France: le pays au monde où il y a le plus d'incidents antisémites violents

Jewish Chronicle: Antisemitism in France: the statistics do not look good

Un jeune français fait une quenelle
devant un crématorium

Last Sunday, the European Jewish Congress and Tel Aviv University reported that there were more violent antisemitic incidents in France in 2013 than any country in the world.

And in March, the French equivalent of the CST, the Jewish Community Security Service, reported that 40 per cent of all racist crimes in France in 2013 were directed at Jews, even though they make up less than 1 per cent of the population. French Jews have long been quick to defend community life in the country and play down such numbers. But now it is just as common to find those speaking out against a widely-felt atmosphere of antisemitism.

David Tibi, the leader of Paris’s main Jewish umbrella group, said: “We no longer have a place in France.” Mr Tibi has lived in Paris all his life, but this July he, along with his wife, will move his family of five children to Israel permanently.  Mr Tibi, a dentist, said: “There is an atmosphere of antisemitism in the streets. My daughter was attacked in the tramway, so was my son. The aggressors made antisemitic comments and pushed them around.”

He has since told his son to stop wearing his kippah in the tram and no longer wears his own kippah in the street during the week.  Mr Tibi said that he and his wife love Israel and were always planning to eventually live there. “However, our Zionist project was accelerated and precipitated by the changing face of French society,” he said. [...]

However, Mr Schmidt [Executive vice-president of Licra] said that the current situation is part of a wider problem. “There is an obsession with Jews in France,” he said.  The 2012 French lawsuit against Google over its auto-complete function was a case in point. “If you typed a French personality into Google, the auto-complete suggestions would bring up the word ‘Jewish.’ For example, if you typed ‘François Hollande’ it would suggest ‘François Hollande juif,’” he said.

Andrew Hussey, an author and expert on French affairs, told Haaretz earlier this year: “I think antisemitism is a fundamental part of French history and culture in a very damaging way. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the petite bourgeoisie felt under threat from the Catholic Church and socialist movements. They turned to the Jews to blame them for every fault in French society, which culminated in the Dreyfus Affair.”

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