Be’eretz Nochriya (In Alien
Land)
 |
| Some of the dead from the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903. |
 |
| Funeral in France for the victims of Mohamed Merah's murderous anti-Semitic rampage at a Jewish school in Toulouse. The more things change, the more they stay the same. |
Author’s Note: Generalizing
is not a particularly effective analysis tool, but neither is being politically
correct to the point of avoiding painful truths so as to remain
inoffensive. A poll
last year showed that 27% of French youth between 18-24 support ISIS; not
an insignificant figure. Thus, while it
would be absurd to insinuate that the majority of Muslims in France are anti-Semitic,
it would similarly be farcical to pretend that hatred of Jews in the French
Muslim community is anything but widespread.
Sewing Hatred
The seeds of the heinous murders in France were not planted
with the murder of 4 Jews at the Jewish Museum of Belgium this past
summer. Nor were the seeds of French Muslim
Jew-hatred planted with the gang rape of a Jewish woman in Paris in November of
last year by a group of Muslim men, nor with the firebombing of Jewish businesses
and synagogues last summer. Mohamed
Merah’s murder of 3 Jewish children and a teacher at a Jewish school in
Toulouse in 2012 was not the triggering event leading to the current wave of
murderous anti-Semitism, nor was the kidnapping and beating of a Jew in Paris
by 6 Muslim Frenchmen in 2008, who scrawled
“dirty Jew” on his forehead (in that case, the French police said it was
not a hate crime, remarkably). The
anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonné’s
reverse Nazi salute and its ensuing massive popularity was a harbinger of
things to come, but that still was not the event which
foreshadowed the path on which we currently find ourselves. Rather, the current iteration of French Muslim
Jew-hatred clearly manifested itself for the first time with the brutal torture
and murder
of Ilan Halimi in 2006.
Halimi, a Jew of Moroccan descent, was kidnapped by a group
of French Muslims who abducted the 23-year-old because he was Jewish, beat him
and tortured him for 24 days, before finally pouring acid on his body, setting
him on fire, and leaving him to die. In the Halimi case, the French police didn’t
treat the kidnapping and torture of Halimi as a hate crime, even though the authorities
knew that the kidnappers had previously tried to kidnap other Jews, and despite
emails from the gang to Halimi’s rabbi saying “we have a Jew”. A
movie released in France in 2014 about the Halimi murder stoked anger at the
police’s ineptitude and underestimation of the danger Halimi was in.
Zionism From An
Unlikely Source
There is no small dose of Shakespearian irony in the
disturbing anti-Semitism of many French Muslims, which has manifested itself
through years of attacks,
open
hatred, and murders. The irony
starts with the common background of the attackers and the attacked, as the Jews
of France are often themselves of Arab descent.
In the recent spate of terrorism, one of the cartoonists (Wolinski) was
a Tunisian Jew; in the Kosher market attack, one of the victims was a Tunisian
Jew whose father is the head rabbi of Tunis, another was born in Tunisia, and a
third victim was the son of Algerian Jews.
Like their Muslim tormentors, Arab Jews fled Algeria, Morocco, and
Tunisia for safer, greener pastures, and now find themselves being blamed for
Israel’s alleged offenses against the Palestinians by their fellow North
Africans-turned-Frenchmen. While it
defies logic that French Jews who do not live in Israel should be blamed for
the fate of Palestinians in Gaza, nobody has ever accused anti-Semites of being
logical.
Adding further irony to the tragic situation is the simple
truth that every anti-Semitic attack in France makes European Jews feel less
safe, pushing them towards Israel. In
effect, just as the Spaniards, the Russians, and finally the Nazis demonstrated
the clear need for a Jewish state, the French Islamists are doing their own
service to Zionism through their repeated Kristallnachts. If French Jews are attacked by their Muslim
countrymen for merely existing, then what choice do they have but to move to a
country where Jewish lives matter?
This sharp rise in French Muslim anti-Semitism has led to a sharp rise
in Jewish migration from France to Israel.
This anti-Semitism doesn’t only manifest itself in spectacular crimes;
it also occurs in the quotidian existence of French Jews, who most of the time
do not even report the events, because they feel the police are unable or
unwilling to help. As of October 2013, 40%
of French Jews admitted to being afraid to openly display their Judaism
(and that number has certainly subsequently increased). From being spit at and threatened on the
train to being assaulted in the street to living in constant fear, French Jewry
is suffering death by 1,000 cuts. In
2012, roughly 2,000 French Jews left; in 2013 the number increased to more
than 3,200, and in 2014, the number more than doubled to 7,000. Certainly the events of this month ago lead
one to believe that 2015 will feature more Jews leaving France than ever
before.
The Blame Game
Throughout European history, Jews have served as convenient
scapegoats for leaders of all stripes; this constant oppression, violence, and
loathing led to the founding of the modern Zionist movement. Herzl, himself an entirely secular and
assimilated Austrian Jew, became convinced of the need for a Jewish state after
the Dreyfus Affair (in which a French Jewish army captain was falsely accused
of being a spy for Germany), and the subsequent protest rallies in which the
French populace chanted “death to the Jews!” Despite his attachment to his home country,
Herzl realized that Jews didn’t belong in Europe, and that combating
anti-Semitism was an exercise in futility.
Herzl was convinced that Jews they would always be outsiders in Europe,
in the best of times merely mistreated, and in the worst of times liable to die
at a whim at the hands of a government in need of a “foreign element” to blame.
The modern Zionist movement, led by
Jewish luminaries such as Herzl and Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, was not principally
a religious movement; rather it was based on the desire of Jews to be treated
as equal human beings, without fear, violence, and degradation.
The second wave of aliyah by European Jews to
Palestine/Israel (then an Ottoman territory) came around the turn of the 20th
century. This mass migration was
inspired by a string of brutal pogroms and anti-Semitic policies that made the
idea of uprooting one’s family and traveling to a (then) malaria-infested
desert less daunting than remaining to wait and be killed.
In that time period in Czarist Russia, the lure of Marxism
tempted the masses, and calls for freedom rang out across the political
spectrum. To counter the efficacy of the
revolutionaries, the Czar’s supporters labeled the revolution a Jewish plot,
and came up with the slogan “Beat the Jews and Save Russia.” This incitement led way to action, and in
April of 1903 in the city of Kishinev, the Russian masses committed a pogrom
against the Jews, killing more than 50, injuring hundreds, and raping dozens of
women.
The theme continued in subsequent years. In 1905, following Russia’s defeat at the hands
of Japan, Jewish “spies” were blamed for the result of the war, leading to more
pogroms and anti-Semitism. During the Russian
Revolution of the same year, Jews were again blamed, and deemed “enemies of
Christianity” by the Czar and his supporters.
Unsurprisingly, more violence against Jews followed.
A New Side Of An Old
Coin
French Prime Minister Manual Valls, a staunch supporter of
French Jews, in an interview
with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic,
said:
We have the old anti-Semitism, and I’m obviously not downplaying it,
that comes from the extreme right, but this new anti-Semitism comes from the
difficult neighborhoods, from immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa,
who have turned anger about Gaza into something very dangerous. Israel and
Palestine are just a pretext. There is something far more profound taking place
now…It is legitimate to criticize the politics of Israel. This criticism exists
in Israel itself. But this is not what we are talking about in France. This is
radical criticism of the very existence of Israel, which is anti-Semitic. There
is an incontestable link between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Behind
anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.”
The old anti-Semitism (to use Valls’ words), did not go anywhere. In a shocking exchange at a rally following
the Paris murders, BBC reporter Tim
Willcox interviewed a Jewish woman whose parents were Holocaust survivors
and moved to Israel after miraculously surviving the horrors of the
concentration camps. When the woman said
that she, as a French Jew was scared, and that Jews hadn’t been this
collectively fearful since the 1930s, Willcox, reflecting a large percentage of
Europe, retorted that “Palestinians
suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well”.
The Hamas Effect This summer during the
war between Israel and Hamas, many French Muslims vented their collective rage
against Israel on the Jews of France. In
Sarcelles, a mixed city nicknamed “Little Jerusalem” because of its large
Jewish population, wannabe Hamas terrorists burned down Jewish-owned businesses
and attacked synagogues.
The particular brand
of anti-Semitism in France is not entirely a Muslim phenomenon; the European
Christian anti-Semitism that has destroyed the lives of Jews for the better part
of a millennium is alive and well. The
Christian blood libels against Jews, the stereotypes, etc., were all
transferred to Muslims, who combined these views with both their
Koranic-inspired hatred of Jews and their brainwashing at the hands of Arab satellite
TV and media (owned by authoritarian regimes desperate to keep the attention
off of their own shocking behavior).
What Does The Future
Hold?
There is no reason to think that the situation in France (or
Europe in general) will improve. There
is a visceral hatred of Jews among too many violent youths for the events of
this month not to re-occur. Europe is
already seeing the rise of far-right and anti-immigration parties in response
to the massive demographic changes that have occurred as a result of Arab and
Turkish migration to the continent. It
is inevitable that as more and more people bring views that do not mesh with
western values into Europe, these societies will be less inclined to take in
more immigrants, to provide social welfare benefits, or to practice
tolerance. As the right wing gets
stronger, attacks against Muslims in Europe are inevitable, which will lead to
further alienation and fanaticism.
In a sad bit of irony, on the day of the Charlie Hebdo attack, French writer
Michel Houellebecq released a book called Soumission,
about France’s first Muslim president taking office in 2022 after France
submits to Islam. In the book, the
runoff in the presidential election is between Mohammed Ben Abbes, the leader
of a fictional Muslim Fraternity party, and the National Front's leader, Marine
Le Pen.
As for the Jews, the name of this article comes from a poem
written by Chaim Bialik, widely considered the best Hebrew-language poet of the
last century. Bialik was from present
day Ukraine, and wrote the following poem after the Kishinev Pogrom:
Once, in that town, under a heap of garbage
I noticed a piece of parchment—
A fragment of the Torah
I picked it up and carefully removed the dirt.
Two words stood out: Be’eretz
Nochriya (In Alien Land)
This scrap of parchment
I nailed above the door to my own home.
For in these two words out of the Book of Genesis
Is told the entire story of the Pogrom.
The Christian pogroms at the turn of the 20th
century demonstrated clearly that Europe was Eretz Nochriya (alien land) for Jews, which spurred
a massive Jewish exodus from the Russian Empire. Sadly, the present-day Muslim pogroms are
doing the same. Only fear of death makes
people leave wealthy countries and move without knowing the language or having
some sort of guaranteed employment. Fear
of death is the current sentiment among many European Jews, and Israel will
benefit from it.
