MUSLIM ATTACKS ON FRENCH JEWS REVIVE POGROM FEARS
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/article1439435.ece
Diners were tucking into their falafels in Pitzman, a celebrated kosher restaurant in the Jewish district of Paris when the owner got a call to say a mob of youths was heading his way. He just had time to pull down the metal shutters before 30 or so gathered outside, screaming “Hamas resistance”, “Israel assassin”, “Death to Jews” and “We’re going to slit your throats”. Inside, customers cowered in fear for 20 minutes before police intervened to break up the mob.
The incident, on Wednesday, came at the height of the most traumatic week for Europe’s Jews in recent times. In the past few days, at least eight synagogues were attacked in France; like Germany, the country is struggling to keep the Middle East conflict off its streets.
As France’s 500,000-strong Jewish community looked at the headlines in horror, the media grappled with the question of who is responsible for the upsurge of anti-Semitic violence in a country still scarred by the memory of the Nazi occupation.
Crucially, it is very different from the anti-Semitism of the past. Gone, mostly, is the threat of the old-fashioned, tattooed, neo-Nazi skinheads. They have been replaced by second or third-generation immigrants from France’s former colonies in north and west Africa.Among the 15,000 or so pro-Palestinian protesters who marched through Paris to denounce Israel’s raids on Gaza, most came from the impoverished, crime-ridden suburbs where their families have lived since their arrival in France, and where almost every balcony has a satellite dish to capture Arab television channels.
Some reports described them as Muslim radicals, but this is simplistic. Their influences are a patchwork consisting of Islamist propaganda, the French far right, the extreme left and a sense of social disgruntlement nourished by unemployment.
Take, for instance, Ahmed, a 29-year-old youth worker who is a member of a gang calling itself the Gaza Firm, which consists mainly of supporters of Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), the capital’s football club.
He said 30 or so members of the firm, most wearing black T-shirts, had joined the march to protect anti-Israeli protesters from the Ligue de Défense Juive (Jewish Defence League), an extremist organisation of Jews involved in numerous violent incidents. Ahmed gave the impression that he would have been quite happy to meet the league for a punch-up in the same way that PSG fans regularly clash with supporters of Olympique de Marseille.
He took out his mobile phone to play a video of a fight between his gang and its Jewish rival in the Jewish district of Paris last week. Punches flew, along with chairs and tables from a nearby café, before riot police intervened with tear gas to separate the two sides.
The intervention appeared intended to restore peace to an affluent neighbourhood, but Ahmed did not see it that way. “Look, the police are protecting the Jewish Defence League,” he said as a line of officers formed in the middle of the road. “They’re protecting the Zionists.”
He took the video as proof that France was under the control of Jewish organisations, saying in a knowing tone: “They’ve got the banks and they’ve got the government.”
Karim, 20, a student, was on the protest with another group, the Collectif Cheikh Yassine, named after the Hamas founder killed by the Israeli army in 2004.
He accused Israel of carrying out massacres in Gaza, but said he was anti-Zionist rather than anti-Semitic. Yet, he was soon talking about the “Jewish lobby”, which he said influenced western nations, and notably President Hollande’s government in France.
Karim appeared unaware that his words echoed those of the French rulers who collaborated with Hitler during the Second World War. Then, such beliefs led to pogroms. Now, they are leading to violence on a lower scale, but which is nevertheless causing deep concern.
Michel Kalifa, the owner of a Jewish delicatessen and chairman of the local association of shopkeepers in the district where Pitzman is located, said: “It’s extremely serious. Our lives our under threat. We no longer feel safe to take our children out into the streets.”
Comments are closed.
