stimulated a lively debate in recent months, over how its corrosive and dangerous presence should be addressed. Close to 40 percent of violent incidents classified as racially or religiously motivated took place in 2017 against the Jews of France. Representing less than one percent of France's population, anti-Semitic acts increased by 20 percent from 2016, a rise of events that the French Interior Ministry characterized as "pre-occupying"; most certainly so if you're a Jewish target.

The protests united campaigners from all walks of life, but many want to know how politicians plan to combat anti-Semitism

From 2011 forward the French government no longer categorized those responsible for anti-Semitic attacks. Up to then, the largest group identified as perpetrators according to researchers, were Muslims. Flare-ups between Israel and the Palestinians were seen to spark violent spikes in France. With the larges population in Europe of both Jews and Muslims, and where Muslims are faced with discrimination in employment opportunities and in police treatment, they turn to Jews as being responsible for their condition in France.

Fearing that one side will be increasingly pitted against the other, even acknowledging that a dynamic where Muslim-versus-Jew exists leads French authorities to bypass mentioning the two communities in one breath. This would constitute an incitement, contrary to a central tenet of French social ideology, that people not be categorized by race or religion, referenced only as fellow citizens, all equal before the law. "But this doesn't correspond to reality. All the politicians speak of living together. And yet, instead, we have de facto groupings based on culture and community", observed pollster Jerome Fourquet.

A synagogue in Sarcelles. Tens of thousands of Jews have left the peripheries of Paris and Lyon, where Muslim populations are rising, and have retrenched in neighborhoods with larger Jewish populations. CreditCapucine Granier-Deferre pour The New York Times

The phrase "new anti-Semitism" offends Muslim leaders who argue that the phrase places broad blame on Muslims, pointing out that within France's estimated six to ten million Muslim population, hate crimes have also increased from 2016 to 2017. This is a typical Muslim counter-attack, to claim themselves victimized as a shield against acknowledging their propensity to victimize Jews. As though to say within the Muslim community, 'if we are to be victimized, then we will victimize the Jews', as though this illogic is a defence of the indefensible.

French Jews for whom France will always be their home, have decided in their tens of thousands and with great reluctance, to leave the country in the face of increasing violence and the growing prevalence of a fraught Muslim presence where Jews have traditionally lived in France. Many have moved internally, leaving the peripheries of Paris and Lyon, where the rise of Muslims in the population has led to threats against Jews. French Jews retrench in neighbourhoods hosting larger Jewish populations; feeling there is comfort in strength of numbers for a Jewish population one-tenth the size of their Muslim counterparts.

Numerous French intellectuals -- Jews and non-Jews -- signed a manifesto, warning of a "silent ethnic purge", calling on Muslims to renounce anti-Semitic Koranic verses. A recommendation that infuriates Muslim leaders, one of whom responded: "People leave because they have reached another economic level". Some Muslims feel discriminated against in French society, particularly in citizenship, believing Jews enjoy better treatment by far than Muslims, according to French political scientist, Rachid Benzine.

A memorial to Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Jewish woman stabbed to death in Paris last month. Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images