Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Friday 23 March 2012

Rush To Judgement: Rabbinical Spokesman Blames French Killings On "Intolerance"

Britain's first postwar premier Clement Attlee famously rebuked one of the stormy petrels of his party with the words "a period of silence on your part would be welcome".

That very phrase seems an apt one with which to chide the journalists who, when literally nothing was yet known of the identity of the perpetrator of this week's outrages in Montauban and Toulouse, had made up their minds that a rightwing extremist was at work.

As the first reports of the shootings at the Jewish school in Toulouse were being broadcast, a female BBC news anchor, seeking from an Al Beeb reporter further updates about the tragedy, observed (in these words or something very similar) "Of course, there have been similar incidents before, haven't there?"

But my assumption that Al Beeb was at long last going to tell the viewer what it prefers not to admit, that there have been a number of alarming incidents of violence and harassment against Jews in France in recent years, was immediately dashed.  For to mention such incidents would have meant spotlighting Muslim antisemitism, and Al Beeb was determined to run with the hypothesis that a far-right white racist who hated Muslims and blacks just as much as, or even more than,  he hated Jews was the man who gunned down a rabbi and three small Jewish children.

It soon became apparent that a vast swathe of the western media was also taking it for granted that a gallic Anders Breivik was the culprit. Indeed, Al Beeb and its leftist cohorts were obviously salivating at the anticipated opportunity to focus on white far-right racism, especially of the "Islamophobic" kind.  Thus the fact that the killer has turned out to be an Islamist with links to al-Qaeda has left many a journalist with egg on their faces.

Such analysts as Melanie Phillips and Barry Rubin have already addressed this topic in their characteristically brilliant fashion, while Robin Shepherd cogently argues that anti-Zionists should feel suitably mortified.

But journalists and politicians are not the only public figures who, before the identity of the murderer was established, ill-advisedly rushed to judgement regarding this week's killings in southern France.  If I interpret his remarks correctly, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, is apparently one of those Jewish leaders who likes to make common cause with Muslims against "Islamophobia" whatever the circumstances, for he seemed quick to lay the blame for the tragedy at the door of such persons as Marine Le Pen and "intolerance" for - to quote one example he gave - the burka. (Hat tip: reader Rita)


In last September's Standpoint magazine Christopher Caldwell had an in-depth and wide-ranging analysis of the plight of French Jewry, who are faced with increasing antisemitism and hostlity to Israel.

He observed, inter alia:
"Paris has more Jews than any country in Western Europe. It also has more Arab Muslims. Clashing visions of how the French state ought to respond have led to a divergence of interests between the two groups. But while the Arab population is rising rapidly, the Jewish population is ageing and shrinking due to emigration, intermarriage and small family size. It has fallen to under half a million, according to the authoritative Hebrew University demographer Sergio Della Pergola. It is now hard to teach the Holocaust in schools, due to harassment and disruption from mostly immigrant students. A third  of Jewish students have abandoned the state school system for Jewish schools, while another third go to Catholic ones — more for reasons of security than pedagogy. Regularly scheduled, robustly attended demonstrations question the legitimacy of the state of Israel....
In a democracy, the interests of a community of 5-6 million will usually trump those of a community of under half a million. The Socialist foreign-policy thinker Pascal Boniface wrote a notorious memo to his party's political strategists on the eve of the 2002 elections in which he urged them to bear this imbalance in mind when they formulated their policy on Israel. Such realpolitik no longer attracts much notice. Muslims have been able to reshape the French state and society in ways that Jews had neither the demographic might nor the proselytising inclination to seek. Ramadan — in which millions of French workers are slowed down by fasting — has become an important part of the rhythm of the French work year. Muslim families have objected to the way the Holocaust is taught in French schools, claiming to see it as an apology for the state of Israel, and some have objected to its being taught altogether.
In the 1970s, French Jews were a people whose story serves to promote immigration. Today, they are victims of that immigrations's failure constrained to compete with other minorities for the favour of the broader society. Today a third of the youth population of many cities, including Paris, consists of the descendents of immigration. France has replaced a cohort that feels it has a debt towards Jews with a cohort that feels Jews have a debt towards them.
The drama plays out in arguments over the state of Israel. Two things make French arguments over Israel particularly passionate. First, French Jews' attachment to Israel is strong. There are 800,000 French-speakers in the Jewish state, and Jerusalem is just over four hours' flight away. So French Jews simply spend a lot of time there. They even speak of a "Boeing aliya" (borrowing the word for a migration to the Holy Land) that takes place every weekend....
The second is that French opposition to Israel is ferocious among certain groups of people who are closely listened to, especially immigrants and intellectuals. A host of organisations are dedicated to exposing the Jewish state's alleged misdeeds. These range from the Communist-inspired Association France Palestine Solidarité, which has existed for decades and organises marches and campaigns, to the newer Europalestine, which spearheads various boycotts and guerrilla theatre operations. They will, for example, enter a Carrefour supermarket en masse and cart out Israeli products. The Muslim Brotherhood-dominated UOIF, which often holds a majority on France's official Muslim body, the CFCM, backs the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Hamas government of the Gaza strip. The Sheikh Yassin Collective, named after the Hamas leader slain in an Israeli anti-terrorist operation, is more hardline still...."
 By the way, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has just issued a timely report by Dr Harold Brackman demonstrating a worrying increase in hostility to Jews and to Israel across Europe: http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7B54d385e6-f1b9-4e9f-8e94-890c3e6dd277%7D/EUROPE_AND_THE_JEWS_2012-DRAMATIC_RISE_IN_ANTI-JEWISH_ANTI-ISRAEL_PREJUDICE_V3.PDF

8 comments:

  1. Daphne, some people may have been misled (as I was) by what was possibly the deliberate dissemination of misinformation by the French authorities, who actually leaked to the press the identities of three alleged neo-Nazi suspects, rather than by any wish to whitewash Muslim antisemitism.

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    1. Interesting point, Shimona. Thanks for pointing that out. The BBC, however, gave a Pavlovian response virtually from the beginning.

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    2. Oh, there is certainly a great wish by the French Left to whitewash Muslim antisemtism, which that side of politics actually condones to say the least. (I would actually say "it's Vichy all over again"). The "Authorities" (so far it's still a conservative government, although by the nature of France's demography it too is quite dhimmified) kept rather schtumm, before it came out that the killer was an Arab Muslim of Algerian origine.

      The only politician to steadfastly warning about the danger of Islamisation in Europe is the much defamed Marine LePen, who is also the only one speaking up, and loudly, for the Jewish people and Israel. As to the early ejaculation of wishfull thinking, it was really a deliberately disseminated, but by the Left (Media and politicians) rather than by the "Authorities".

      Oh, and Sultan Knisch has a MUST READ article today about this:
      http://sultanknish.blogspot.fr/

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  2. I note that on tonight's 10.p.m. news the Al-Beeb's reporter talked of 'a sigh of relief' that 'the nightmare was over'. Not for the families of ALL the victims, it isn't. Secondly, the generic 'children' was used rather than the specific 'Jewish children'.

    And for all those suffering, the loss of children, adult siblings, spouses, fathers etc. before their expected time is always particularly painful. As a Christian, I extend to those Muslim and Jewish families my condolences and prayers. May the peace of God be with you.

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  3. I just listened to this Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt's obvious islamophilia again and I get more and more the feeling that leftism makes you blind.

    Incidentally, our ABC (who wants to be a BBC when it grows up) would not have interviewed him if he was not of the left.

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  4. Excellent post with very informative information.

    Thanks for providing this.

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  5. With leaders like that it’s no wonder French Jews are leaving.
    Jews Flee France for Safe Haven of Israel
    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/03/23/jews-flee-france-for-safe-haven-of-israel

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  6. The ominous trends are obvious, Europe is again like in the 1930s descending into another Jew hating cycle.

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