Anti-semitism in France
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| Wed, 09-01-2004 - 4:22am |
By Amiram Barkat and Daniel Ben Simon
Tue., August 31, 2004 Elul 14, 5764
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/471352.html
A 50-year-old Jewish man appears to have been
behind the torching of the Jewish community center
in Paris some 10 days ago, French police have
confirmed. The man, whose first name, Raphael, was
released for publication, was arrested yesterday.
According to French police sources, Raphael was a
regular visitor to the community center's soup
kitchen, and is believed to have set fire to the
building in the wake of a dispute with the people
who run it.
The man has not confessed to the arson, but the
police investigation has turned up considerable
evidence tying him to the incident.
Jewish community leaders in France reacted with
anger and embarrassment following the latest
revelations about the fire.
If the police suspicions prove true, the affair
will mark the second time in two months that an
incident labeled as anti-Semitic and covered
widely in the media has turned out to be motivated
by other factors entirely. The first incident
involved a non-Jewish Parisian woman who claimed
to have been assaulted by six North African
immigrants on a train, but later confessed to have
fabricated the story.
French government sources and Jewish organizations
have yet to comment officially on the affair, and
are waiting for a public announcement from the
police.
Since the story broke, however, France's Jews have
been beside themselves with shame, with some
calling Jewish radio stations yesterday to express
their frustration. Others have spoken of profound
embarrassment in light of the latest development
in the fight against anti-Semitism.
One radio listener said that in the past he had
been afraid of Muslims, but had now decided to be
wary of Jews. Another shouted that he was ashamed
to show his face in the building in which he
lived, noting that after the fire at the community
center, his neighbors had visited him to express
their disgust at the incident.
Little by little, the sense of being the victims
that had enveloped the Jews of France is being
replaced by the sense that the series of
deceptions is threatening to blur the severity of
the problem. In particular, the French Jews are
concerned that from now, any incident against the
Jews will be immediately accompanied by suspicion.
Till now, radical Muslim elements have been
automatically suspected of any allegedly
anti-Semitic incident. Now, the suspicions will be
directed against those who have been deemed the
principal victims of anti-Semitism, and the public
and official outcry against any attack on Jews is
expected to weaken.
Every time a report of an anti-Semitic incident
broke, French leaders made a concerted effort to
bolster the Jewish community and express their
support for its members. Time and again, French
President Jacques Chirac found himself harnessing
the republic's institutions and public opinion so
as to convey a sense of security to the Jewish
community, and almost every location at which
anti-Semitic incidents occured was visited by
French leaders as a sign of solidarity with the
country's Jewish community.
And as if the sense of guilt that the French felt
in the wake of attacks on Jews wasn't enough,
Israel added fuel to the fire. Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon and his cabinet colleagues never
failed to miss an opportunity to paint France as
the most dangerous place on earth for Jews. Sharon
even went so far as to urge French Jews to
immigrate to Israel before falling victim to
France's large Muslim sector.
Now that it appears that a mentally unstable
Jewish man was behind the arson attack, the Jewish
community is likely to see the sympathy of the
French public dwindle.
"Don't forget that we are dealing with a community
that lives under tension, concern and fear all the
time," Henri Cohen Solal, a Jewish psychoanalyst
from Paris, told Haaretz yesterday. "To this you
must add the fact that in most instances, the Jews
encounter quiet anti-Semitism - invisible and not
transparent... This marginal situation is very
problematic, and it sometimes causes members of
the community to take extreme action so as to cry
wolf. But it must be clear that the wolf exists,
even if it isn't always seen."
