Roosters or ostriches, however you dice it, Frances prime minister is out to lunch.
Before last weeks mass murders in France, one at a kosher supermarket, I wrote of France in last weeks column, The exile comes home to roost. I observed (again, before last weeks slaughter):
Stories on attacks on Jews in France are so numerous that they blur. A synagogue is shot at. A synagogue is surrounded by a mob. A person with a yarmulke is attacked. A Paris suburb puts up a plaque honoring a convicted Palestinian terrorist. Shots are fired at a Jewish print shop. A kosher restaurant is attacked. A Jewish home is targeted because its Jewish; one resident is raped, another robbed.
After last weeks slaughter (and the long list above), Frances Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that if Frances Jews were to leave, The French Republic will be judged a failure.
Will be?
Earth to Valls: Frances republic is a miserable failure.
We wont even go back to Vichy Frances collaboration with the Nazis.
Since 2000 alone, French Jewry has sustained body blows.
Is Valls just waking up?
He states:
There is a new anti-Semitism in France. We have the old anti-Semitism, and Im obviously not downplaying it, that comes from the extreme right, but this new anti-Semitism comes 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. . . .
Mr. Valls how to put this kindly your invocation of Gaza is itself a pretext.
Gaza was in 2014.
Before that, in 2012, and 2008-2009.
Your new anti-Semitism, however, happened long before these wars between Israel and Islamic Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
Before your pretext.
The horrendous, three-week long, torture murder of Ilan Halimi was in 2006.
Your country originated, tolerated, and still tolerates, the blood libel that a 12-year-old Arab boy, Mohammed al Dura, was heartlessly murdered by Israeli forces in 2000.
Its not Gaza, Mr. Valls.
You know that.
Countless other anti-Semitic acts of violence over the last 15 years in France come from (to use your words) immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa.
Kind of like saying that last Sunday the Denver Broncos lost a contest.
That leaves the heart out of it.
They lost a Super Bowl hope.
The new anti-Semitism comes from radical Muslims.
You know that.
France is over.
The Jews of France get it.
Theyre leaving not because of anything the prime minister of Israel says. Theyre leaving because the France they knew no longer exists, nothwithstanding the two Muslim heroes in last weeks attacks.
Frenchmen like you, Mr. Valls, are tortoise-slow on the uptake. It isnt immigrants.
What an insult to immigrants!
The United States of America is full of immigrants. Some of them speak no English. Many of them are dirt poor. None of the non-Muslims among them, to my knowledge, has launched terrorist attacks against Americans, Jews or otherwise. There is nothing intrinsic to being an immigrant that fills one with hatred.
You have a radical Islam problem, Mr. Valls. Even after last weeks murderous attacks in Paris, even after the declarations of some of the murderers themselves that they acted to avenge the defamation of Mohammed, you cant name your problem.
You seem more afraid of naming your radical Islam problem than you are of dying at the hands of one of its adherents.
Thats why France as weve known it the home of freedom is over.
Youve turned a blind eye to what is undermining your own country: not Gaza, but radical Islam.
And you expect Jews to remain?
You have said:
[What is taking place in France] 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.
Bravo, Mr. Valls . . . years too late. Where were you when these words could have made a differerence? The horse has left the barn.
Nobody wants to go to a synagogue with an army outside.
I dont want to visit your country. I wear a kipah on my head. I have no desire to visit a place where, to stay safe, I have to take my kipah off. Im not interested in hiding that Im Jewish.
That, however, is the France you have created: to be Jewish here, hide!
Thats what your France has become: a place of hatred of and lack of safety for Jews and for Judaism.
Just now youre realizing that many of Frances Jews will leave?
Name your problem. Deal with your problem. Then maybe, just maybe, it wont be too late.
With the kind of prodigious effort you have utterly failed to demonstrate until now, you might retain your liberté. You might retain your egalité. Your fraternité, I am afraid to say, is gone forever . . . the horse has left the barn.
Too many years with your head in the sand.
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
