Book Reviewed: Hate: The Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism in France by Marc Weitzmann

The face of new Anti-Semitism in France

In the last forty years, tens of thousands of Jews have left France for Israel or to the peripheries of Paris and Lyon, where Muslim populations is rapidly rising. Across the globe, in Islamic countries and in Muslim communities elsewhere, Anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments are increasing largely fueled by Muslin clerics strengthening the Islamic teachings against Jews. The Quran makes forty-three specific references to Children of Israel using the term Yahud for Jews. The Qur’an teaches Jews as evil and projects them negatively in verses: 5:82; 2:79; 3:75, 3:181; 5:64; 5:41;5:13; 2:247; 3:78; 2:14; 2:44; 2:109; 3:120; 5:18; 4:161; 4:46; 2:61; 2:74; 2:100; 5:79; 59:13-14; and 4:53.

Over the course of the past decade, France never had less than 400 anti-Semitic acts a year, including the brutal murder of Ilan Halimi by the “gang of Barbarians” in 2006; and the massacre at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse in 2012. Jewish gravestones are routinely defaced and desecrated with swastikas and anti-Jewish slogans. The northwestern Paris represents a tactical retreat for Jews; It has become a haven for many Jews who say they have faced harassment in areas with growing Muslim populations. Ms. Galilli, a Jewish woman moved to this neighborhood said that they spit when she walked in the neighborhood for wearing a Star of David. France has a painful history of anti-Semitism with its worst hours coming in the 1930s and during the German occupation in World War II. But in recent months, journalists and academics have called this “new anti-Semitism,” and they trace a wave of anti-Semitic acts to France’s growing Muslim population. For the French government, it is touching the country’s rawest political nerves, as well as ethnic and religious fault lines. They cannot categorize people by race or religious affiliation. In the eyes of the law and the French constitution all French citizens are equal. Gunther Jikeli, a German historian at Indiana University who conducted a study of Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe, called the phenomenon “blindingly obvious,” in his interview with the newspaper Le Monde. A manifesto signed by a former president, a former prime minister and numerous intellectuals warned of a “silent ethnic purge,” a reference to what Mr. Fourquet called the “large-scale phenomenon” of internal migration. The manifesto called on Muslims to renounce what it deemed anti-Semitic verses in the Quran. Author and philosopher Pascal Bruckner said that “For fear of not setting one community against another, you wind up hiding things.”

Routine expression of anti-Semitism is also linked to the state of Israel. Michel Serfaty, a rabbi, has led good-will bus tours in Muslim communities in France for more than 10 years acknowledged an uphill battle. “I’ve seen it myself,” he said. “Day after day, the insults, and finally people say, ‘Right, that’s it, we’re leaving.’ Complicating the matter, as it is happening all over the world is that the radical left and liberal feminists align with Muslim community in its expression of antisemitism. This is sad for European countries where the political, social and economic landscape is rapidly changing. The Roman Catholic Church tried to control the lives of Europeans for centuries. Now, when they are enjoying the freedom of free expression, the population is facing an uphill task of fighting the domination of Islam over their lives.

The book is very narrative and describes in detail some of the terrorist attacks on Jewish business and Jewish individuals. The author analyzes the circumstances that led to the brutal murder of Ilan Halimi by the gang of Barbarians, and other cases. For a reader interested in the influence of Islam on the growth and nurturing of antisemitism, this is quite interesting.