If the vocation of the annual CRIF dinner is meant to be a forum on anti-Semitism, Monday night was a smashing success, leaving little room in the wreckage for any good news from the media-hyped gathering of much of the Jewish in-crowd of Paris and their friends….kind of like the recent IDF demolition of Gaza.
And if seeing the two in the same sentence makes no sense and seems outrageous, please think again. With the exception of 2008 and perhaps 2007, anti-Semitism in France has almost always been the main topic of the annual dinner hosted by the CRIF, le Conseil representative des institutions juives de France.
But there is always room to talk about other subjects that touch the community here and the French in general. They include bettering Jewish-Arab relations in France, a heart-warming success, according to some on the “Friendship Bus” and the small Arab-Muslim delegation at the dinner, and a joke, according to others in the community.
Other subjects include stepping up business relations with Israel, where French companies play such a small role compared to the United States or Germany, for example, or tourism in Israel, where French Jews dominate the TA summer scene year after year while the Americans say they are afraid to come, and go elsewhere.
Not this year. As dozens of guests boasting ski tans milled about with champagne glasses, suddenly security people were jostling with TV cameramen and photographers, when the favorite son, President Nicolas Sarkozy, strode in, surrounded by CRIF President Richard Prasquier, and Sarko’s close community associate, a CRIF VP who is also a Likud Party France heavy and very close to Bibi Netanyahu, a certain Meyer Habib. The President stayed half an hour. He had opened the Gaza donors’ conference in Sharm el Sheik in the morning and then attended the afternoon funeral in Levallois next to Paris of the 17-year-old girl killed in the Cairo market attack on Sunday. CRIF head Prasquier set the tone in his speech to the several hundred guests. January and February saw 400 recorded anti-Semitic acts in France, more than in all of 2008.
“Anti-Semitism is back,” he told the crowd. The incidents, from attacking synagogues to beating kids up on the streets, have been carried out almost exclusively by Muslim North African Arabs as reactions to Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. Prasquier didn’t say that. He didn’t have to because everyone knows it, and the French have a very annoying technique of explaining thing by not explaining them, known as the “non-dit”.
The problem is that outside of the Jewish community, the French simply ignore what is going on or at best, they say, what do you expect, look at what the Israelis did in Gaza.
“The figures are there, but to people outside the community, this all sounds a bit exaggerated,” said Jean-Michel Rosenfeld, an assistant mayor in the 20th arrondissement of Paris and a Socialist Party activist. “There are anti-Semites in France, but this is not an anti-Semitic country. We know that here, but I wonder what some Americans or Israelis must think.”
“The Gaza incursion opened the doors to a lot of hate from strange partners,” said well-known author Marek Halter. “You had French secular extreme leftists demonstrating against Israel with Arab Islamist extremists with Hamas and Hezbollah flags, but I think it was less about demonstrating against Israel than about their hatred for Jews.”
Halter said that, once again, French Jews believe that anti-Semitism will never go away. This time, it is very vocal from the ethnic French extreme left and from ethnic Arab religious Islamic elements.
Most French French people here are tired of reading about anti-Semitism all the time. The French have a tendency to ignore what they do not want to see and to do it very well.
“Sarko is very attached to Israel,” noted author Halter, “but this is a bad moment. It is not the time to be talking about stepping up business relations with Israel, especially after all those ugly scenes from Gaza on television.”
“Cooperation is strong in the military field with Israel because terrorism is a common enemy,” noted Gil Taieb, a longtime activist and CRIF VP who organizes the French Tzedaka campaign every year, “but you don’t read about major French companies signing cooperation accords with Israeli companies. That will have to wait until things calm down.” In fact, the violence level has already dropped radically.
Taieb is known for not mincing his words. “A certain hypocrisy à la française is at play here,” he said with a frown. “You see that the subject of anti-Semitism leaves no room to talk about any other subject, but it goes beyond that. What nobody wants to admit here tonight is that once you get away from the leadership level of various communities, there is nothing to be done. There is really no way to crack down against the anti-Semitic violence of young people from immigrant communities. The radical leftists will get on with their lives, but many Arab and African kids in France have this hatred of Jews that will not go away. And nothing can be done about it.”
Bibi’s point man in France, Meyer Habib, a very nice, behind the scenes kind of guy, looked kind of embarrassed about mentioning business relations. “There is a lot of work to do, for sure,” he said. “It’s just not the subject of the dinner tonight.. I can guarantee you that the French government will be speaking with Netanyahu about stepping up high tech research. France is so far behind Germany and Great Britain. It is embarrassing.. But not tonight.” He smiled as if so say, sorry guy..
It was late. CRIF President Richard Prasqier was saying good night to guests. “Do I think that all this talk of anti-Semitism has hurt business development between France and Israel?” he asked rhetorically. “No, but it has not helped either. France can do so much more. Why is France so far behind Germany? I don’t know. Look, this global crisis could be a golden opportunity or could make things worse. But first, let’s deal with the subject at hand tonight.”
“I don’t care what the French think about the Jewish community exaggerating all the talk about anti-Semitism,” said Sandrine Sebban, a well-known journalist at RCJ Jewish radio in Paris. “It is omni-present, a nasty reality for many people, and unfortunately, everything else, including bettering Jewish-Arab relations in France, and stepping up high tech work with Israel, takes a back seat right now.”
Sebban was very straight forward. “The fact is that many young Muslims in France do not like Jews, and the IDF incursion in Gaza gave them an excuse to vent their anger at them. And let’s be honest. Most young Jews do not like hanging out with the Arab kids either. Most kids like to hang out with their own kind. And what they do next may be surprising.”
A quick note: the strongest applause of the evening came for Prime Minister François Fillon when he said, “we cannot allow a country like Iran to have access to nuclear weapons when it calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and denies the existence of the Holocaust.”
And in a subject that was not brought up at all: the anti-Semitic violence in France has brought a huge increase in interest for making aliyah. Sitting next to Gil Taieb, the head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, JAFI, in Paris, David Roche, said that the number of people coming to JAFI meetings on aliyah since January has doubled and even tripled. “We will see what happens next,” he said, “but at the agency, we say this is good news.”
Indeed, one man gathers what another man spills.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on March 9, 2009
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