Sunday, September 11, 2016

France: On Its Way to Being a Jew-Free Nation?

By Robbie Travers 

  • Incitement to murder Jews was described by the French press as "mild mannered".
  • In 2014, supposed anti-Israel protesters attacked a Paris synagogue and trapped the congregants inside. The attackers' chants apparently included "Death to the Jews," "Murderous Israel," and "One Jew, Some Jews, All Jews are Terrorists."
  • The terrorist attacks on Jews in France are the culmination of years of Jew-hatred tolerated with little official criticism.
  • With ISIS and Hamas banners and flags flying, groups in Paris pledged the genocide of the Jews with impunity. When chants of "Death to the Jews," ring out publicly, is it surprising that people might actually begin to think that killing Jews is just fine?
French soldiers guard a Jewish school in Strasbourg, February 2015. (Image source: Claude Truong-Ngoc/Wikimedia Commons)
During the past 15 years, it is estimated that tens of thousands of Jews have fled France.
Of these, approximately 40,000 have fled to Israel, according to Israeli figures. Many thousands of others have fled to Canada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. France is increasingly becoming a nation in which it is no longer safe to be openly Jewish.
To explain why so many Jews are leaving Europe, it helps to understand the increasingly toxic context developing in France for Jews.
Synagogues and Jewish schools across France are regularly guarded by police officers and soldiers. Jews in Europe see their holy sites and places of worship under threat.
In December 2015, 14 Jews were poisoned by a toxic substance which had been smeared on to the keypad to access a Paris synagogue. No one was killed by the poison, but "25 firemen rushed to the synagogue, where they treated congregants and traced their condition to the daubed lock."

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