The Columbia Current

“I will not let you wear your Magen David in the metro” my mother repeated, almost mechanically. We had this discussion every time I left the house. But as usual, I stubbornly insisted that I would not take it off. It came as no surprise later on when I heard a Moroccan man whisper “sale Juive” (French for “dirty Jew”) as he looked at my necklace in the Parisian subway. That was one of many small incidents which made me feel a peripheral unease.

Again, I wasn’t surprised when I heard the story of a young Jewish professor in the suburb of Seine–Saint–Denis whose coat had been scotched with an “Israel–apartheid” sticker by his students, who had then drawn a swastika next to “Kill the Jews” on the classroom blackboard. Nor when on March 23, 2002, in Toulon, a Jewish synagogue and community center were set on fire, or when on October 29–30 of the same year, close to one hundred gravestones were desecrated at a Jewish cemetery in Brumath, just outside Strasbourg. The vandals had painted swastikas and SS symbols on ninety–two Jewish gravestones

It was only two years ago, when 23–year old Jewish boy Ilan Halimi was found naked by a railway track in the Paris suburb of Bagneux, with burns and knife wounds all over his body, that the threats suddenly became more tangible, not only for me but for many other Jews in France. A gang of teens of North African origin took Halimi hostage and held him for weeks, demanding a large ransom. Most public officials insisted the gang did not act out of anti–Semitism. However, the gang seemed inordinately fixated on the fact that Halimi was Jewish because, as one police detective put it, “Jews equal money.” Current President Nicolas Sarkozy, who at the time served as Interior Minister, stated that greed was the main motive in the murder, “but they believed, and I quote, ’that Jews have money.’ he said. “That’s called anti–Semitism.”

Early this year, in same suburb of Bagneux in which Halimi’s murder took place, and in which there has a slew of violent immigrant riots in the past two years, 19–year–old Mathieu Roumi suffered considerable physical and emotional mistreatment at the hands of another youth immigrant gang. Among the many abuses subjected to Roumi, one of the assailants shoved cigarette butts into his mouth, and another grabbed correction fluid and scrawled “dirty Jew” on his forehead. The six men proceeded to scream at him and threaten that he would die the way Halimi did. “We admire Youssouf Fofana!” they shouted at him, referring to the leader of the gang that murdered Halimi. Fortunately, the similarity between the cases ended there, as Roumi was able to return home alive and relatively unhurt.

Certainly, the French government, and the majority of French society, utterly rejects anti–Semitism. The epoch in which anti–Semitism was instrumental to the French nationalist discourse, or almost represented an authentic political doctrine, seems to have ended long ago. Forgotten, it appears, are the centuries in which the Jews were blamed for the de– Christianization of society and were qualified as the “deicide” people, or were linked to the wealthy Rothschild family and denounced for controlling the country’s economy. Yet these events can be overlooked or minimized. They all provide striking counter examples to the reassuring statistics on the “diminution of anti–Semitic feeling” in modern France.

Today the average French citizen is increasingly open to marrying within Judaism or of voting for a Jewish candidate. French Jews are now seen by more than two thirds of the population as fully French. They hold important positions in all aspects of public life and can openly practice their religion. The majority of the French public’s response to the violence of the last ten years was also, on the whole, overwhelmingly empathetic. After Halimi’s death, tens of thousands of people marched through Paris to protest against racism and anti–Semitism. Similarly, in November 2003, after an arson attack on Jewish school in Gagny, President Chirac stated, “An attack on a Jew is an attack on France.” He ordered the formation of an inter–ministerial committee charged with initiating measures to combat anti–Semitism. Since its first meeting in December 2003, the committee has worked to improve government coordination in the fight against anti–Semitism by publishing statistics on the number and nature of anti–Semitic acts committed annually as well as on the evolution of public perception of these phenomena. During the Halimi scandal, now Minister of Foreign Affairs Bernard Kouchner stated that the French population “shouldn’t relax its vigilance and wait until the next anti–Semitic or racist act to come forward and say ’that’s enough...’ that it’s no use invoking the ”republican integration“ or ’the country of the Rights of Man,’ because these words are insufficient to make it stop.”

The concept of “republican integration” lies at the heart of French political and cultural identity. It holds that every citizen of the French state should cede racial and religious allegiances in favor of political loyalty to the French nation. The notion of “communitarianism,” understood as political communities anchored in historically cultural communities, has been a recurrent source of debate within French society. For example, Jews have often been forced to question whether they are first Jewish and secondarily French, or vice versa.

Indeed, “communitarianism” is profoundly linked to the historically problematic notion of diversity within the French republican system. During the Enlightenment, cultural differences were depicted as a resurgence of tribalism and superstition, which opposed the universality of “civilization.” The French Revolution and the writings of Jean–Jacques Rousseau on minority interests, which suggested that minorities might “threaten the unity of the indivisible Republic,” promoted the suppression of the Jewish cultural differentiation and political autonomy. In view of recent criticism, many Jewish leaders, among them rabbis and academics, have vigorously defended the traditional Republican values of French Judaism. In their self–conscious reflection on “Judéité,” and its place in the Republic, many influential Jewish figures have demonstrated a keen awareness of their collective responsibility to defend a specifically French Jewish identity, subordinated to citizenship, as well as to demonstrate their commitment to the notion of universalism.

Yet anti–Semitism still plagues certain sectors of modern France. Since 2000, which corresponds to the date of the second Palestinian uprising against Israel, the specter of a new kind of anti–Semitism, particularly attributed to an economically disenfranchised North African or Muslim youth, has menaced France. This anti–Semitism manifests itself in different ways: violent in “heated” suburbs, latent in wealthier districts, and politicized in universities. It often originates in a sector of the population which finds in the hatred of the Jews a relief for its social frustration, material discomfort, and historical victimization. Police interrogations deduced that the perpetrators of recent anti–Semitic violence seldom originate from extremist right–wing milieus such as French nativists, but are instead often perpetrated by non–organized North African youths. These delinquents often lack ideology but act out of a diffuse hostility to Israel, exacerbated by the media representation of the Middle East conflict which, in their eyes, recreates the picture of ostracism and failure which they feel victims of in France. While these anti–Semitic acts appear to be perpetrated by a new element in French society, it is unclear whether the motivations and justifications behind them are new, or whether they stem from French anti–Semitism rooted in “republican integration.” Is this resurgence in violence a continuation of the pre–World War II trend of conservative, right–wing French anti–Semitism that underpinned the fascist regime during the Holocaust? Or is it attributable to a new anti–Zionism born from a growing tension between the large Jewish and Muslim communities in France?

The Jewish community’s perpetual association with Israel represents one of the main reasons for its renewed sense of unease. The French media has played a vital role in perpetuating anti– Israel prejudice and, in the eyes of many, has sparked a distorted discourse on the Israeli–Arab conflict. As the well–known French Muslim writer Tariq Ramadan stated, the tragic spectacle of conflict in the Middle East nourished “an anti–Semitic discourse by no means confined to young people with too much time on their hands but peddled by intellectuals and imams who blame every setback and frustration on the machinations of the Jewish lobby.” The depiction of the Jews as conspirators or likewise as a subversive group looking out only for itself has also been linked to references about the “Jewish lobby” in America. A May 1998 issue of the Left Republican wing magazine Marianne, for instance, pictured six million American Jews marching united and using their financial influence to “buy Congress” and place its agents at high levels of the State Department. The Socialist–Democratic oriented newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur (French for The New Observer) has likewise hinted that the Jewish lobby was responsible for America’s policies toward Iraq.

The media’s attitude concerning Israel has perverted any meaningful conversation about the Middle East. A class of highly partisan journalists has led the charge, engaging in irresponsible and blatant manipulation of facts. These intellectuals have implicitly legitimated the violence against French Jews, which the public quickly perceived as “understandable” in view of Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians. In the words of Hubert Védrine, the former Socialist Minister of Foreign Affairs, “One does not necessarily have to be shocked that young Frenchmen of immigrant origin have compassion for the Palestinians and are very excited because of what is happening [with regards to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict].” Similarly, there were no protests when agricultural trade union leader José Bové claimed that the Mossad (Israeli Intelligence Agency) had initiated the anti–Semitic aggressions in France to hide their own aggressions in the Palestinian Territories. These attacks have had a large affect on Jewish institutions meant to defend Israel. Many Frenchmen criticize these pro–Israel organizations for unconditionally and systematically supporting Israel and attempting to be “more Zionist than the Israelis themselves.”

All layers of French society engaged in and embraced attacks against Israel from 2001– 2003. Slanted media coverage and limited sources of information resulted in an anti–Israel ideological consensus within France. This sparked Jacques Tarnero and Philippe Bensoussan to produce the documentary “Decryptage,” which offers an in–depth investigation of the abuses of language and accuracy of the French media. The documentary demonstrates how an average French viewer is subject to selective and biased images, often taken out of context, and hears only the opinions of Israelis who are well known critics of the Israeli government. In one particularly troubling example addressed by the documentary, when thirteen–year–old Israelis Koby Mandell and Yossi Ish–Ran were brutally stoned to death by Palestinians as they went for a hike in 2001, the French media described the two boys as “young Jewish colonists.” The word “colony” has a singularly derogatory connotation in French culture, as it evokes associations with France’s colonial past in North Africa, a past with which many have not yet come to terms. The term “colonist” insinuates that the victims, however young, were not entirely innocent. This only made the horrific crime against them more “contextualized” and hence less “blamable.”

A Jewish cemetery defaced with swastikas and anti–Semitic slurs in the Alsace Lorraine region of France

A Jewish cemetery defaced with swastikas and anti–Semitic slurs in the Alsace Lorraine region of France

Indeed, the particular intensity of the French public’s mobilization for the Middle East is also partly motivated by sentiments of culpability from its colonial period. The comparison of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to the Algerian War of Independence, in which France fought to retain Algeria as a colony despite fierce insurgent resistance, leads to an understanding of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as one between the oppressor the oppressed. This makes it difficult for many in France to comprehend the Arab–Israeli conflict objectively and dispassionately. Perhaps, then, the perpetrators of today’s anti–Semitism are engaged not in protecting a traditional model of “Frenchness” from Jewish contamination, but in importing a conflict from their homelands to a country where their own inclusion is often questioned. In the “banlieues,” the economically underdeveloped neighborhoods on the outskirts of French cities where residents enjoy few educational and career opportunities, many second generation immigrant youths have inherited anti–Jewish prejudices. This xenophobia has manifested itself within the French school system. Indeed, in many suburbs heavily populated by North African immigrants, the word “Jew” appears in derogatory graffiti on middle school walls and neighborhood playgrounds. The term ’broken pen’ translates to “feuj” in French, is the slang word for Jew and also used as a synonym for “stingy.” The Inspector General of Education in France, Mr. Jean–Pierre Obin, wrote in the official report on French national education that France is facing “a stupefying and cruel reality: in France, Jewish children—and they are alone in this case—can no longer be educated in just any school.”

Many teachers complain that the government has done little to combat such prejudice despite many proposals for reform. President Sarkozy’s recent proposition to formalize Holocaust education by having each French elementary school class ’adopt’ and learn about a child victim of the Holocaust was met with fierce opposition from both the left and the right. Jean–Marie le Pen, the far–right leader who in the past described the gas chambers of Nazi death camps as a mere “detail in history,” declared the plan morally appalling. “The poor children will feel guilty and broken,” he said. This widespread condemnation placed Jewish organizations in an uneasy position. Many Jewish leaders, including Holocaust survivor and former cabinet minister Simone Weil, condemned Sarkozy’s initiative. Others grant that, although the intention of fighting anti–Semitism inside schools is laudable, the institutional means Sarkozy wished to implement were inappropriate.

Some schools have also attempted to resolve the problem by employing more subtle means. After a gang harassed a young Jewish girl in the Parisian suburb of Saint–Ouen in 2004, her school’s administration decided to screen the movie “Night and Fog,” a 1955 documentary that includes footage of Nazi death camps. In the discussion following the movie, one boy asked how Jews who had experienced such suffering could treat Palestinians “the same way.”

The boy’s remarks speak to a phenomenon known in France as “competing victimization,” where various minority groups wage war for the right to play the victim. The victim, of course, never has to take responsibility for his actions or for his welfare. In the words of French history teacher Barbara Lefèbvre, who taught in many working–class suburbs has extensively written about anti–Semitism in schools, “As long as anti–Semitism came from the extreme right there was a reaction... but when it came from that part of the population that itself was a victim of racism, no one wanted to see it.” After each new anti–Semitic attack the Interior Ministry promises increased security around Jewish institutions. But “more police aren’t the answer because [the anti–Semitism] remains in the spirit of the people,” said Marc Djebali, a spokesman for the Jewish community in Sarcelles, a suburb with highly concentrated Jewish and Arab communities.

As a consequence of anti–Jewish and anti–Israel sentiment, many have argued that the Jewish community has entered an intellectual and behavioral “ghettoization.” Jewish parents send their children to Jewish schools at a much higher rate as a “security measure.” French critics have denounced this trend as an unacceptable rejection of the secular and republican conception so sacred to the French national ethos, an ethos which demands that ethnic and religious preferences remain in the private realm. Indeed, from the start, the French Revolution wooed many Jews away from their traditional communities and managed to assimilate many. As evidence of their fruitful integration, Jews adopted French–sounding names and enrolled their children in French public schools. Although decolonization and the resultant influx of millions of North African immigrants resulted in the sociological transformation of French Jewry, Jewish integration remained relatively successful.

Yet in the midst of the renewed strife, critics of the French Jewish community once again discuss the notion of “communitarianism.” By phrasing their argument in these terms, the critics reincarnate the pejorative connotation of “communitarianism”—so often prevalent in French anti–Semitism stemming from the Revolution—that Jews do not act in the interest of the nation as loyal and dedicated Frenchmen but rather as members of a community whose allegiance resides elsewhere. Today, however, that traditionally elusive and vague “elsewhere” has taken physical form in Israel. Combined with the traditional calumnious depiction of Jews as unpatriotic and treacherous, this concept is far from innocent. Anti–Zionism adds a new and troubling element to anti–Semitic behavior.

Different sectors of the French Jewish community have faced varying degrees of anti– Semitism in the past decade. In an example of such fluctuation, a study by sociologist Erik Cohen in Le Monde des Religions (The World of Religions) suggests that 65% of Jews in the Paris area today claim to feel uneasy about publicly identifying as Jews. Yet 91% also stated they are happy or very happy with their lives in France. Other French Jews, however, have lost faith in their country and decided to make aliyah (to immigrate) to Israel. In 2000, for example, about 1,153 French Jews made aliyah during the recrudescence of anti–Semitic aggressions. But in 2005, that number rose to 3,005.

During the 2002 elections, a minority of French Jews increasingly threatened by instability, actually felt more secure in voting for extremist nationalist politician Jean–Marie Le Pen, despite his well–documented and unabashed anti–Semitism. Even as he downplayed the Holocaust, many Jews took solace in his pledge to provide greater protection against urban delinquency. Former President of the Conseil Representatif des Institutions Juives de France (Representative Council for French Jewish institutions) Roger Cuckierman remarked after the first round of the elections, in which Le Pen scored 16.86% of the votes, that he both “understood and deplored” the French Jewish vote in light of domestic security concerns, but that he did not expect “French Jews to be duped by a racist and anti–Semitic party” in the second round. Some Jews have felt reassured under the new presidency of conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, who was elected in 2007 promising sweeping change to French society. Jewish emigration to Israel has dropped under Sarkozy’s administration, as he has voiced his unwavering support for Israel—even declaring Israel’s creation one of the “miracles of the 20th century.” Sarkozy’s immigrant background and support for the Jewish community represents an image that many Jews identify with, despite their traditionally leftist political leanings.

Thanks to Sarkozy’s rise and the waning of the Palestinian uprising, many see hope for a resolution of the conflict between the French Arab and Jewish communities. Moderate leaders consistently called for reconciliation, including the leader of the “Young Muslims of France,” which at the break of the second intifada in 2000 claimed that “the Jews of France are not the soldiers of the Israeli army.” Such moderates prove that the extremist behavior of certain groups and individuals cannot be generalized to the majority of Arabs and Muslims living in France. State and private institutions have also attempted to bridge the gaps between the two communities. Indeed, these new developments remind us that peaceful elements can resist the temptation to amalgamate identities, and that despite their conflicting allegiances, French Arabs and Jews do not need to resort to violence.

At present, however, anti–Semitism continues to haunt French society. The long reach of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has certainly touched France and inflamed anti–Jewish sentiment. But although the situation of anti–Semitism in France is linked to battles fought in other regions of the globe, its manifestation remains profoundly ingrained in the history and political system of the country.

These phenomena raise the question of the validity of the French nation–state in a period where its collective identity is very much in crisis. Indeed, the problem of French anti–Semitism cannot be understood independently from the difficulties of dealing with the sociological impact of mass immigration in France as well as the process of European unification. France’s attitude toward Israel and America, for which it suffers continual stereotyping, has also increasingly become a powerful factor for consolidating a collective identity, articulated “against” diverging models. The challenge for France, as for many European countries today, is to bear in mind its special responsibility to preserve a “cautious” discourse, as modern anti–Semitic rhetoric has an inviolable historical resonance, as well as to fight the schematic associations of identity in order to preserve the authentic values of equality and fraternity of its republic.

SANDRA CARIGLIO is a Columbia College sophomore and Staff Writer for The Current Originally from Paris, France, she is majoring in Philosophy and Political Science and enjoys watching snow tempists.