Be’eretz Nochriya (In Alien Land)

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 20^th 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 20^th 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.