French Anti-Semitism Reaches from Paris to Poland
Commentary by Steve Yuhas
August 12, 2004

A couple of weeks ago Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon was speaking to the American Jewish Association and he called on Jews from around the world to immigrate to Israel.  This is not a new message for the Prime Minister of the Jewish state as immigration to the Jewish homeland is official policy and when a member of the Jewish faith sets foot on Israeli soil he or she becomes a citizen almost as soon as their luggage arrives on the turnstile at Ben Gurion airport.

What was new in Sharon’s message was his call specifically for Jews living in France to make immigration a priority due to the rising level of anti-Semitic attacks and violence against Jewish people and property at a level not seen since Germany in the 1930s.  Of course the French Foreign Ministry declared Sharon’s comments irresponsible and dismissed the notion of anti-Semitism in the nation that boasts some 5 million Muslims and 650,000 Jews.

According to France’s own figures, though, in the first six months of this year there have been 510 anti-Jewish attacks including violence, bombings and the desecration of Jewish places of worship and cemeteries.  France may consider these attacks insignificant, but to a people whose first taste of the Final Solution began in 1938 on "Kristallnacht" ('Night of Broken Glass") in eerily similar circumstances one can only imagine what must go through the mind of a Jew living in France at the first sign of a Swastika on a Jewish deli.

Now comes the news that a group of Israeli students were attacked not in the streets of Tel Aviv by Palestinian terrorists or in the streets of Paris by anti-Semitic thugs, but during a visit to the former Nazi death camp, Auschwitz, in Poland.  Predictably, the people who perpetrated the attacks against the U.S. and Israeli students were three French male tourists who declared Auschwitz nothing more than a pro-Israel propaganda tool for Jews.

More amazing than the three French thugs who took the time to visit the Nazi death camps where millions of innocent Jewish people were gassed, tortured and turned to ashes was that nobody on the staff of the final resting place for millions of people attempted to do anything to help the students. 

Guides at the camp, which I’ve visited, are typically elderly and many have a personal story to tell so it stands to reason that they wouldn’t be able to physically break up any altercation, but surely there is security that could root out the thugs from France who believe that the Holocaust is a myth spread by Jewish people to what end – who knows.

A French Jew attending Columbia University in the United States, Nathalie Soussan, is afraid to return to France following her studies.  She loves France, but believes that she may have to build a new life somewhere other than France because of the increasing anti-Semitic violence there.  Soussan says that since the Palestinian Intifada on September 28, 2000 that attacks against Jews increased exponentially. 

According to Emmanuel Gagniarre, of the French Embassy in Washington D.C.,"Most of the time these incidents (violence against Jews) are the deeds of young people of Arab and North African descent, who live in the rougher neighborhoods, in the suburbs of big cities, with the backdrop and international environment that is not very conducive to peaceful relations."  Well it is good to know that France has found an excuse for the violence against Jewish people – the violence that is happening is happening by people who belong to the religion of peace because they’re young and live in bad neighborhoods.

Radical Islam is preached in mosques all over France – the country with the largest Muslim population outside of the Middle East.  Is it any wonder that young Muslim men are being blamed for the anti-Semitic violence?  It is young Muslim men responsible for anti-Christian violence in places like Pakistan and most recently Iraq, young Muslim men who used planes to kill thousands of Americans on September 11^th and young Muslim men who aim and fire at United States troops on the ground in Iraq – after liberation and after the government was turned over to Iraqi officials.  Is there a trend here that nobody else can see – young Muslim men opposed to Americans and Jews all over the world?

With anti-Jewish violence on the rise all over Europe, but with violence being outpaced in France is it any wonder that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called on Jews living in France to immigrate to Israel?  France has never purged anti-Semitism from her lexicon and since World War II there has been anti-Semitism at the highest levels in the country.  There have been openly anti-Semitic politicians elected since freedom was restored to that country by the United States after World War II. 

Anti-Semitism will never be purged from a place like France because so many Muslims live there and Jews cannot make a difference politically while Muslims can.  It should come as no surprise that when Jews are attacked at the final resting place of millions of Jews in Poland that the attacks came at the hands of young Frenchmen and it is no surprise that a mini- Kristallnacht takes places every six months in France.

The short end of all this is that if Jews are to be safe they must leave France and it is a sad commentary to think that Jews are safer in Germany than in the oh so tolerant nation of France.