French Jews face trinity of hate from left, right, and Islamists, says author
As the global pandemic of anti-Semitism worsens, its impact deepens. According to Paris writer Marc Weitzmann, such is the situation for Jews in France today that many play down, if not conceal, their Jewish identity in public. Weitzmann himself readily admits to not exhibiting outward signs of his Jewishness when circulating in the city.
Having just spent the past four years studying the resurgence of Jew-hatred in France for his new book, Weizmann is keenly aware of the potential, sometimes lethal, danger Jews face in his native country.
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Weitzmann argues the link between the Yellow Vests movement, initially a protest against the government’s increase in fuel prices, and anti-Semitism is part of a bigger picture. In the book, he says the hostility to Jews — more demonstrative, more violent, more openly expressed in recent years — is grounded largely in two forms of populism: The first is an extreme, violent ethos endemic to Muslim suburban public housing projects; the second a deeply-rooted French nationalistic ultra-conservatism. Add in anti-Jewish tendencies from the far left and the three, each reinforcing the other in their belligerence toward Jews, make for a particularly toxic combination.
“Since the recent rise of international populism, the situation of Jews has become a problem almost everywhere,” Weitzmann says. “That’s because Jews, especially the Diaspora, are seen as an equivalent for cosmopolitism and globalism. This is really the target of the populist movement everywhere. In that sense, the situation of Jews is becoming problematic in a way not seen since the creation of Israel.”
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“The situation for Jews in France had actually been bad since the early 2000s,” says Weitzmann. “Synagogues had been attacked in the suburbs and there were several anti-Semitic murders. But in January 2014, something changed. That month, you had this far-right protest march in Paris called Day of Wrath where you heard for the first time since the 1930s, people crying out anti-Semitic slogans in the streets of Paris. Among them was ‘Jew, France is not yours!’ From then on, you had a dramatic rise in anti-Semitic incidents.”
The following year, French right wing comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, who has been convicted several times for anti-Jewish incitement, popularized an arm gesture widely seen as an inverted Nazi salute and intended as an expression of anti-Semitism. Some Yellow Vests protestors have used it at demonstrations, a few of which Dieudonné has attended with right wing, anti-Semitic writer Alain Soral, who recently was sentenced to a year in prison for Holocaust denial.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/french-jews-face-trinity-of-hate-from-left-right-and-islamists-says-author/
