French Jews Tell of a New and Threatening Wave of Anti-Semitism
Jay!
03-21-2003, 06:44 PM
NY Times.com: French Jews Tell of a New and Threatening Wave of Anti-Semitism (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/22/international/europe/22ANTI.html?ex=1048914000&en=c6439f9696c42d07&ei=5062)
By CRAIG S. SMITH
EVRAN, France — Jérémy Bismuth is Jewish, though he doesn't wear a yarmulke or Star of David pendant or adhere to a Kosher diet or leave school early on Fridays to be home before sunset. Nothing identifies the 15-year-old French boy as Jewish except his birth.
Yet because he is a Jew, he was attacked by a group of other children, mostly Muslim, at the private Catholic school he then attended. They dragged him into the school's locker room showers shouting that they were going to gas him as the Nazis had gassed Jews. He was beaten and flogged with a pair of trousers whose zipper scratched one of his corneas.
For Jérémy and his parents, the incident a year ago was the harrowing confirmation of a trend that many say is gathering momentum: a resurgent European anti-Semitism, coming not from its traditional source among Europe's right-wing nationalists, but from the Continent's growing Islamic community, egged on by the political left.
"The political climate is too pro-Arab, and in the past year it has become intolerable," said Michèle Bismuth, Jérémy's mother at the family's home last week. She said her traumatized son would not leave the house for 10 days after the attack.
To some, such incidents, which have becine increasingly common since the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting began more than two years ago, represent the Middle East conflict brought to Europe, where sympathy for the Palestinian cause runs far higher than in the United States.
"Since the intifada began in 2000, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been imported here," said the mother of another high school student who had a hood thrown over his head and was beaten to unconsciousness by a gang of Muslim youths calling him a "dirty Jew" outside a Paris high school two months ago.
The woman, talking nervously at a kosher restaurant not far from the school, said she fears the atmosphere will darken with the war in Iraq. "When they say `America' they think `Israel' and when they think `Israel' they think `Jewish,' " she said. "Who is going to assure our safety?"
Swastikas, slogans and physical assaults against Jews in Europe have reached a frequency not seen since the 1930's when Fascism was on the rise. But in the vast majority of the cases today, the assailants are young Muslims of North African heritage whose parents emigrated to Europe in the 1960's and 1970's.
The greatest number and most violent attacks have come in France, which, with an estimated six million Muslims and 650,000 Jews in the country, has Europe's largest Jewish and largest Muslim populations.
Some Jews have left France for Israel, driven as much by the deteriorating climate in Europe as they are drawn by solidarity with the Jewish state. According to Israeli government figures, 2,556 French Jews emigrated to Israel last year, double the number a year earlier and the most since the 1967 Six Day War.
Not everyone is willing to call the current wave of violence anti-Semitism. Henri Wajnblum, head of the Union of Progressive Jews of Belgium, said it is important to distinguish between anti-Semitic and anti-Israel actions. He and other members of his Brussels-based group have been visiting classrooms in Muslim neighborhoods to help explain the difference between Zionists and Jews in general.
But for Jews who have become targets, the distinction is a false one that masks the root problem — a latent anti-Semitism that they say has created an environment in which a new strain of racism can thrive.
"In the popular imagination, Jews aren't sympathetic because they are identified with Israel and Sharon," said Sammy Ghozlan, a retired police officer who operates a clearinghouse for information on anti-Semitism in France, referring to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.
He said many Jews are distraught after willfully believing that the hatred of Jews was erased in Europe by the traumatic accounting of anti-Semitism's toll at the end of World War II.
continued (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/22/international/europe/22ANTI.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5062&en=c6439f9696c42d07&ex=1048914000)
I heard scattered reports of anti-semetic protesters mixed in with the large anti-war protest here in L.A., too...
By CRAIG S. SMITH
EVRAN, France — Jérémy Bismuth is Jewish, though he doesn't wear a yarmulke or Star of David pendant or adhere to a Kosher diet or leave school early on Fridays to be home before sunset. Nothing identifies the 15-year-old French boy as Jewish except his birth.
Yet because he is a Jew, he was attacked by a group of other children, mostly Muslim, at the private Catholic school he then attended. They dragged him into the school's locker room showers shouting that they were going to gas him as the Nazis had gassed Jews. He was beaten and flogged with a pair of trousers whose zipper scratched one of his corneas.
For Jérémy and his parents, the incident a year ago was the harrowing confirmation of a trend that many say is gathering momentum: a resurgent European anti-Semitism, coming not from its traditional source among Europe's right-wing nationalists, but from the Continent's growing Islamic community, egged on by the political left.
"The political climate is too pro-Arab, and in the past year it has become intolerable," said Michèle Bismuth, Jérémy's mother at the family's home last week. She said her traumatized son would not leave the house for 10 days after the attack.
To some, such incidents, which have becine increasingly common since the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting began more than two years ago, represent the Middle East conflict brought to Europe, where sympathy for the Palestinian cause runs far higher than in the United States.
"Since the intifada began in 2000, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been imported here," said the mother of another high school student who had a hood thrown over his head and was beaten to unconsciousness by a gang of Muslim youths calling him a "dirty Jew" outside a Paris high school two months ago.
The woman, talking nervously at a kosher restaurant not far from the school, said she fears the atmosphere will darken with the war in Iraq. "When they say `America' they think `Israel' and when they think `Israel' they think `Jewish,' " she said. "Who is going to assure our safety?"
Swastikas, slogans and physical assaults against Jews in Europe have reached a frequency not seen since the 1930's when Fascism was on the rise. But in the vast majority of the cases today, the assailants are young Muslims of North African heritage whose parents emigrated to Europe in the 1960's and 1970's.
The greatest number and most violent attacks have come in France, which, with an estimated six million Muslims and 650,000 Jews in the country, has Europe's largest Jewish and largest Muslim populations.
Some Jews have left France for Israel, driven as much by the deteriorating climate in Europe as they are drawn by solidarity with the Jewish state. According to Israeli government figures, 2,556 French Jews emigrated to Israel last year, double the number a year earlier and the most since the 1967 Six Day War.
Not everyone is willing to call the current wave of violence anti-Semitism. Henri Wajnblum, head of the Union of Progressive Jews of Belgium, said it is important to distinguish between anti-Semitic and anti-Israel actions. He and other members of his Brussels-based group have been visiting classrooms in Muslim neighborhoods to help explain the difference between Zionists and Jews in general.
But for Jews who have become targets, the distinction is a false one that masks the root problem — a latent anti-Semitism that they say has created an environment in which a new strain of racism can thrive.
"In the popular imagination, Jews aren't sympathetic because they are identified with Israel and Sharon," said Sammy Ghozlan, a retired police officer who operates a clearinghouse for information on anti-Semitism in France, referring to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.
He said many Jews are distraught after willfully believing that the hatred of Jews was erased in Europe by the traumatic accounting of anti-Semitism's toll at the end of World War II.
continued (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/22/international/europe/22ANTI.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5062&en=c6439f9696c42d07&ex=1048914000)
I heard scattered reports of anti-semetic protesters mixed in with the large anti-war protest here in L.A., too...
jon@af
03-21-2003, 06:55 PM
what the FUCK is wrong with people!? why the hell cant they get over the fact someone is different. "Oh, lets beat the shit out of someone, that will make everything all better and change the world completely" I wish everyone could just see how ignorant they are. This is the reason why I hate people in general. People are just plain dumb. I would like to see into the mind of some of these anti-semetic people and see what they are thinking, if anything. Another thing, they should take all those who are against the jews and show them what kind of shit went down in concetration camps, and ask them how they would feel if they were the ones in those camps, and for what reasons the jewish people should suffer this again.
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