France 2004

 

France was one of five countries characterized by a significant rise in antisemitic manifestations in 2004. Major violent incidents increased from 64 in 2003 to 96 in 2004, a large proportion of which involved physical assaults on Jewish, or mistakenly Jewish, individuals. A notable new trend was the emergence of an antisemitic discourse within the Afro-Caribbean community. On 13 December, the Council of State, the highest administrative court, banned Hizballah’s al-Manar transmissions on the grounds that some of its programs were antisemitic. In June, a Paris appeals court ruled that controversial comedian Diedonné was not antisemitic.

 

The Jewish Community

The French Jewish community, numbering about 575,000 out of a total population of 58.5 million (1999 census), is the largest in Europe. The greatest 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. In comparison, the foreign population (i.e., holding foreign nationality) amounts to about 4.3 million, while French citizens of foreign origin number 19.7 million (official census figures). The number of Muslims was estimated at 4 million, including 2 million holding French citizenship. (French legislation forbids census questions relating to religious affiliation).

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, reflected in the large number of Jewish private schools (about 100, attended by 30 percent of Jewish schoolchildren, or some 30,000 pupils) and synagogues (over 150 in the Paris area). Since the beginning of the antisemitic wave which began in autumn 2000, many families have transferred their children from state-run secular schools to private Jewish (mainly Orthodox) schools.

On 15 March 2004, a law was promulgated which forbids the wearing of religious symbols (such as a large cross, a skullcap or the Muslim hijab [headscarf]) in state schools and in the civil service. It came into effect in September 2004.

 

Political parties and extra-parliamentary groups

The Far Left, the Greens and the Communist Party

The far left, the Green Party and some segments of the anti-globalization movement exhibit strong anti-Zionist and sometimes antisemitic prejudice, especially when they deny the right of the State of Israel to exist. However, the far left, notably the Trotskyite Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR; led by Olivier Besancenot), the Lutte Ouvrière (led by Arlette Laguiller) and the Trotskyite Parti des Travailleurs (led by Daniel Gluckstein) suffered a major setback in the March 2004 regional and the June 2004 European elections (see ASW 2003/4). The Communist Party polled 6.79 percent in the Euro-election, which put a stop to its decline (the Party had numerous regional councilors elected on slates shared with the Socialist and Green parties).

Orthodox communist and sometimes Stalinist groups on the fringe of the Communist Party, such as the Pôle de Renaissance Communiste de France (publication: Initiative Communiste); Renaissance Communiste and Gauche Communiste, are particularly supportive of Palestinian hardliners (mostly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – PFLP) and promote extreme anti-Zionism as a part of their ‘anti-imperialist’ and anti-American agenda. Recently, they have begun supporting the armed Iraqi ‘resistance’, which sometimes leads to cooperation with the Islamist movement; such is the case of the Camp Anti-Impérialiste, a transnational ultra-leftist movement based in Italy and supported by orthodox Communists as well as by Holocaust denier Serge Thion.

The Green Party (led by Gilles Lemaire) polled 6.83 percent in the Euro-election and retains only one MEP. The record of the Green Party has been tainted by abortive attempts to expel from within its ranks notorious anti-Jewish activist Ginette Skandrani, who has close contacts with Holocaust deniers. On 3 April 2004, she was one of the organizers of a march in Paris in memory of Hamas leader Shaykh Ahmad Yasin.

The virulently anti-Zionist Trotskyite Socialisme par en bas, an offshoot of the British Socialist Workers’ Party, has taken over the Agir contre la guerre movement, which was pivotal in organizing pro-Palestinian and anti-war demonstrations in Paris (see ASW 2001/2, ASW 2002/3). Its central thesis, which is exposed in the writings of its theoretician Chris Harman is that fundamentalist Islam is neither a clerical nor a reactionary movement but an anti-imperialist one which should be supported both in the Middle East against Israel and in the West. This explains the presence of women wearing the hijab and even the abaya (combined head cover, veil and shawl) at their meetings.

The anti-globalization movement, in itself not antisemitic, is widely known for the anti-US and pro-Palestinian stand of José Bové, former leader of the peasant union Confédération Paysanne. Following the participation of Swiss Islamist fundamentalist Tariq Ramadan (see below) and some of his followers in the European Social Forum (ESF) which took place in Paris in November 2003, a major controversy arose within the ranks of the anti-globalization movement concerning the position it should take in the ongoing debate over secular values, such as women wearing the hijab and the Middle East issue.

 

Extreme Right Parties

The Front National (FN), founded in 1973 and led by 77-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen, had approximately 50,000 members after the presidential election of 2002. The party performed well in the regional elections held on 21/28 March, polling 14.7 percent of the vote. On the other hand, it fared poorly in the Euro-election, receiving a mere 9.81 percent, since it had to compete with the arch-conservative anti-EU Mouvement pour la France, led by former minister Philippe de Villiers, which won 7.92 percent (Villiers’ second-in-command Guillaume Peltier, is a former leader of the FN and the MNR youth movement [see below]). For the first time in almost 20 years, it can be said that the continuous electoral progress of FN has been halted, and the party’s public demonstrations attract fewer members than ever: the annual demonstration held in Paris on 1 May was attended by 3,000 people, whereas the turnout in the mid-1990s was 10,000.

However, the vote for the extreme right is still at a high level, especially in northern France, the south-east and the Riviera, and Alsace-Lorraine. Le Pen’s daughter Marine, who has her own think-tank, Génération Le Pen, seems a likely successor to her father when he steps down (although Le Pen says repeatedly he will run for president in 2007). Although she has been trying to change the party’s image by expunging antisemitic and fascist themes, which prevent FN from becoming a partner in any right-wing coalition, the FN remains an ultra-right movement. This was confirmed implicitly by the party’s second-in command, Bruno Gollnisch who, at a press conference in Lyon on 11 October, said that “there is no longer any serious historian who supports the findings of the Nuremberg Trials.” He also said: “I do not question the existence of the concentration camps but, with regard to the number of victims, historians could argue. As for the existence of the gas chambers, it’s up to the historians to decide.” As a consequence, Gollnisch was suspended from his tenure as a university professor and was awaiting trial.

The Mouvement National Républicain (MNR), led by Bruno Mégret, is now only a shadow of its former self. It polled only 1.44 percent in the 2004 regional elections and lost all its councilors; in the Euro-election it obtained a mere 0.31 percent, after focusing its campaign almost exclusively on the slogan “No to Turkey in the EU.”

 

Extra-parliamentary Extreme Right Groups and Activities

In January 2005, the Renseignements Généraux (the state security police) released a report on the far right scene in 2004/5. Estimating that the total number of activists ranged between 2,500 and 3,500, the report stated that the far right was responsible for only 7 percent of antisemitic incidents recorded in 2004. Specific mention is made of Alsace, where 35.5 percent of far right activity purportedly took place. The report stressed that the main target of far right activity had become the Muslim community. It identified 20 groups, split into five ideological subdivisions: the skinhead movement (1,000−1,500 activists); the ‘Identity’ movement; ultra-nationalists; neo-Nazis and soccer ‘hooligans’.

The skinhead movement is divided between the French Blood & Honour division (Sang et Honneur), mostly concentrated in Alsace (where ‘white noise’ music concerts draw an audience of up to 1,000 people, 90 percent of them from Germany), and the Charlemagne Hammerskins. Skinheads publish fanzines that are overtly antisemitic, deny the Holocaust and justify the use of violence against immigrants and people of foreign origin. One of their publications is called Charlemagne, referring to the French Waffen SS division of the same name; another, Genocide.

The ‘Identity’ movement (total membership, according to the police report, 500) revolves around Bloc Identitaire, led by Guillaume Luyt and Fabrice Robert. Membership is about 350. It publishes the quarterly Identité. The group seems to be close to the mayor of Orange, Jacques Bompard, who launched a think-tank, Esprit Public, and aspires to succeed Le Pen. A rival national-revolutionary faction is led by Christian Bouchet, former leader of Nouvelle Résistance and Unité Radicale. His organization, Réseau Radical, which runs the www.voxnr.com website and publishes the magazine Résistance!, numbers about 40 loosely organized activists. The group promotes hard-line anti-Zionism and supports Palestinian jihad and Muslim fundamentalist groups. Another ‘Identity’ movement is Terre et Peuple, led by the former GRECE president and FN national leadership member Pierre Vial. Finally, this subdivision includes the Groupe union défense (GUD), a mainly student group with a record of violence and extreme antisemitism.

The ultra-nationalist movement consists of four groups with followings of between 30 and 80: Œuvre française, a rabidly antisemitic movement led by Pierre Sidos; Cercle franco-hispanique, led by Olivier Grimaldi, an admirer of the Spanish Falange; Garde Franque, the French section of the shadowy neo-fascist European National Front (www.europeannationalfront.org); and Marshall Pétain devotees, who gather in two rival factions of the Association nationale Pétain-Verdun.

Of special concern to the Jewish community in 2004 were neo-Nazis and skinheads who were allegedly responsible for several desecrations of Jewish cemeteries, most of which took place in eastern France. In February, then Minister of the Interior Dominique de Villepin announced that he would ban extremist neo-Nazi groups. On 18 May, the Alsatian movement, Elsass Korps, was outlawed. This was a loose group of some 30 ‘white power’ neo-Nazi skinheads, with a record of convictions for racist violence. Other neo-Nazi groups are Combat furtif- Werwolf (about 100), also in Alsace; and Truppenkameradschaft, an association of former French Waffen-SS soldiers.

Although violent and racist, those groups are perceived today as posing a minor threat, when compared to radical Islamist organizations.

 

Islamist Groups

Two competing factions run the official body representing French Islam, the Conseil Français du Culte Musulman (CFCM), elected in 2003. One consists of moderate followers of the Grande Mosquée de Paris, led by Dr. Dalil Boubakeur and supported by the Algerian government; and the other comprises orthodox Sunni of the Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (UOIF; led by Laj Thami Breze), who are inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and by the Egyptian-born Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the supreme religious authority of UOIF (see ASW 2003/4; also, for a comprehensive survey of the various groups belonging to the Islamist movement, see Jean-Yves Camus, “Islam in France” http://www.ict.org.il).

The UOIF remains a controversial organization. While it agreed to meet with CRIF for the first time in September 2004, Shaykh Qaradawi, who chairs the European Council for Fatwa and Research (based in Ireland), has condoned suicide bombings, even against civilians. The UOIF is not linked to the anti-globalization movement, preferring to establish relations with conservative parties such as the majority party UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire) and the UDF (Union pour la democratie francaise).

The followers of the Swiss fundamentalist theologian Tariq Ramadan gather in Présence Musulmane and the Collectif des Musulmans de France. Ramadan is also the inspiration behind the main French Islamic website, www.oumma.com, which although strongly anti-Zionist, avoids publishing anything that might be labeled antisemitic. Of the very few outspokenly antisemitic Islamic groups, mention should be made of the Strasbourg-based Parti des Musulmans de France (PMF), led by a man with far right connections, Mohamed Ennacer Latrèche, who received his religious education in Syria and frequently travels to Damascus.

Several radical groups campaigned in support of the Hizballah-run TV network, al Manar, before it was banned by the French government in December (see below). These included the Mouvement pour la Justice et la Dignité (MJD) and the Ligue Internationale pour la Défense de l’Islam et des Musulmans (LIDIM), a one-man group founded by an Iraqi Jew (Bagdad Maata, also known as ‘Makhlouq’), who converted to Islam and regularly writes articles for two popular Islamic websites, www.saphirnet.info and www.islamiya.info.

In the Paris and Lyon areas, there is a growing Salafi movement, inspired by Saudi ulama (Muslim scholars). Most Salafi followers belong to the school of thought which strictly abides by the rulings of the pro-government Saudi religious establishment. This means that there is no open and organized expression of the ‘jihadist’ trend, such as that characterizing the British al-Muhajiroun, for example. Salafi activity is mostly noticeable through their websites, such as www.darwa.com, http://www.sounnah.free.fr and http://www.salafs.com. According to a report of the State Security Agency published in January 2004, they were running 31 mosques in the Paris area, four more than in the previous year.

Other Islamic fundamentalist groups in France are the association Foi et Pratique, led by Tunisian Muhammad Hamami, which is a splinter group of the pietist Tabligh movement, and a branch of the Lebanon-based Ahbachi movement, with headquarters in Montpellier, under the leadership of Shaykh Khalid al-Zant.

Radical anti-Zionism, however, is not confined to the ranks of Islamic fundamentalists. This is best exemplified by the fact that a campaign for the boycott of Israeli goods and for the severing of scientific cooperation between French and Israeli universities has been launched by a secular pro-Palestinian movement CAPJPO (Coordination des Appels pour une Paix Juste au Proche-Orient), led by Olivia Zemor, a Jew. CAPJPO was the driving force behind the short-lived attempt to create an anti-Zionist/radically pro-Palestine political movement, Euro-Palestine, which ran for the 2004 Euro-election in the Paris district, and polled 1.83 percent, with peaks at 8–10 percent in some satellite cities such as Garges les Gonesse and Trappes. The Euro-Palestine movement ultimately collapsed because of fierce internal fighting caused by the antisemitic outbursts of comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, who was a candidate on its slate. Dieudonné is known for his highly controversial statements in praise of Usama bin Laden and his appearance on a TV show where he compared religious Jews to Nazis (see below; also ASW 2003/4).

 

antisemitic activities

France was one of five countries characterized by a significant rise in antisemitic manifestations in 2004 (see General Analysis). Major violent incidents increased from 64 in 2003 to 96 in 2004, according to the Stephen Roth Institute; the French SPCJ (Service for the Protection of the Jewish Community) which records antisemitic acts, reported an increase in the overall number of antisemitic events from 503 in 2003 to 590 in 2004, half of them violent, and among those a large percentage of physical assaults on Jewish, or mistakenly Jewish, individuals.

According to the statistics of the French Ministry of the Interior, released in January 2005, there were 1,513 racist and antisemitic actions in 2004, an increase of 81.63 percent over 2003. The number of antisemitic incidents in 2004 was 950, of which 199 were qualified as ‘violent’, while 601 were threats or verbal abuse. A majority of antisemitic incidents took place in the Paris area (41.97 percent), followed by the Rhônes-Alpes (Lyon) and Provence-Côte d’Azur (Marseille and Nice) areas. Anti-Muslim violence was particularly strong in the Alsace and Corsica regions. Among the 302 people taken into police custody following racist/antisemitic incidents, 182 were allegedly involved in an antisemitic offense. There was a decrease in antisemitic incidents in the second half of 2004, and figures for court convictions of perpetrators have increased. At the same time, new trends in the public expression of antisemitism were taking shape, notably, the emergence of an anti-Jewish discourse within the Afro-Caribbean community (among followers of Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, for example) and the growing influence of the Salafi movement among Muslims. Far right racist violence targeted mainly the Muslim community.

The victims of antisemitic violence were Jews of all ages, especially school children and including the elderly and the sick. In Boulogne, an 81-year-old Jewish man was attacked on 26 December by the guard of his building and called a “dirty Jew,” and in Paris, a handicapped Jewish woman was cursed and shaken in the street on 8 October. In October alone several Jewish children were attacked: inter alia, a Jewish girl in Sevran was beaten and choked at a bus stop by three men of North African origin; four Jewish children were beaten and robbed at the entrance to their building in Paris and cursed with the words “Go back where you belong, dirty Jews”; and a 12-year-old Jewish boy was attacked in Paris by another youth and also called a “dirty Jew.” It should be noted that such assaults on children continue a trend noted in previous years (see ASW 2003/4, 2002/3).

Threats and curses were almost commonplace. On 16 February 2004 some men of North African origin entered a Jewish-owned shop in Marais and said to the owner: “We’ll gas you to death. Come out of your shop if you are a real man, dirty Jew,” and on 28 August 2004 a man of North African origin shouted “I’ll slit the throat of a Jew” to people in a cafe in the 19th arrondissement in Paris.

Antisemitic graffiti and swastikas appeared on the walls of large numbers of Jewish institutions, such as synagogues and community buildings, as well as on Jewish property and in Jewish neighborhoods. Desecration of Jewish cemeteries at Colmar (Alsace), Saverne and Brumath, inter alia, appeared to be the work of neo-Nazis. (For a discussion on the question of the perpetrators of antisemitic offenses, see General Analysis).

 

responses to racism and antisemitism

On 13 December 2004 the Council of State, the highest administrative court, banned Hizballah’s al-Manar transmissions on the grounds that some of its programs were antisemitic. In February, the Committee for Audio and Visual Media had banned an al-Manar TV series, “al-Shatat” (The Diaspora), based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, following a complaint by CRIF. On 23 November al-Manar had accused Israel of spreading AIDS to Arab countries.

            On 7 March, SOS-Racisme, MRAP (Mouvement national contre le racisme), UEJF (L’Union des étudiants juifs de France) and other organizations fighting racism and antisemitism filed a legal action in a Paris court against a US server that hosts AAARGH (Association of Veteran Fans of Stories about Wars and Holocausts), a virulently antisemitic and Holocaust denying French site, whose declared aim is to deny the gassing in Nazi concentration camps.

In June 2004, a Paris appeals court ruled that controversial comedian Dieudonné (Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala) was not antisemitic under French law after he portrayed an Orthodox Jew giving the Hitler salute. The lawyer for the four Jewish organizations that charged racial discrimination said the ruling followed the letter of the law, but ignored the hurt the sketch had caused to French Jews. Several of Dieudonné’s shows were cancelled in 2003 and early 2004, officially on safety grounds, following complaints and threatening phone calls.