The general consensus is that it is Muslims doing the violence, but that a history of anti-semitism in France has created a supportive environment for it.
It is also hard to document that it is Muslims because of political correctness in the media, and even in the largely leftist Jewish press which suicidally supports the Muslims and anything politically correct. The identification of Muslims as the perpetrators is often buried in an article and hedged about by all kinds of excuses.
All bolds, colors, notes in brackets, are my additions.
Story in Boston Globe
The atrocity has stunned a country that is trying to cope with what Jewish leaders perceive as intensifying anti-Semitism in France, mainly among Muslims of Arab or African heritage, but also growing among Caribbean islanders from former colonies and, to a lesser extent, poor white immigrants from other parts of Europe who also inhabit the dreary suburbs -- known as ''banlieues" -- that surround all major French cities
I wonder what the actual numbers are, who is doing the criminal acts? Can't find out there.
Story in Canadian Christian Publication
There are about 5 million Muslims and 650,000 Jews in France, the largest number for both communities in Europe. Most of the attacks on Jews occur in Paris suburbs and other neighbourhoods where Jews and Muslims live in close proximity.
"Since the Jewish and Muslim communities are both the largest, it is not surprising that misinformation and lack of education can lead to anti-Semitic hate crimes in France," Laila Al-Qatami, spokesperson for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League, said in a recent e-mail. "As documented by the recent national report on hate crimes in France, these quadrupled in 2002, with over half the attacks aimed at Jews."
The outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada on September 28, 2000 sparked a wave of Middle East related anti-Semitic incidents worldwide, with the largest number of European anti-Semitic attacks occurring in France: 1,300 recorded since 2001, the highest level since World War II, according to the Wiesenthal Center.
Interesting that the article gives no numbers, does not identify the perpetrators, just kind of hints that it might have something to do with the big Muslim population.
Story in Canada.com
This one finally gets around to admitting it's Muslims doing it but piles on the apologies for them and tries to blame it on "entrenched European anti-semitism against Arabs."
Jew-baiting is but one bit of the ethnic disaster occurring in France today, but it is a telling bit: chiefly a case of entrenched European anti-Semitism against Arabs -- who, let's not forget, are Semites, too -- helping kindle a violent anti-Semitism against Jews.
The poor, disenfranchised Muslim youth who were rioting throughout France this month are the brothers of those who for years have been attacking France's Jewish population. Almost invariably they are members of a largely North African subculture of extremism -- a blister on the skin of France's overwhelmingly moderate and peaceful Muslim community of six million -- a subculture rising up after decades of marginalization, poverty and abuse.
This is fascinating. Normally leftist Jewish groups, such as anti-semitism-alertness groups like the ADL, are knocking themselves out to avoid pinpointing the fact that it is Muslims doing the attacks. How very politically correct of them. They bring up right wing and left wing antisemitism in France, which is no doubt a reality, but all the reported cases of actual physical harm I've seen have been by Muslims. See if you can find any other actual perpetrators documented anywhere in these articles. You have to wade through piles of irrelevant verbiage to find such facts, buried deep and surrounded by vagueness about the identity of the perps, and the very few actual crimes then do turn out to be by Muslims:
Here's
The ADL
...Generally speaking, the climate deteriorated. On the eve of Yom Kippur 2000, a delegation of CRIF called on the French President and on the then French Prime Minister. I must tell you that we were not heard; we were not at all understood. We went to state our deep concern following the multiplication of violent attacks against Jewish communities by suburban louts, most of them of Arab Muslim origin. Our hosts replied that France was not an anti-Semitic country, which was absolutely not what we were saying.
...impossible not to see what is happening at school. The situation has been thoroughly analyzed in "The Republic's Lost Territories," a book published under the authority of Emmanuel Brenner in 2000. It is a series of accounts written by teachers, describing their daily experience. Their conclusion is the sad evidence of a deep-rooted anti-Semitism in state-run schools. This issue was picked up by CRIF's President Roger Cukierman in a powerful speech addressing the Prime Minister, the largest part of the French government and scores of political and religious representatives, on the occasion of CRIF's annual dinner in January 2003. Hundreds of copies of the book were handed out to the participants. Since the schools were named in the book, no one could decently claim from then on that he didn't know that
Jewish children were prevented from attending some state-run schools because they were mobbed by Arab Muslim children; or that teachers couldn't teach anymore their classes about the history of the Ancient Hebrews, about the Dreyfus Case or about the Holocaust without being ragged by
some pupils; {note: Some unidentified pupils} while anti-Semitic slogans are taken for granted by the latter.
This article from an Anti-Semitism awareness source, like the ADL's, reports on reluctance to name the aggressors Muslims but seems equally reluctant itself. Note how difficult it is to get a clear sense of who is doing the attacks and how many there are from how this is written.
antisemitic activity
The level of antisemitic violence remained high in 2002 as well as in 2003. According to CRIF, there were 517 incidents registered in 2002 and 503 in 2003. Despite the slight decrease in 2003, the number of violent attacks rose from 185 to 233, including 100 assaults on individuals compared to 75 in 2002, Moreover, 50 percent of all incidents in 2003 were directed against Jewish youngsters under the age of 18.
According to the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH), the French government’s human rights watchdog, there was a dramatic rise in antisemitic and anti-Muslim acts in France in 2002: over 300 reported instances of violence and 992 cases of abuse or threats. Two-thirds of these incidents (193 violent and 731 threats, graffiti and insults) were antisemitic, six times as many as in 2001.
Prior to the presidential elections of 5 April 2002, French government officials were reluctant to take firm action against the
mainly Muslim perpetrators of antisemitic acts, other than condemning the more serious ones, probably for fear of losing the supposed Muslim/Arab vote. For example, President Jacques Chirac condemned an arson attack which entirely gutted a Marseille synagogue on 31 March 2002. However, Chirac added, he did not believe France was an antisemitic country. With the election of the new government, the new interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy took a more activist approach, inter alia, increasing security of Jewish institutions. As a result, there was a decrease in the number of attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions in the Paris area between April and December 2002. In February 2003, Minister of Education Luc Ferry announced new measures to deal with increasing antisemitism in schools and universities. In March the minister was asked by the government to prepare a plan to decrease the level of violent incidents directed against French schoolchildren in general due to their religious or cultural background. An inter-ministerial committee to counter antisemitism was set up by President Chirac on 17 November 2003.
Jewish schoolchildren were the target of a large number of attacks in 2002, a trend which continued into 2003. Several of the attacks in 2002 were directed against buses carrying Jewish schoolchildren, especially in the Paris area (see also ASW 2001/2). For example, on 10 April 2002 a group of
Arab youths stoned a bus parked beside the Lubavitch Gan Menahem Jewish school in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, as pupils were beginning to board. One child was injured and some windows were broken. A month later, a 16-year-old Jewish youth was
assaulted in Bordeaux by a group of eight Muslims who studied in the same school. The attack was accompanied by curses and threats. Although Jewish school buses were no longer targeted in 2003, a Jewish schoolgirl studying at the Longchamp School in Marseille was assaulted and verbally abused on 16 May by
a group of ten Muslim girls from a nearby school. She was rescued by the principal and identified her attackers to the police. In March and April 2003 students at the Otsar HaTorah School in Toulouse were hounded as they traveled home from school on public transport by
Arabs who called them “Dirty Jews.” In public schools, teachers who attempt to give lessons on the Holocaust, as well as Jewish pupils, are harassed in classes with {"with?"}
a large proportion of Arabs/Muslims, who deny that Nazis killed Jews (see, for example, CRIF, “Anti-Semitism in France: An Assessment”).
Among the serious attacks on Jewish adults in 2002, a worshiper leaving a synagogue in the 19th arrondissement of Paris was hospitalized after he was attacked by a group of thugs with a sharp instrument in February, and a Jewish couple (identifiable because the man wore a kippa) required hospitalization after they were beaten in Villeurbanne, near Lyon, by six Muslims in March. In March 2003 two Jews were severely beaten, allegedly by Muslims who had taken part in a demonstration against the war on Iraq.
Arson, Molotov cocktail and other violent attacks on synagogues reached epidemic proportions in 2002 (see also ASW 2001/2). As noted above, a synagogue in Marseille was burned to the ground on 31 March. Additionally, synagogues in the Paris area, Strasbourg, Nice, Montpellier, Lyon and again in Marseille were targets of arson or Molotov cocktail attacks. The Maccabi Club house in Toulouse was also torched in April 2002, destroying everything in the building. The year was also marked by stone throwing and vandalism (including graffiti) of Jewish property (synagogues, cemeteries, schools, private property). In 2003 arson attacks damaged synagogues in Saint Mandé and Cachan. “Palestine will win,” was scrawled on a wall of the latter synagogue. Further, an arson attack gutted the Merkaz HaTorah Jewish secondary school in Gagny, a suburb of Paris, on 15 November 2003, a Sabbath, so no pupils were present.
The following is from the
Geopolitical Review:
UPDATE: Reuters reports on holocaust lessons meet Muslim rebuff in France:
"Filthy Jew!" schoolchildren howl at a classmate. "Jews only want money and power," they tell their teachers. "Death to the Jews" graffiti appear on school walls outside Paris and other French cities. These are not scenes from the wartime Nazi occupation or a fictional France where the far-right has taken control. Outright anti-Semitism like this is a fact of life these days in the poor suburbs {
Media Political Correctness Alert: Funny how they blame the "right wing" but then can't avoid pointing out that the source of the problem is in the Muslim communities, which they further play down by calling them a "minority" although the Muslim population is as much as ten times the size of the Jewish population, and calling them the "poor suburbs" as if to plead this in their favor..}
After a slow response when this "new anti-Semitism" flared four years ago, France has made fighting prejudice against Jews into a national priority. Holocaust education in state schools now starts with pupils as young as nine years old.
But even the best plans for teaching about the Nazi massacre of Jews can fall short when confronted with an Islamic identity spreading among a minority of France's five million Muslims. . .
Notice how Reuters loads their article by associating anti-Semitism with the "far right." Putting aside the historical fact that Nazism was a leftist ideology (Nazism means "National Socialism"), but in the modern era, anti-Semitism is as much a part of the "far left" (Europe) as it is the "far right" (militant Islam).
And an article from
Front Page Magazine .
Most of the attacks on Jews are the work of North African Moslems who’ve flooded the country. (Its Moslem population is estimated at six to eight million.) With 600,000 Jews (the third largest Jewish community in the Diaspora), France truly is a happy hunting ground for followers of the religion of peace. Since their homelands are largely Judenrein, it’s a special treat for them to have real, live Jewish targets.
French indifference facilitates these crimes. The Moslems are the beneficiaries of centuries of French anti-Semitism.
Friends who have spent time in France know it is the Muslims. I have one friend who lived in Paris for five years while her husband did business there, and another who was a missionary to the Muslims in Marseilles for two years, and both tell me it is the Muslims who are attacking the Jews, and they fear for their Jewish friends there.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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