European states are protecting Jews so don't make aliyah out of fear

Notes and links at foot on who was killed in recent Islamist attacks in Belgium and France. The response of state security services in all instances was not faulted.

A soldier patrols outside a synagogue in Paris on Jan. 12, 2015, part of the 10,000 security personnel ordered into the streets to protect sensitive sites after three days of bloodshed and terrorism. Photo by Jacques Brinon/AP

Why Israeli call for French aliyah is so offensive

Antisemitism in France isn’t propagated by governments; in fact, at least in France, the state is protecting Jews.

By Joel Braunold, Haaretz
January 15, 2015

Some 120 years after the Dreyfus affair, French Prime Minster Manuel Valls is putting the very fate of the republic in the hands of Jews and their willingness to stay in France. Amid the tragedy and political posturing from Israeli politicians, it seems that France has come full circle from an event that sparked modern Zionism.

In 1894, the promise of emancipation as the answer to the Jewish Question was proven false as Captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason on the basis of trumped up charges. The whole affair led Herzl to the conclusion that assimilation into Europe would not solve anti-Semitism and inspired him to write Der Judenstaat, which became the seminal text of modern political Zionism.

Flash forward to today, the prime minister of France says the fate of the republic depends on the courage of Jews to stay the course within French society. Acknowledging this transition is essential to understanding why the Israeli call for French aliyah was so anachronistic to the new antisemitism that the Jews of France, and of Europe in general, are now confronting.

The old antisemitism that led up to the destruction of a third of all global Jewry was based on the rejection of the concept of the European Jew. Jews were never accepted as equal citizens, be they German Jews, Austrian Jews, Polish Jews or French Jews. When the fascists rose to power, they picked on the eternal otherness of the Jew to demonstrate that these were a people apart, different and despised. The alienation and dehumanization of the Jew was a direct rejection of the Jewish place in the nation state.

Following the warning signs of the 1900s up until the Holocaust itself, it became evident that having one’s own nation state was the only solution to the racism and hatred that had led to genocide of mindboggling proportions.

French soldiers secure the access to a Jewish school in Paris as part of the highest level of “Vigipirate” security plan. Jewish schools and synagogues in France have been promised extra protection. Photo by Reuters

The recent and sadly frequent deadly attacks on the Jews of France have not been because they are French Jews. The jihadists who killed the school children in Toulouse or the hostages in the kosher supermarket in Paris did not target them to make a point about how the republic should be Jew-free. They were targeted as they were Jews, Jews who happened to be in France.

The new antisemitism has turned every Star of David into a bull’s-eye for racists who have problems with what is happening in Israel, as demonstrated by the rise in anti-Jewish incidents during this past summer’s Gaza war. The Jews murdered in Toulouse and in the kosher supermarket were not the main targets of the overall attacks in either case. Their deaths did not start the rampages, but they were the last targets in both.

When it came to Toulouse, as wells as the antisemitic remarks by French comic Dieudonne, some commentators have attempted to airbrush the antisemitism. They claimed that the targeting of Jews equaled the targeting of the establishment. Such claims rob the victims of these hate crimes of their very identity.

Unlike the antisemitism of old, the solution is not an abandonment of one’s home. The state is not rejecting Jews; in fact, it is trying to protect them, at least in the case of France. The fact that thousands of police are deployed to protect Jewish schools doesn’t detract from the terrifying reality in the aftermath of the attacks. There are deep systemic problems that need both physical and educational solutions if multiculturalism and pluralism are to win out. But we should not kid ourselves that the violence against Jews today is the same as it was in the 1930s.

Before he went on kill 3 Jewish children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse, Mohamed Merah shot Muslim paratrooper Sergeant Imad Ibn-Ziaten, aged 30, and two Muslim soldiers in Montauban, above, Corporal Abel Chennouf, 24, and Private Mohamed Legouad, 26

This new reality explains why Israeli politicians’ call for French aliyah is so hurtful to France and its Jews. The correct response to the attacks came from President Reuven Rivlin, who should have been the dignitary representing Israel at the Paris unity march instead of politicians jockeying for votes. Rivlin stated that aliyah should be “born out of a positive Jewish identity, out of Zionism, and not because of antisemitism.”

The masked French SWAT team slipped into the apartment where Mohammed Merah was hiding. Photo by AFP / Getty images

The new antisemitism faced by European Jews needs new responses from Israel rather than the offensive knee-jerk denial of the Diaspora.

Joel Braunold served on the National Union of Students (UK), National Executive Committee 2008-2009 and works in conflict resolution. He now lives in Chicago, IL.

Notes
Killed by Islamists in Europe

Charlie Hebdo, office, 2015

Frédéric Boisseau, 42,
Franck Brinsolaro,
Cabu (Jean Cabut),
*Elsa Cayat
Charb (Stéphane Charbonnier)
Philippe Honoré, 74, cartoonist
Bernard Maris, 68,
+Ahmed Merabet, 42,
+Mustapha Ourrad
Michel Renaud,
Tignous (Bernard Verlhac),
*Georges Wolinski

Hyper Cache supermarket
January 9th, 2014
Yoav Hattab, Phillipe Barham, Yohan Cohen, François-Michel Saada killed by
Amedy Coulibaly

Woolwich
22 May 2013, Fusilier Lee Rigby killed by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, Nigerian converts to Islam from Christianity.

Belgian Jewish Museum, 2014
Four people killed, three of them Jewish (including two Israelis)

By Mohammed Merah, 2012
Three Muslim soldiers in Toulouse and Montauban
Four Jews (a rabbi and three children) in Toulouse

March 2, 2011 Frankfurt Airport
Two American airmen shot dead by Arid Uka, living in Germany, family from Kosovo.