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In March 2007, here on The Moderate Voice, I wrote this post about a Miami Herald report noting how many French Jews were leaving France. Three years earlier, in 2004, I noted concerns among Jews in France due to an increasing number of incidents. Now The Telegraph, noting France’s troubling problems with anti-semitism, reports that a new exodus has begun:
The least surprising thing about today’s turn of events in Paris is that Jews are the target. Because when it comes to home grown anti-Semitism, France leads the world.
A survey last year from the European Jewish Congress and Tel Aviv University found that France had more violent anti-semitic incidents in 2013 than any other country in the world. Jews were the target of 40 per cent of all racist crimes in France in 2013 – even though they comprise less than 1 per cent of the population. Attacks on Jews have risen sevenfold since the 1990s.
No wonder Jewish emigration from France is accelerating. From being the largest Jewish community in the EU at the start of this decade, with a population of around 500,000, it is expected by Jewish community leaders to have fallen to 400,000 within a few years. That figure is thought by some to be too optimistic. Anecdotally, every French Jew I know has either already left or is working out how to leave.’
A lot has happened in the years since I did my first post on France and the Jews in 2004:
Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet refusenik who is now chair of the Jewish Agency Chairman, said last year that 2,254 French Jews moved to Israel during the first five months of 2014, against only 580 in all of 2013. That is a staggering 289 per cent increase, but in recent months the figure is thought to have increased exponentially.
The exodus this year was expected to be huge. And now it’ll be even bigger:
The number expected to leave this year for Israel was estimated at over 10,000 – and that was before today’s events. And that is just to Israel. Many are coming to Britain as part of the wider French exodus under President Hollande.
And it’s not just in France: while in Canada in October in my non-blogging incarnation, I was astounded at the large Jewish population in Toronto. I was told by several Canadians that many Jews fled Montreal for Toronto years ago when it looked like Quebec’s separatist party might have its way. It is a fascinating history but the people who told me about this also mentioned the problems of Jews in France.
The Telegraph notes some of the recent attacks on Jews in France and adds:
Almost of all these attacks have been carried out by Muslims.
Andrew Hussey, an author and expert on French Muslim affairs, says: “anti-Semitism is a fundamental part of French history and culture in a very damaging way. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the petite bourgeoisie felt under threat from the Catholic Church and socialist movements. They turned to the Jews to blame them for every fault in French society, which culminated in the Dreyfus Affair.” That is now part of a toxic mix with more recent expressions of Muslim anti-Semitism.
Go to the story and read the rest.
I noted several weeks ago in my Cagle Cartoons syndicated column that we’re now in the century of soft target attacks. This week underscored that reality even more:
What softer target that a group o fcartoonists at a satirical newspaper and a kosher Jewish market? And — yes — to some this is cool and they can’t move fast enough to join groups using the blood of innocents to gain headlines, cable news time, and material for social media.
graphic via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.