france 2002-3

 

 

The high level of antisemitic violence in France in 2002 continued into 2003, with 516 incidents in 2002 and approximately 400 in 2003. These figures included numerous acts of assault on Jewish individuals, including schoolchildren, violent attacks on synagogues, schools and other Jewish institutions, vandalism, threats and graffiti. The anti-Zionism and sometimes antisemitism displayed by the far left during demonstrations against US intervention in Iraq and in support of the Palestinians has shifted Jewish concern from the extreme right. French Jews demonstrated in several rallies against antisemitism in France.

 

The Jewish Community

The French Jewish community, numbering between 500,000 and 600,000 out of a total population of 60 million, is the largest in Europe. The biggest concentration is in the Paris area (300–350,000), followed by Marseille (80,000), Lyon (30,000), Nice and Toulouse (20,000 each). Strasbourg, where 12,000 Jews live, is a major religious and cultural center.

The three main organizations of French Jewry are the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF), the Consistoire Central and the Fonds Social Juif Unifié (FSJU). There has been a dramatic revitalization of communal life since the early 1980s, which is reflected in the large number of Jewish private schools (over 80, attended by 5 percent of Jewish schoolchildren) and synagogues (over 150 in the Paris area). Since the beginning of the present wave of antisemitism, many families have transferred their children from the state-run secular schools to private Jewish (mainly Orthodox) schools.

Jews, as well as Muslims, are involved in the political debate about the proposed ban on displaying religious signs (such as the kippa and the Muslim hijab) in state schools and in the civil service, which President Jacques Chirac will ask parliament to pass in 2004 (for more details, see below).

 

Political parties and extra-parliamentary groups :

The Far Left and the Anti-globalization Movement

The anti-Zionism and sometimes antisemitism displayed by the far left during demonstrations against US intervention in Iraq and in support of the Palestinians has shifted Jewish concern from the extreme right to the extreme left, and especially to three Trotskyite organizations: Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR; led by Olivier Besancenot); Lutte Ouvrière (led by Arlette Laguiller) and the Parti des Travailleurs (led by Daniel Gluckstein). Their candidates polled, respectively, 5.7 percent; 4.2 percent and 0.5 percent in the 2002 presidential election. Strengthened by the decline of the Communist Party (3.4 percent), the extreme left has been very active in the anti-racist, pro-Palestinian and anti-globalization movements. For the upcoming regional and Euro-elections scheduled for March and June 2004, LCR and Lutte Ouvrière have reached an agreement and will probably obtain seats in many regional councils as well as in the European Parliament.

Another rising Trotskyite group, the youth organization Socialisme par en bas (Socialism from Below) has a political line similar to that of the British Socialist Workers’ Party. This group has taken over the Agir contre la guerre movement, which was pivotal in organizing the pro-Palestinian and anti-war demonstrations in Paris in 2002/3. Its central thesis, that fundamentalist Islam is neither a clerical nor a reactionary movement but an anti-imperialist one which should be supported, especially in the Middle East, explains the presence of women wearing the hijab (headscarf) and even the chador at their meetings (combined head cover, veil and shawl).

The Green Party (led by Gilles Lemaire) and the peasant union Confédération Paysanne, led by José Bové, are very active within the anti-globalization movement, represented in France largely by ATTAC (L'Association pour une Taxation des Transactions financières pour L'Aide aux Citoyens – Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Benefit of Citizenry). The major event for the French anti-globalization movement was the European Social Forum (ESF) which took place in Paris in November 2003. A major controversy arose concerning the participation of several Islamic groups in the French organizational committee of ESF, namely Présence Musulmane, Secours Islamique and Collectif des Musulmans de France. There was also much criticism of the presence of Tariq Ramadan among the participants in several ESF meetings. Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, is the grandson of Hasan al-Banna, the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brothers (although the two differ ideologically). He has established himself, through his books and conferences, as the most influential preacher among Muslim youth in French-speaking countries and now supports the political platform of the anti-globalization left. A few weeks before the ESF began, he published a text (on the website www.oumma.com) which attacked several prominent French intellectuals, some Jewish and others he mistakenly thought were Jewish, for having supposedly betrayed their universalist beliefs in favor of unconditional support for Zionism and Israel.

 

Extreme Right Parties

The Front National (FN), founded in 1973 and led by 75 year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen, has approximately 50,000 members. Le Pen polled 17.69 percent of the vote in the 2002 presidential election. In December 2003, with the approach of the regional elections, the daily Le Monde released the results of a poll according to which 22 percent of the French electorate support FN ideology. Le Pen himself leads the FN slate in the Provence Côte d’Azur province, where he hopes to topple both the Socialist Party and the conservative UMP (Union for Popular Movement). Le Pen’s daughter, Marine, seems a likely successor to her father when he steps down, and she now has her own think-tank, “Génération Le Pen.” Although she has been trying to change the party’s image by expunging antisemitic and fascist themes, which prevented FN from becoming a partner in a right-wing coalition, the FN remains an extreme-right movement, evidenced, for example, by Le Pen’s presence at a meeting of the racist and xenophobic MIEP (see Hungary) in Budapest in November 2003, at which the British Holocaust-denier David Irving was a speaker.

The Mouvement National Républicain (MNR), led by Bruno Mégret, is now only a shadow of its former self. It is unclear whether it will be able to contest the upcoming elections due to lack of financial resources. The party lost the municipalities of Marignane and Vitrolles and most of its members in the regional councils now sit as independents.

 

Extra-parliamentary Extreme Right Groups and Activities

With the failure of MNR some rank-and-file members transferred to more activist groups with a hard-line racialist stand, such as Bloc Identitaire, led by Guillaume Luyt and Fabrice Robert and with a membership of about 200. It publishes the quarterly Jeune Résistance. Former leader of the national revolutionary movement Nouvelle Résistance Christian Bouchet leads a small group of fewer than 50 which runs the www.voxnr.com website and publishes the magazine Résistance!, which is close to the Italian daily far right newspaper Rinascita. The group made headlines when some of its members left for Baghdad on 22 February 2003 with a delegation of the Islamist Parti des Musulman de France and the leader of the Belgian neo-Nazi Mouvement Nation.

A new development on the far right has been the emergence of splinter groups from the MNR which support separatist claims in some regions of France. Two of them will contest the next regional elections: in Brittany, the Mouvement Régionaliste de Bretagne (MRB), led by Xavier Guillemot; and in Alsace, Alsace d’abord, led by Stéphane Bourhis and Robert Spieler, who have a good chance of polling close to 10 percent. Terre et Peuple, a similar group led by Pierre Vial, held a meeting on the theme of French-German brotherhood on 19 October 2003, which was addressed, inter alia, by Peter Marx and Martin Döhring from the extreme right NPD (see Germany).

On 15 November 2003, the annual gathering of the French radical racialist right took place in Versailles under the banner “Journée de l’Identité,” organized by Gilles Soulas, owner of the neo-Nazi bookshop Aencre, and the Fondation Polemia, chaired by Jean-Yves Le Gallou, who formerly held the number two position in MNR.

The French skinhead scene is very small. Apart from concerts which take place in Alsace, and draw an almost exclusively German audience, the only other activity is that of the Sang et Honneur group, a branch of the Blood & Honour movement.

 

Islamist Groups

France’s Muslim population numbers between 4 and 5 million. The election of a representative body of French Muslims took place in April 2003 following an agreement reached between the Muslim associations and Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy in February. Conseil Français du Culte Musulman (CFCM) is a compromise between the moderate Islam of the Grande Mosquée de Paris, led by Dr. Dalil Boubakeur and supported by the Algerian government; the fundamentalists of the Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (UOIF) inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brothers and by Egyptian Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (who now lives in Qatar and is considered a mentor for Islamists); and the Fédération Nationale des Musulmans de France (FNMF), which has close ties to Morocco. The vast majority of voters chose the fundamentalist slates of UOIF/FNMF, which in some areas were open to members of the Turkish Mili Görus movement, and in other places, to militants of the pietist Tabligh movement. Despite the predominantly fundamentalist nature of the CFCM board, Boubakeur was elected president (a compromise imposed by Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy). Internal strife within the CFCM persists, especially on the topic of the hijab. On 17 December 2003 President Jacques Chirac announced that he would ask parliament to pass a law prohibiting the wearing of all symbols of religious faith in public schools and in the civil service, a move obviously directed at countering the purportedly growing influence of Islamists (but which also affects observant Jews). Although Boubakeur requested compliance with the proposed new law, UOIF and other fundamentalist groups reacted very strongly against what they perceive as discrimination. A demonstration, with some 3,000 participants, took place in Paris on 21 December, in support of the right to wear the hijab in public places.

In the Paris and Lyon areas, there is a growing Salafi movement, inspired by the Saudi `ulama' (Muslim scholars). Some Salafi members switch to the Pakistani Tabligh, whose influence is also strong. While these movements are not proponents of armed jihad, a number of Salafi Muslims, including converts to Islam, were arrested in 2003 for alleged ties to al-Qa‘ida. Among them was Pierre Robert, arrested in Morocco following the bomb blasts in Casablanca in May and suspected of being a local leader of Salafia Jihadia in Tangiers. In September, a native of the French Antilles, Willie Brigitte, was deported from Australia, where he had sought refuge, on suspicion of having undergone training by al-Qa‘ida. In November, a cell of the Takfir wal Hijra movement, linked to the Algerian Salafi terrorists, was dismantled in the Paris area and in December, Lionel Dumont, a member of a jihadist cell (the so-called Roubaix Gang), which became known in 1995 in northern France for having robbed banks, was deported from Germany. Dumont, supposedly a member of al-Qa‘ida, was trained in Bosnia and Afghanistan.

Among the pro-Palestinian groups, the most radical is the Comité de Bienfaisance et de Soutien aux Palestiniens (CBSP). In July, it was disclosed that this charity had links to the Palestinian Hamas and probably raised money for it. On 22 August the CBSP appeared on a list of Hamas-linked groups whose assets were frozen by the US Department of the Treasury; an inquiry is pending in France as well. Another radical group is Palestine en Marche, led by Raghida Osseiran, in Lyon.

The more moderate Muslim associations, such as Présence Musulmane and Collectif des Musulmans de France, inspired by the Muslim Brothers and by Tariq Ramadan, have the largest followings. Although they have publicly condemned antisemitic acts which have taken place since the outbreak of the second intifada, their anti-Zionism remains strong.

 

antisemitic activity

The level of antisemitic violence remained high in 2002 as well as in 2003. According to CRIF, there were 517 incidents registered in 2002 and 503 in 2003. Despite the slight decrease in 2003, the number of violent attacks rose from 185 to 233, including 100 assaults on individuals compared to 75 in 2002, Moreover, 50 percent of all incidents in 2003 were directed against Jewish youngsters under the age of 18.

            According to the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH), the French government’s human rights watchdog, there was a dramatic rise in antisemitic and anti-Muslim acts in France in 2002: over 300 reported instances of violence and 992 cases of abuse or threats. Two-thirds of these incidents (193 violent and 731 threats, graffiti and insults) were antisemitic, six times as many as in 2001.

            Prior to the presidential elections of 5 April 2002, French government officials were reluctant to take firm action against the mainly Muslim perpetrators of antisemitic acts, other than condemning the more serious ones, probably for fear of losing the supposed Muslim/Arab vote. For example, President Jacques Chirac condemned an arson attack which entirely gutted a Marseille synagogue on 31 March 2002. However, Chirac added, he did not believe France was an antisemitic country. With the election of the new government, the new interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy took a more activist approach, inter alia, increasing security of Jewish institutions. As a result, there was a decrease in the number of attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions in the Paris area between April and December 2002. In February 2003, Minister of Education Luc Ferry announced new measures to deal with increasing antisemitism in schools and universities. In March the minister was asked by the government to prepare a plan to decrease the level of violent incidents directed against French schoolchildren in general due to their religious or cultural background. An inter-ministerial committee to counter antisemitism was set up by President Chirac on 17 November 2003.

Jewish schoolchildren were the target of a large number of attacks in 2002, a trend which continued into 2003. Several of the attacks in 2002 were directed against buses carrying Jewish schoolchildren, especially in the Paris area (see also ASW 2001/2). For example, on 10 April 2002 a group of Arab youths stoned a bus parked beside the Lubavitch Gan Menahem Jewish school in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, as pupils were beginning to board. One child was injured and some windows were broken. A month later, a 16-year-old Jewish youth was assaulted in Bordeaux by a group of eight Muslims who studied in the same school. The attack was accompanied by curses and threats. Although Jewish school buses were no longer targeted in 2003, a Jewish schoolgirl studying at the Longchamp School in Marseille was assaulted and verbally abused on 16 May by a group of ten Muslim girls from a nearby school. She was rescued by the principal and identified her attackers to the police. In March and April 2003 students at the Otsar HaTorah School in Toulouse were hounded as they traveled home from school on public transport by Arabs who called them “Dirty Jews.” In public schools, teachers who attempt to give lessons on the Holocaust, as well as Jewish pupils, are harassed in classes with a large proportion of Arabs/Muslims, who deny that Nazis killed Jews (see, for example, CRIF, “Anti-Semitism in France: An Assessment”).

            Among the serious attacks on Jewish adults in 2002, a worshiper leaving a synagogue in the 19th arrondissement of Paris was hospitalized after he was attacked by a group of thugs with a sharp instrument in February, and a Jewish couple (identifiable because the man wore a kippa) required hospitalization after they were beaten in Villeurbanne, near Lyon, by six Muslims in March. In March 2003 two Jews were severely beaten, allegedly by Muslims who had taken part in a demonstration against the war on Iraq.

            Arson, Molotov cocktail and other violent attacks on synagogues reached epidemic proportions in 2002 (see also ASW 2001/2). As noted above, a synagogue in Marseille was burned to the ground on 31 March. Additionally, synagogues in the Paris area, Strasbourg, Nice, Montpellier, Lyon and again in Marseille were targets of arson or Molotov cocktail attacks. The Maccabi Club house in Toulouse was also torched in April 2002, destroying everything in the building. The year was also marked by stone throwing and vandalism (including graffiti) of Jewish property (synagogues, cemeteries, schools, private property). In 2003 arson attacks damaged synagogues in Saint Mandé and Cachan. “Palestine will win,” was scrawled on a wall of the latter synagogue. Further, an arson attack gutted the Merkaz HaTorah Jewish secondary school in Gagny, a suburb of Paris, on 15 November 2003, a Sabbath, so no pupils were present.

 

attitudes toward the holocaust and the nazi era

Plans for a memorial on the site of the Struthof concentration camp to honor the 45,000 French resistance fighters kept there under extremely harsh conditions and of whom about 22,000 died, were displayed in early 2002. Eighty-seven Jews were brought to Struthof as guinea pigs for testing the first gas chambers.

            Maurice Papon, 92, was released from prison on 18 September 2002 on the grounds of ill health, after having served four years of his ten year sentence. Papon was convicted in 1998 of complicity in crimes against humanity for having signed deportation orders for 1,690 Jews between 1942 and 1944. The Simon Wiesenthal Center and MRAP (Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l’amité entre les peuples) deplored the release. Papon refused to appear in court in January 2003 in response to a summons from the court. In April 2002, the French Council of State ruled that France must pay $330,000 to Papon’s victims.

 

responses to racism and antisemitism

Public Activity

French Jews demonstrated in several rallies against antisemitism in France. On 20 January 2002, representatives of Christian and Muslim communal organizations and party officials joined Jews in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles for the third time in a protest against antisemitic incidents in the area, and specifically against recent arson attacks on the Créteil and Goussainville synagogues. Various Jewish organizations, including CRIF, the Central and Paris Consistories, the Federation of Zionist organizations of France and the Sons and Daughters of Jews Deported from France, organized demonstrations on 7 April 2002 in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg and Toulouse against antisemitism and in support of the State of Israel.

            Some 2,000 persons participated in a rally held on 6 January 2003, addressed by Jewish student leaders and CRIF representatives, who protested a motion adopted on 16 December 2002 by the Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris 6) to suspend scientific cooperation with Israeli academic institutions and to stop EU grants to Israeli universities. The French government opposed the boycott decision. Both the Paris 6 and the Paris 7 university, which had also passed a similar motion, cancelled the boycott.

            French Jews participated in rallies against the presidential candidacy of Le Pen in Paris and in other cities. On 28 April they joined about 10,000 protestors under banners such as “France, a country of Human Rights,” and “Jews against Le Pen.”

“The White Book,” a paper published by the Union of Jewish Students of France (UEJF) and SOS-Racisme, which fights racism and xenophobia, reviews all antisemitic incidents in France from the outbreak of the second intifada (September 2000) to 31 January 2002, and discusses the revival of antisemitism there. It enumerates 405 antisemitic attacks during this period.

In August 2002, the government outlawed the rightist group Radical Unity. Its website was also banned by a Paris court.

 

Official and Legal Activity

In February 2002, French Minister of Education Jack Lang set up a commission to examine Holocaust denial at the University of Lyon III. Lang stated that the purpose was not restriction of academic freedom but enforcement of the Gayssot law (1990), which forbids xenophobia and Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial was expressed, inter alia, in a doctoral thesis on Paul Rassinier, which was subsequently revoked by the university in June 2001 after protests by the UEJF.

The trial began in Frankfurt on 16 April 2002 of five al-Qa‘ida members accused of planning an attack against the Jewish community in Strasbourg and against a Christmas market there. The accused were convicted and given prison sentences.

            Three students, one French, one Dutch and one Tunisian, were arrested for incitement to racial hatred and antisemitism on 12 April 2003 during a 11,000-strong demonstration against the war in Iraq. They were released but could face charges leading to a sentence of one year and a large fine. They carried posters with a Star of David crossed by a swastika and the US flag with the stars replaced by swastikas and Stars of David.

            In September 2003, a French court fined Jean Claude Willem, communist mayor of Seclin, 1000 Euros (about $2,300) for ordering school canteens to cease buying Israeli orange juice. He was acquitted by a lower court in March 2003, but when the state solicitor, at the request of the minister of justice, appealed the decision, a higher court found Willem guilty of breaching a law against discrimination against a nation.

            Michel Houellebecq, provocative author of Plateforme, in which he referred to Islam as a stupid religion, went on trial on 17 September 2002 for inciting racial hatred by attacking a religion and its followers. He was acquitted.