Je Suis Charlie, Je Suis Ahmed, Je Suis ?????…asks Ron Weiser
I was waiting for another Je Suis to spontaneously erupt from the good people of France.
But it did not come, maybe tomorrow, maybe not………..not the French word for Jewish or the names of even one of the innocent people going about their erev Shabbat shopping in a kosher store in France.
Je Suis?????
Dr Ron Weiser
And no, the real problem is not the Moslem population of France, nor even the Jihadist element of that population.
Blaming them allows the French an excuse.
The real problem is France.
Even before this latest atrocity French Jews were making aliyah in record numbers.
Thousands and thousands – 9,000 in 2014 alone.
For the first time in the history of the modern state of Israel, more Jews are coming on aliyah by choice from a democratic country than from your typical country of distress.
Is this because French Jewry is more Zionistic than say the Jews of Australia?
Is this because the aliyah shaliach in France is so effective?
It is because something is so broken within French society – the non-Moslem 90% of the population – and within the leadership of France, that Jews are fleeing for their lives – literally.
A France that is rotten to the core.
A hypocritical country that thinks that mouthing slogans of liberty and equality make it so.
A country that snobbishly looks down on the State of Israel and waves its wand of moral equivalence over her. Where an Israeli Arab is safer walking any street in Israel dressed in any religious garments he or she chooses, than a Jew in France walking around in a kippa.
A France that only a few days ago voted in the UN Security Council for a Palestinian State without any safeguards or guarantees at all that a Jewish State alongside it would be part of the deal.
A France whose actions do not immunise it from the Jihadists in any case.
Thank G-d for Australia.
And what a delicious and fitting irony.
That of all people, of all people, Bob Carr must be kicking himself for pushing so heavily for Australia to have a seat on the UN Security Council and then for that seat to be used by Australia to demonstrate the moral clarity Prime Minister Abbott and Foreign Minister Bishop did with that magnificent vote, the final vote of Australia’s term as a Security Council member.
I wrote in an earlier piece of my disbelief when during a debate I heard in Israel last year on the situation of French Jewry which included one of their leading representatives, he stated that there was no antisemitism in France.
I was equally shocked two years earlier when another leader of French Jewry publically blamed Israel for causing French Jewry’s problems (the problems they claim they do not have), more or less along the same lines as a so called leading light of British Jewry.
There are many lessons to be learnt.
Not the least of which is to recognise a problem when it exists.
And to not excuse an act of fundamentalist terrorism as that of a crazy criminal.
U.S. President Barack Obama said he wants the people of France to know that the United States “stands with you today, stands with you tomorrow” after this week’s terror. He told a crowd in Tennessee that “we stand for freedom and hope and dignity of all human beings, (and) that’s what Paris stands for.”
He is wrong – that is not what Paris stands for at all.
The kidnapping and torture of Ilan Halimi in 2006; the terrorist murders of Jews in Toulouse in 2012; and the attack in May at the Jewish Museum of Belgium, in which four people were murdered and for which a man with French and Algerian citizenship was arrested tested Paris.
What did Paris stand for then?
Platitudes.
A few nice words.
Does French Jewry feel safer today?
French President Hollande summed it all up so so terribly wrong.
He called the attack on the Hyper Cacher supermarket an act of antisemitism.
Of course it was, but in French terms that is not so horrible after all and has happened before.
Until the French leadership and the French people regard the attack on the kosher deli just as they regard the attack on Charlie Hebdo AND use the same terms – an attack on French values, on the French way of life and on France itself – we should call them out on their moral failings.
And until then, goodbye France.
Ron Weiser is a Past President of the Zionist Federation of Australia and Hon Life President of the Zionist Council of NSW.
90% of native French Jews were sent by the French themselves to Auschwitz and surrounding death camps. Their north African replacement Jews couldn’t live with the French for two generations before they now flee in terror.
Criticism of the manner in which the French deal with antisemitism and, conversely, with the islamic menace in their midst can derail from the sphere of the rationale quite easily, particularly if generalisations dependant on poor knowledge of the place itself takes the reins.
True, the French Jewish leadership has been critical of the insufficient attention security measures have applied to Jewish institutions in France, particularly after the 2012 Toulouse tragedy. True, the French Jewish leadership criticised the manner in which the entire French society ignored the Toulouse massacre and only reacted when non Jewish French fell victims to the same source of barbarism. Yet, it is also true that the tension, boiling indignation of the French faced with the omnipresence in their national landscape of what could be assumed as potential attacks has erupted with unseen force only within a few days from the recent massacres .
One may give credit to a society which has come of age in terms of guarding the most precious principles of a decent society. As national maturity is observed, the memories of a Dreyfuss affair, the coalescing through a vast nazi collaboration with antisemitic sentiments, are now well passed and diametrically changed in the profile of this nation. France’s attitude toward Israel is a completely distinct issue; it may not be aligned to any degree to the notion of antisemitism. The Jews of France are vastly represented in all major aspects of national interest well in disproportion to their number at a level historically not attained.
We are back to the fact that the gravity of the islamic presence in France is so acute, that nobody can presently offer any formula for a decisive, optimistic improvement. Countless, non-stop public discussions are aired and tensions vary from the “academic” calm to the desperate impasse , all concluding that the shift required is almost unfathomable within the present and even the next generation. In the meantime the French want to pretend, I suppose, that their wonderful country and way of life can be enjoyed without an abandon to those so French of expressions such as despair, calamitee, calvaire etc.
Otherwise, my heart is laden with pain and sorrow for yet another tragic loss of our own…..
Incidentally, Shoah is not t be appropriated by anyone as exclusive deterministic rationale. I carry the burden of almost an entire family destroyed …..
There are none so blind as those who do not see.
Mr Jaku – those who do not learn from the Shoah fail our community.
Of course the intial problem are the jihadists – but the insecurity of European Jewry, and France’s in particular, comes from the way the French are not dealing with it.
If Je Suis Juis was a success, let us pray for fewer such successes.
The reason French Jews are leaving is not because of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism per se, but because of the lack of proper response from the French. If Islamic fundamentalism was dealt with properly, then the Jews of France would not feel so insecure.
The reason that France sees Charlie Hebdo as terrorism and the murder of Jews in a Jewish Day school as something short of that is anti-Semitism. Text book anti-Semitism.
What France has announced belatedly and as a temporary measure is better than before, but changes little in the long run.
Read below just some comments from the Times of Israel article on what troubles French Jewry.
Understanding the problem is the beginning of dealing with it.
“Serge Bitton, a resident of the heavily Jewish suburb of St. Mande.
“The issue for the future of our lives here as Jews is how France reacts, not its government. And right now, France is reacting to Charlie, not to Chaim,” Bitton said of public outrage at the Jan. 7 attack on the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.”
“The government talks but it’s only words. We do not have a future here,” said Joyce Halimi, 26, who attended the vigil with her husband, Julien.
“Tellingly, the feeling of insecurity is being openly discussed by leaders of French Jewry who, in the past, have strived to reassure their coreligionists and inspire them to stay and fight.
In an interview with Le Figaro, Cukierman called the increase in emigration from France to Israel a “failure for France” and said it owed to “growing insecurity felt throughout the country.”
French Jews, he added, “feel like the nation’s pariah.”
Gil Solomon, you’ve got me there. As Abe Lincoln said, something deep inside me does want to believe in ‘the better angels of our nature’. I do see the goodness deep in the heart of human beings. Yet (sigh) I know that humans are creatures of free choice and, therefore, the darker side of human nature is very powerful too. Looking at the latest atrocities in France this point needs no argument.
In short, despite the way I am I take your point Gil. Let’s see if France (and the West) really wakes up to the Islamic terror war on the world. Let’s see if France clears out the Sharia hot zones of human rights violation in certain urban suburbs. Let’s see if France and the French people see hamas for the terrorists that they are and start/s supporting Israel’s defence of her civilians. Let’s see if in one or two years’ time each French person still says ‘je suis Juif en France.’ I am a little hopeful, though I’m by no means sure that true positive change will succeed the sincere emotional outpouring of this time.
I guess we will all see.
-In brotherly respect, Efrem Manassey.
Any one who doubts the soundness of Ron Weiser’s position would learn a great deal from the essay by Professor Robert Wistrich in the current issue of the online”Mosaic” Magazine.
Efrem, you express a lot of wishful thinking in a few short lines.
“We can be sure that the French people are thinking deeply” you say. “Surely they are considering this and surely they feel that” you go on to say.
It is time for all Jews to enter the real world. That European world of largely anti Semites is not thinking, considering or feeling any of the issues you raise. When it comes to Jews and Israel they did not and still do not care less.
All the “Je Suises” and candlelit processions in the world will mean squat unless newspapers and world leaders (definitely including Israeli leaders) have the courage of their purported new found convictions to write and speak without fear of being classified as politically incorrect. If not, it can be concluded that fear and intimidation works and this lesson will not be lost on the terrorists.
On its own, holding up some silly placard proclaiming Je Suise this or Je Suise that, the usual response of an impotent western world will prove nothing.
What should be of more interest to all of us is will the French police clean up the “no go” Muslim zones in Paris or will the status quo remain unchanged. If unchanged, expect more of the same.
Oh, would that I was in Paris again; loudly would I be among the people shouting ‘je suis Charlie’ and ‘Je suis Juif’ . Thankfully their is a difference between the French and the stance of Hollande, especially his pathetic Security Council push th recognise Palestine without a peace agreement.
We can be sure that the French people are thinking deeply about that. Surely they are considering that Hollande’s appeasement of Muslims has only resulted in Jihad against their fair republic. Surely they feel a sense of oneness with their Jewish French compatriots who were slain mercilessly in the Kosher Supermarket.
Yes, I have heard that they now say ‘Je suis Juif en France’ and it gives me hope for them. I wouldn’t write off France just yet.
But boy do they have big problems to sort out, now that such a large Muslim population contains an endless stream of radicalised youth. I could never see the wisdom of such wholesale immigration from North Africa myself.
I can only wish the French open eyes and Bon chance.
Je Suis Juif is a campaign that appears to have been started by Jews outside of France. It has had relatively speaking, only minor to moderate support. It did not feature in any large or even somewhat prominent way in the Paris march yesterday.
Je Suis Juif has regretably not become any central part of any slogan.
You only need to ask yourself one question – if the kosher deli attack occurred but the Charlie Hebdo one did not, would such a march have taken place in Paris yesterday?
Ron, the empirical evidence is convincing that it would NOT have taken place.
This was not the first jihadist anti-Jewish atrocity in France, and none of the others caused more than a limp ripple among the noble heirs of the revolution of liberte, egalite, fraternite.
Oh, that’s right, they’re also the heirs to Proudhon , Action Francaise and Le Pen.
The descendants of the Germanic barbarian Franks have returned to their former selves.
I have been monitoring the French news since the beginning of this recent tragic sequence of events. “je suis Juif” and “je suis flic” (I am a cop) have featured prominently! The French authorities at the highest levels have done their utmost to do the right thing vis-a-vis the French Jewish community at this time and the community itself seems satisfied. What more would Ron Weiser have the French do in the current circumstances?
‘je suis Charlie’ means standing up for free speech. The back patting niceties have diverted attention from the core issue.
If there was free speech, instead of the gratuitous useless back patting, every media outlet which values free speech would show that they are not intimidated and would publish some or all of ‘the cartoons’ – preferably on the same day throughout the world to how solidarity.
Our media have no problem in satirising and offering opinions about Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or any other group other than Moslems and Islam. By contrast one only needs to look at http://www.palwatch.org/ to see how they treat the infidel.
The marching, chanting and back-patting is offensive because it simply masks the problem and thus is likely to encourage further dhimmitude by our media and politicians.
There is no doubt that the perception of French Jewry is that, indeed, if not for the Charlie massacre the filosemitic sentiments of the general population would not have evinced. Roger Cuikerman, the CRIF President said precisely that. I his words, the \french have woken up at long last and now rekcognise that what has been affecting seemingly only the Jews is a malaise to which the whole country must respond. The mere size of the reaction in France in one day, more than 3.7 MILLION people across the country comng out in support of direct and effective measures against extremism, shows that the sentiments have been kept muted, but just about to explode.
The complex job of addressing this seemingly insurmountable task would have gained a greater pace, considering that the demonstrations of yesterday have put the French politcal c;ass now in charge on notice that is is expected to perform. The omnipresence of Sarkozi in all places, right behind Hollande, the hyper active Popular Front on all current cases can only urge the administration somehow not sufficiently alert that it better pull its finger out – or the French version of the same -.
One quote that has captured my attention was from PM Valls who said that ” France without her Jews will cease being France “.
Strong Jewish voices have warned that France is about to loose its Jews if the indifference by all to its plight is likely to continue.In his address at the Great Synagogue in Paris last night Bibi has called on French Jews to take the road to Yerushalaim.
This is not an overnight treatment and life here in France has taken this sunny Mondy morm its normal course….in French Catalunya an early spring delights the eye and fresh pain au chocolat delights the rest with a perfect cafee au lait at my favourite watering hole. I wouldn’t mind me newly fund mate, Michael Jaku, sitting against (sic) me on this terrace, but, alas, one must watch his waist, right, Maitre Michel !!!
All very true Ron, but berating France and French Jewish leaders while failing to criticise other nations and Jewish leaders misses a major flaw.
As far as the French are concerned, they can rot in their own detritus. They showed their true colours in stabbing Israel in the back in 1967 and in nurturing Ali Khomeini. Now they have 750 places in France governed by sharia law where no police dare enter.
Obama’s solidarity with France is typical of his islamophilic stance. Nowhere does he actually condemn islamic terror. This is in keeping with his protection of jihadists in the country he claims to be loyal to. Did you know that under Obama the US space program is a glorious muslim enterprise? Check it yourself! And USA Jews time and again prove to be gutless boot lickers of Israel’s enemy.
The Irish, the British and the Scandinavian governments are as bad as the French and the Spanish are worse. The Jewish leaderships there are as spineless in those in France.
And that brings us to Australia. Yes, Australia under Abbott has returned to its principled pre-Whitlam position, but what is its leadership doing. Oh yes, quiet diplomacy behind closed doors. Very quiet and very ineffective. When the anti-Israel rallies in July became anti-Jewish, not a single leader who bleated for the retention of 18C filed a complaint. Not a single Jewish (or even Zionist) leader organised a demo against: Jake Lynch’s anti-intellectual courses, the ABC’s and SBS’s distortions and misreporting, the Fairfax press’ persistent anti-Israel/pro-mohammedan advocacy journalism or the death of multiculturalism due to mohammedans.
To paraphrase the green movement’s motto: criticise globally, act locally.
Ron
A wonderful article that tells it as it is.
Hopefully our communal leaders will similarly endorse your sentiments.
Thank you.
There is nothing wrong with being a dedicated Zionist, I am one of them, there is nothing wrong with advocating with force and passion the case for Israel as seen and predicated in all international fora, but calling France “rotten” and hypocritical in relation to the case for the french Jewry takes the cake and rendered the “claimant’ utterly ignorant, to say the least.
I am currently in France and have been here for quite some time now. I am walking and talking France, I break their bread or baguettes, I drink their water, I see and talk to people in lots of places and I also read Ron Weiser’s choleric vituperations from somewhere in Dover Heights as close to France as the planet Mars and say to myself “Yep, that m’ Ron alright !!”.
No, mate, France is neither rotten nor is it hypocritical. I have been shaken by the recent events unfolded here and right now from the window of my place I can see French people walking in droves to a square in this wonderful provincial town holding signs saying ” Je suis Charlie” and , YES, “Je suis Juif”. I have seen on the local TV stations, almost ALL of them reports and commentaries, interviews, statements from all places, as high as President, PM , ministers etc., all condemning the “Hyper Cacher” murders, have seen thousands of French non Jews gathered in front of the devastated Kosher shop bringing entire fields of flowers, showing their shock and their affection and I DO NT count Ron Weiser’s impudent comments as relevant at all!!
This morning heads of the French Jewish Constistoire (CRIF)Roger Cukierman and Joel Mergui had a long private meeting with President Hollande and came out stating that , indeed, French Jewry is a prime and consistent target of the terrorism France has been fighting against. They asked for better and comprehensive protection of all Jewish places and declared that they trust the French government to provide the protection needed.
France is in a most difficult of situations in regards to the increase of Jihadist terrorism. With the HIGHEST muslim population in Europe, some FOUR MILLION SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND 7.5% percent of population, it has, by far, the most difficult task in changing a vast majority of that massive number into what all French want to become a safe, consistently democratic, civilised country, BACK to its glorious traditions.
I criticised in an earlier posting the notion of “amalgam” ( most definitely NOT a dentistry amalgam !!!) which the French are using in reference to the “consistency” or otherwise of the muslim attitude in France.
On reflection, considering the demographic statistics, the only way France can attain a drastic transformation of part of its muslim population – and NOBODY can put a precise figure on that – is by persuading the intransigent unassimilated culturally/socially muslim to abandon its “fronde”, opposition to the values of their host country, actually let’s forget “host” and use, as the French do, THEIR OWN country based on the genuine, historic FRENCH principles so well known since their revolutionary uttering two and half centuries back.
In the international fora France has NOT been as close to the policies we have supported and Australia has been espousing since its Coalition, BUT, France is part of NATO and an active one in it and that NATO is taking active and effective part in fighting islamic terror in a few places where the fight matters. As a matter of FACT, the most frequent claims and crie de guerre by the islamists is precisely their objection to France’s participation in THAT war.
I have no doubt that these wonderful people, the French, have a perfectly tuned nation of what their country should look like and how that ideal can be attained. They have strategies in place to address and arrest the current abominable manifestations of islamic terror.
Enough for now, I must get to that local Place de la Republique and march with my fellow believers in that Fraternite we all are fighting for as universal Juifs. Ron, mate, you are most welcome to join us !!!
Henry, please, I have lots of typos again but one is bad . I said “eating” with Pres. Holland instead of “meeting”, can you pls help.
thanks
otto
I will have a bottle of Cahteau Lafitte 1957 forya !!! – another typo it is “Chateau”.
o
Surprise, surprise! For the first time I agree with Otto.
Also worth noting, that of the 4,700,000 Muslims in France, it has been said that approximately 20% of them are illegal migrants.
JE SUIS DRANCY
Je Suis Drancy.
Indeed,’JE SUIS JUIF’ can be seen in photo currently on:
http://www.thelocal.fr/
I propose a composite banner, which we should use here and internationally:
JE SUIS CHARLIE
et
JE SUIS JUIF
et
JE SUIS …….
Thank G-d for Mark Dreyfus too don’t forget, when he stood against his counterpart George Brandis, the federal government trying to sneak in changes to the Racial Discrimination Act where it would’ve have been everybody’s right to be a bigot, around the time Holocaust denying bishop Richard Williamson was granted a visa [later withdrawn under protest remember?] under the nose of the appointed Holy See’s Consultor for Jewish relations Canberra’s Archbishop Christopher Prowse last year.
Don’t forget that in 2001 Daniel Bernard, French diplomat didn’t deny saying the following, but was merely annoyed that ‘a private conversation became public’….
“All the current troubles in the world are because of that shitty little country Israel.” The diplomat added, “Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?”
As ‘one of those people’, I prefer ‘that shitty little country’ and leave it up to readers to make their own conclusion as to why a diplomat continued in his post for another year after such a comment.
Let’s also not forget that Szarkozy presented the French Legion of Honour to Charles Enderlin, a French-Israeli, who, as head of France2 TV, facilitated the Mohamed al Dura blood libel that headlined intifada and resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent individuals.
“Je suis Juif” has indeed become part of the slogan.
A major trigger for terrorist attacks against Jews in Europe is the constant stream of anti-Israel slanders, blood libels, half-truths, insane conspiracy fantasies, and the tacit acceptance by Europe of the legitimacy of Arab terrorism….er..in Eurospeak,”resistance.”
Australia is not free of this either.
This attitude creates the impression among jihadists that there is open season on Jews.
We have seen this kind of phenomenon before: during the British Mandate in The Land of Israel, when Britain adopted anti-Jewish policies, rampaging Arab mobs would shout, “Butcher the Jews; the government is with us.”
Don’t blame aliyah to Israel. The problem lies at the feet of the French themselves. Like so many European countries they opened their doors and allowed people of islamic faith to enter their borders, supposedly in the name of humanity and the other motive cheap labour. The plan to increase sharia law and to convert the world to islam started when the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran from that time onward the seeds were planted. Hence the terrorist cells that exist today and now the free world suffers because it will not forcefully re-act to the threat. Just look at France today undecided about Gaza the Palestinian state may be just may be this will start the bells ringing.. Also look at the unrest in other European countries it is time to wake up. It would appear history is repeating itself and shows most people have a short memory.