Posted on 09/13/2006 5:16:15 PM PDT by SJackson
Ask people outside the French immigrant community why the Jews are leaving their country, and the usual answer is that they are making aliya to escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism. Ask the French olim themselves, however, and the responses become more diverse and complex.
Many recent arrivals say in no uncertain terms that it was primarily anti-Semitism that brought them from France to Israel. Others acknowledge that while anti-Semitism has increased in recent years, the phenomenon has been due largely to the intifada and emanates mainly from young Muslim immigrant men, mostly from North Africa and poorly integrated into French culture and society.
Many French olim claim that fervent Zionism and a strong attachment to Israel have impelled them to leave France and establish new roots here. Others appear to be hedging their bets, making what has come to be known as "Airbus aliya," in which the family's wife and children live in Israel, while the husband keeps his job in France and commutes between the countries.
While the reasons for making aliya vary from one family to the next, no one disputes the assertion that being Jewish in France has become more difficult during the past six years. With a tradition of anti-Semitism that dates back to Medieval times and the Crusades, France became a virtual icon of anti-Semitism in the 19th century with the Dreyfus trial - often said to have been Theodor Herzl's inspiration for the creation of modern political Zionism - and the mass round-up of Jews by the Vichy government during World War II.
French intellectuals are unabashedly anti-Israel, and the French government has often displayed a pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian bias since Israel's resounding success in the 1967 Six Day War.
With the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000, French Jews began to note a sharp increase in anti-Semitism with incidents and violent attacks unlike anything seen since the 1940s. Many of these incidents have been perpetrated by Muslim immigrants.
France's National Consultative Committee on Human Rights reported a sixfold surge in acts of violence against Jewish people, property and institutions from 2001 to 2002. In 2003, a popular Jewish DJ was brutally murdered in Paris, apparently by a radical Muslim youth organization. This was followed in 2004 by incidents. For example, a Jewish school bus was set on fire in Strasbourg; a concert by an Israeli singer in Macon was repeatedly interrupted by shouts of "Death to the Jews"; a 14-year-old boy wearing a kippa was beaten near the entrance to a Paris Metro station, with bystanders refusing to intervene; a female Jewish teacher was knocked down, beaten and trampled in central Paris; a University of Saint-Antoine medical school class was interrupted by four men shouting anti-Semitic threats and beating a Jewish student, while the class and professor looked on in silence; and a 12-year-old girl leaving a Jewish school was beaten by two men who carved a swastika into her face with a box cutter. Synagogues were torched, Jewish cemeteries were desecrated, and Jewish institutions were vandalized, damaged or destroyed.
The number and virulence of these violent attacks have indeed been reflected in the number of Jews leaving France for Israel: 11,148 between 2000 and 2005, with a 35-year high of 3,300 Jewish immigrants in 2005. While statistics for 2006 are unavailable, every indication suggests another banner year for French immigration to Israel, despite the recent war in Lebanon.
On July 25, at the height of the war, no fewer than 650 Jews arrived from France - 500 from Paris and 150 from Marseille - marking the largest number of immigrants to arrive in a single day from France since 1971.
Much of the impetus to leave France for new lives in Israel has come as the result of deep internal soul-searching among French Jews. Many of them have concluded that there is simply no future for them in France.
As Simon Kohana, president of the largely Sephardic Jewish Citizens Forum said recently, "We have begun to ask ourselves if we can even stay in France. Are we really French citizens? We have the feeling that we are a people apart."
At the same time, however, critics charge that much of the motivation to leave France can be attributed to a concerted effort by the Israeli government to lure French Jews to Israel. With Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union having apparently dried up for the moment and the long dreamt-of influx of immigrants from English-speaking countries yet to materialize, Israel is looking to France's Jewish community - the second largest in Europe - to provide a fertile source of "warm bodies" to settle here and add weight to the demographic balance of Jews and Arabs.
Former prime minister Ariel Sharon angered the French government in 2004 by urging French Jews to immigrate to Israel for their own safety, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently reminded French Jews of the anti-Semitism in their country and urged them to send their children to Israel.
Jewish Agency president Sallai Meridor said last April that Israel has a "national duty" to bring French Jews to Israel for their safety and security as the Agency stepped up its activities in France.
Yet not all French Jews are heeding the call to aliya or feel particularly receptive to the Israeli government's efforts to induce them to emigrate.
"France is not an anti-Semitic country," said Roger Cukierman, president of an umbrella group of Jewish organizations in France, in April 2005. "Out of a population of about 600,000, some 2,400 people making aliya is not very many, in spite of all the talk about leaving."
Other community leaders accuse the Jewish Agency of playing on French Jews' fears of anti-Semitism while knowing that there will simply not be enough jobs or employment opportunities waiting when they arrive in Israel.
Finally, many left-wing French Jews accuse the Jewish Agency of focusing their efforts on religious families while ignoring the secular members of the community, a charge that Meridor denies.
While the debate over why French Jews are leaving France may not be resolved any time soon, one thing remains certain: French Jews are leaving in steadily rising numbers, and most of them are coming to Israel.
I can't take credit for that. SNL did it as a parody tourism commercial.
An article I read on FR about a month ago said 50% of French Jews had left within the last 10 or maybe it was 15 years - an astounding number.
Considering the size of the Jewish population in France, the numbers would represent approx 2 to 3 percent of French Jews.
It is not quite a "flood".
"Other community leaders accuse the Jewish Agency of playing on French Jews' fears of anti-Semitism while knowing that there will simply not be enough jobs or employment opportunities waiting when they arrive in Israel. "
Israel managed to find work for est one million people from the FSU. They can find work for 2,400 French Jews.
"Former prime minister Ariel Sharon angered the French government in 2004 by urging French Jews to immigrate to Israel for their own safety"
PM Sharon's mistake was in not including Jews from the UK, Belgium and Holland in that statement.
Boy, I'd leave too. The government won't protect them from the lowlife scum islamofascists, why stay there and support the government? And if the gov is too weak to protect these few, what ARE they capable of doing? I'd run screaming.
Ping!
Please comment on this thread from your perspective as a French Jew. Very interested to hear what you have to say.
That number was grossly axaggerated.
And I can see the Israeli department of immigration advertisements in France... "Come to Israel. We like Jews, and we won't kill you!"
Best sort of ad. Simple. To the point. Tells the truth!
Mark
On the other hand, Napoleon, for all his flaws, intituted citizen's rights for Jews within his empire, a step which was revolutionary in the Europe of his era.
Furthermore, though Dreyfus was wrongfully convicted of treason, this serious injustice was officially redressed - with the assistance of the Jewish community and many non-Jews alike - and he was released from a long imprisonment.
Not to condone the French, but their historical attitudes toward Jews must be placed in the proper perspective by comparison to other European countries.
I never left.
That's good to hear. I think we should offer visas to all of Europe's Jews. Jews are, by and large, intelligent and hardworking, and would be an asset to this country. And they'd be a LOT safer here then in Eurabia.
Could it be.....MUSLIMS!!!!
then=than
Upon each visit back to her family; these past few years; she encountered more bitterness. . .ugliness/rudeness etc. and in turn, felt a growing sense of being 'disenfranched'.
The plans have now changed. Now, they will visit France. . .but stay in USA. Quality of life better - and her experience of just living it.
I'm too sexy for this song.
Because Muslims are the anointed victims de jure in the MSM and among leftie elites in general (just look how they tried to spin the recent Hizbo/Israeli conflict). Thus, they are a protected class, whereas Jews and Christians are not. You know good and well that if Muslims were being beaten and mosques were being vandalized and torched, the MSM would splash it all over the front page and every politician (esp. lib) would be handwringing and moaning about "intolerance."
They're settling in on the Upper West Side where most of the inhabitants are non-stop critics of Israel???
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