Paris Kosher Market Attack: 'Je Suis Juif' Trend Won’t Change Jewish Plight In Europe
An overture of support from European leaders for Jews across the continent rang out in the wake of the deadly attack on a Paris kosher market last week, but it's unlikely the emotional speeches and slogans will soften decades of anti-Semitism in Europe and mend longstanding divisions in European societies, Jewish scholars said Friday. That means that just because Europeans are now embracing “Je Suis Juif,” or “I Am Jewish,” on social media, Europe's prejudices against Jews won't disappear anytime soon, the experts say.
“If the events of World War II and the Holocaust didn’t make Europeans more sensitive to the realities of anti-Semitism, the attack on the kosher market probably isn’t going to do much to change things in a significant way,” said Barry Trachtenberg, director of the Judaic studies program at the University at Albany, SUNY, in New York.
French President François Hollande called the kosher market shootings an “appalling anti-Semitic act” and promised protection for French Jews, amid mounting anti-Semitic violence across Europe in recent years. Demonstrators in Paris on Sunday expressed solidarity with Jewish communities, seen as being caught in the crosshairs of Islamist extremists, with signs that read “Je Suis Juif” carried alongside signs reading “Je Suis Charlie,” a reference to last week’s deadly shooting at the headquarters of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.
The perception that the Paris attacks will have little effect on making life easier for Jews in Europe was underscored by All Alabama writer Jonathan Miller this week. “Je suis Juif, Je suis Charlie, what wonderful sentiments!” Miller wrote Thursday. “We are all Jews, we are all Parisians, at least for this moment.”
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