Around the time of Chirac’s statement, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy publicly briefed police officials on the new ‘double zero tolerance’ security legislation against racism and anti-Semitism just passed by the government. As part of this new regulation, demonstrators will not be allowed to carry flags with swastikas and other anti-Semitic, non-neutral symbols. The French police also recently announced the formation of a new unit to investigate racist and anti-Semitic crimes, and stepped up police protection at synagogues and Jewish schools.
Ratner says that this was not the first time officials acted. Last summer he himself met with members of the French government to discuss concerns over the country’s rising tide of anti-Semitism. He praises the work of Sarkozy and says that during these meetings, Sarkozy not only made commitments to crack down on anti-Semitic acts but also followed through on his promises.
“There was a beefed-up police presence at Jewish institutions,” says Ratner, noting that the frequency of anti-Semitic incidents decreased at the time.
But Soussan says Sarkozy and government officials are not really tackling the problem: “They are not taking preventative measures at all, but rather wait for something to happen first and then act.”
Past and Present
France has had both a positive and a negative relationship with its Jews, according to David A. Bell, professor of history at John Hopkins University. In its negative aspect, French public figures from across class and party lines continually resorted to the worst kind of anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Bell recaps the Dreyfus affair, in which a falsely accused Jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was publicly stripped of his rank in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire in 1894, as crowds yelled “Death to the Jews!” Then came the unconscionable actions of the Vichy French police, who acting independently of the Nazis, rounded up Jews and forced thousands of them on trains to Auschwitz to meet Hitler’s executioners. (A quarter of the French Jewish population perished in the Holocaust.)
He also recalls the violent attacks on Jewish cemeteries, restaurants and synagogues in the 1970’s and 80’s, and the more recent public statement of Jean-Marie Le Pen, head of the right-wing, National Front party, calling the gas chambers a mere ‘detail’ in the history of World War II.
On the positive side, Bell reminds us that France has been home to successful Jews like Emile Durkheim, Camille Pissarro, Leon Blum, Marc Bloch, Pierre Mendes-France, Claude Levi-Strauss, and many others. He also points out that France was the first country in Europe to grant Jews full civil rights – not only in France but in all of the territories conquered by Napoleon.
“Indeed, the Jews of nineteenth-century France enjoyed such a high level of success and acceptance, including access to elite universities and high government offices, that they set about re-fashioning the Jews of other countries in their own image, in a Jewish version of France’s mission civilisatrice,” says Bell.
However, notes the widely-quoted academic and author Daniel Pipes, “France never purged itself of anti-Semitism, just hid it.” In its present form, says Pipes, Muslim anti-Semitism is more likely to erupt in violence than Christian anti-Semitism.
Contributing Factors
Social and economic factors may be at least partly to blame for Muslim anti-Semitism in France. “Most of the time, the incidents are the deeds of young people of Arab and North African descent who live in the rougher neighborhoods, with the backdrop and international environment that are not very conducive to peaceful relations,” says Gagniarre.
Many of the Muslim families originally from North Africa live in grim, drug-infested high-rise suburbs on the outskirts of French cities. Their community lacks cohesion and is split by ethnicity, history, religiosity, politics and class.
