{"id":2134,"date":"2006-03-02T09:17:53","date_gmt":"2006-03-02T16:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2134"},"modified":"2006-03-02T09:17:53","modified_gmt":"2006-03-02T16:17:53","slug":"violent-antisemitism-in-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2134","title":{"rendered":"Violent Antisemitism in France"},"content":{"rendered":"

David at The Debate Link<\/a> links to a column by Mark Steyn<\/a> about Jews being murdered by Muslims in France.<\/p>\n

The article is stirring, but I need more evidence to be persuaded, and so should David. Steyn himself isn’t a reliable source – for instance, Steyn once endorsed the homophobic myth that being gay leads to an early death (From Steyn’s review of a play about Matthew Shepard: “Maybe Matthew Shepard would have died anyway, not at twenty-one but at twenty-five or thirty, not because he was gay and someone killed him but because he was gay and it killed him”\u009d).<\/p>\n

The evidence in Steyn’s article is entirely anecdotal. Has anyone done an empirical study of the annual rate of violent anti-Semitic incidents in France and in other countries over the past 10 years, for instance?<\/p>\n

Some of the statements in Steyn’s story seem amazing and are not attributed.<\/p>\n

Ilan Halimi, also 23, also Jewish, was found by a railway track outside Paris with burns and knife wounds all over his body. […] This time around, the French media did carry the story, yet every public official insisted there was no anti-Jewish element. Just one of those things. Coulda happened to anyone. And, if the gang did seem inordinately fixated on, ah, Jews, it was just because, as one police detective put it, ”Jews equal money.”<\/div>\n

It’s disgusting that “every public official” in France denying antisemitism – or it would <\/em>be disgusting, if it were true. From a BBC story about Halimi’s murder<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of people have marched through Paris to protest against racism and anti-Semitism after the kidnap and murder of a young Jew. […]<\/p>\n

Among those at Sunday’s rally were members of the government and the opposition, Jewish and anti-racism campaigners, and leaders of the Jewish and other religious communities. […] France’s Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who was at Sunday’s march, said earlier in the week that greed was the main motive.<\/p>\n

“But they believed, and I quote, ‘that Jews have money’,” he said. “That’s called anti-Semitism.” <\/p><\/div>\n

Contrary to Steyn’s claim, it’s clear that at least some prominent public officials are calling this murder antisemitism. Note as well that the “Jews have money” quote that Steyn attributes to a police detective, presumably to imply that French police are antisemites, was (if Sarkozy’s statement was accurate) actually said by the murderers. That’s an appalling error for Steyn to make.<\/p>\n

Given these errors, I don’t think it’s justifiable to take any of Steyn’s unattributed statements at face value.<\/p>\n

Also, Steyn’s implication that anyone who thinks Israel is the leading threat to world peace must be “to put it at its mildest, indifferent to Jews” is similar to saying criticism of Israel is antisemitism. It’s hard to say for certain without knowing exactly how the survey was worded.Why couldn’t someone simultaneously oppose antisemitism, but also believe that the most likely hotspot to directly or indirectly cause WW3 is the Israeli occupation of the West Bank? The two views are not mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/center><\/p>\n

I don’t doubt that antisemitism is a serious problem, including in France. But I’m not sure that the incendiary tone and lack of rigor in Steyn’s column is a useful approach to the problem (although it delights France-bashers, I’m sure). I’d recommend reading the “France” section of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia’s report on antisemitism<\/a>, instead.<\/p>\n

Some interesting tidbits:<\/p>\n

* The French Jewish community, at 600,000+, is the largest Jewish community in Europe. “In reaction to the anti-Semitic mood the number of the French Jews who immigrated to Israel in 2002 doubled to 2,566, the highest number since 1972.” At that rate, it doesn’t seem likely that a huge portion of France’s Jews will be immigrating to Israel, as I’ve heard some commentators predict.<\/p>\n

* Antisemitic violence peaked in 2000, apparently set off by the Palestinian Intifada. At the time this report was issued, in 2003, violent incidents appeared to be dropping.<\/p>\n

* France keeps excellent records of antisemitic incidents, compared to most European countries. This fact should be accounted for – or at least noted – in any country-to-country comparison of incidents.<\/p>\n

* “The perpetrators [of antisemitic violence] were only seldom from the extreme right milieu, coming instead mainly from non-organised Maghrebian and North African youths. After interrogating 42 suspects, the police concluded that these are ‘predominantly delinquents without ideology, motivated by a diffuse hostility to Israel, exacerbated by the media representation of the Middle East conflict (…) a conflict which, they see, reproduces the picture of exclusion and failure of which they feel victims in France.”<\/p>\n

* Nonetheless, a survey of North African youth in France found that:<\/p>\n

…86% of them judged that “defacing synagogues” is “very serious” or “rather serious”; 95% of them thought that the Jews have the “right to follow their usual habits without risking to get into a fight”; and only 5% of them thought that “if the Jews did not seek to make themselves conspicuous in wearing the kipah, this kind of fight would not take place”. In the end, 54% of them underlined the seriousness of “insulting the Jews, even if it is a joke”. Compared with the overall group of people between 15 and 24, such answers tend to show that the youth of North African origin is more tolerant than the average, an attitude that can undoubtedly be explained by the fact that anti-Semitic acts or attitudes remind them more or less directly of how they themselves have suffered from racial or cultural discrimination as Muslims or children of North African parents.<\/div>\n

* On the other hand, North African youth were more likely than other French youths to think that Jews have too much influence.<\/p>\n

(Curtsy to this comments thread at Volokh,<\/a> which is where I found virtually all the links and info used in this post.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David at The Debate Link links to a column by Mark Steyn about Jews being murdered by Muslims in France. The article is stirring, but I need more evidence to be persuaded, and so should David. Steyn himself isn’t a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,40,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-semitism","category-international-issues","category-palestine-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}