Anti-Jewish Violence in France Today
by Toni Kamins
(Op-ed by the author that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, April 24, 2002)

While the spate of anti-Jewish violence in France is disturbing and frightening and the nonchalant reaction of some of France's leaders equally so, it is important to take a careful look at these events in order not to characterize them as something they are not.

Is France a country rife with anti-Semitism? The answer is not a simple one.

Yes France has had a terrible history with the Jews living within its borders, with its Jewish citizens, and with the Jewish people in general. As if looking at the twentieth century alone were not enough, the ten plus centuries that preceded it don't look any better. Jews have lived in France roughly since the fifth century and for most of that time they were subject to government-sponsored vilification of their faith, mass expulsions, forced conversion to Roman Catholicism, crippling taxation, humiliating legal oaths, life in cramped ghettos, economic segregation, proscriptions from living in France's major cities, blood libel accusations and trials, and both systematic and random physical violence and murder. The end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought us the Dreyfus Affair, and World War II and the German occupation saw France collaborate with Nazi Germany in committing heinous crimes against Jewish citizens of France and Jews from other countries that were living in France.

But while France's history with the Jewish community is filled with all that and more, it is France's disgraceful relationship with its Muslim population that in large part accounts for the current violence.

For decades Muslims from France's former colonies in North Africa have settled in France proper. But the French, who are loathe to accept anyone or anything they perceive to be non-French, have made them far from welcome. To be blunt the French don't want the North African immigrants in France. And to drive that point across they have relegated them to living in what are known as the banlieue or suburbs. But if this term conjures up visions of bucolic bedroom communities within easy reach of say Paris, Lyon, or Marseille think again. The banlieue are largely made up of government housing projects - soulless places where the residents have little if any contact with the rest of French society, except for cohorts of a mind-numbing bureaucracy. Unemployment is high, education is an afterthought, access to mainstream French society is nearly impossible, and being arrested for suspicion of this or that is common. The disdain and contempt in which these people are held is palpable, and as comes as no surprise to anyone except the French, crime, drugs, and other social problems are rampant.

The level of alienation that exists in the banlieue cannot be overstated and it is difficult for those who are unfamiliar with France to understand it. The French? They dismiss it as the problems of the banlieue and hope they will go away.

Also resident in the banlieue are Jewish immigrants from North Africa. They are victim of many of the same social forces as the Muslims, but a well-developed Jewish communal infrastructure and support system helps to mitigate them.

The violence against Jews and Jewish buildings occurs against this backdrop and in the banlieue, not in the middle of the streets of Paris. The anti-Jewish character of the violence is obviously there, but to say that it is strictly an expression of Muslim anti-Semitism is far from the truth and obscures the complex nature of the situation. These acts at least as much (and perhaps even more) anti-social, anti-establishment, and anti-French as they are anti-Jewish. Moreover most Muslims in France are not committing them.

That is not to say that there are no anti-Semites in France. There are. But there are anti-Semites in every country - including the United States. After living for so many centuries as a religious minority everywhere in the world this should not come as news to any Jew. The Jewish community should not ignore what is going on in France, and along with the French government it should make sure the violence does not continue or escalate, but neither should they overreact to it. The impulse on the part of some to boycott France and French products is one such overreaction.

While it may be easy or tempting or even comfortable to draw a parallel between what is happening in France today and what went on in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s or in prior centuries and call it the seeds of another Holocaust is reckless. It panders to fear and ignorance and it fosters a simplistic view of the world in general and the Jewish community in particular. It is critical to make the distinction between crimes being committed by a relative handful of alienated outsiders within France and crimes committed as an expression of official government policy….no matter how many diplomats make negative remarks about Israel. Both are abhorrent, but they are not the same thing.

About the Author: Toni Kamins is the author of The Complete Jewish Guide to France. She is a freelance journalist and former editor and has covered an array of Jewish and secular subjects for The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Jerusalem Post, New York Magazine, the Village Voice, the Forward and other publications as well as websites devoted to France, travel, and to Jewish topics. She has also contributed articles on the Middle East and the Holocaust to reference books and contributed to a number of major travel guides.

Toni has Jewish heritage in her genes: For generations there have been rabbis in her family, and family legend has it that she is descended from Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, the 16th century creator of the Golem.