The Merah affair has exposed a more violent antisemitism in France, with a higher incidence of antisemitic actions. That’s a worrying situation in a country where the biggest Jewish and Muslim communities of Western Europe live.
On Saturday, in Marseilles, a youngster wearing a kippah was attacked by a group that shouted at him: “Long live Mohamed Merah, shame on the Jews….” The murder took place in Toulouse and turned into a reference for antisemites “who turned into more and more unscrupulous and unrestrained and self-confident”. This attack incident appeared in the report issued by the security department of the Jewish community (SPCJ), which indicated that in 2012 there has been a 58% increase in the number of violent antisemitic actions, reaching a climax recorded right after March 19th, the day when a motorcycle killer murdered in Toulouse a teacher and three Jewish children at the “Otzar HaTorah“, school, renamed thereafter to “Or Hatorah“.
Over the course of the ten days that had passed after the murder, there have been 90 antisemitic actions, some of them violent and others were perpetrated by individuals who justify the action of Mohammed Merah, by means such as a banner denominating Merah a “brave knight of Islam”. “There is some kind of unscrupulousness”, claims Alain Jakubowicz, the president of LICRA (The League against Racism and Antisemitism): “Those who act in an antisemitic manner are more and more unscrupulous and self-confident; they even don’t hide behind fake slogans of anti-Zionism.”
Moreover, in September 2012, a grenade was hurled towards a kosher supermarket in Sarcelles (Seine-Saint-Denis). On the whole, 614 antisemitic acts were registered during the year. That’s higher than the number of acts perpetrated in 2011 (389), but lower than the 2009 figures (832), or the record number registered in 2004 (974).
“The new thing is the very violent nature of those actions”, stresses the political science specialist Jean-Yves Camus, a specialist on far-right and antisemitism, claiming that a fourth of those actions are now carried out with weapons. This phenomenon was also addressed by the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, who declared in the month of October that he was “deeply saddened by the anti-Semitic incidents that have occurred in France”.
The French Minister of the Interior, Manuel Valls, condemned in July the increase that has taken place for some years now in “the new antisemitism that has germinated in our neighborhoods”. As for Jean-Yves Camus, he says that “this new antisemitism, which comes from amongst the ranks of Arabic-Muslim youngsters, not anymore from the far-right, is rooted in the second intifada, that took place in the year of 2000. “Most of those who perpetrate those antisemitic actions, are not radical Muslims, but rather people who are confused by what is going on in the Middle East, in ‘Palestine’, and confused as well as from very old stereotypes ascribed to Jews, concerning money and power”, says the investigator, who converted to Judaism.
France nowadays is home to the largest Jewish community in Western Europe (between 500,000 and 700,000 people), and the largest Muslim community in Western Europe (at least 4 million people). Jean-Yves Camus says that the authorities must not remain passive when they face this antisemitic awakening. “But nothing has been done”, he says, “because this phenomenon is self-sustained: This antisemitism brings about the creation of an increasingly negative image of Islam and Muslims in the French society, and it triggers reactions that distort the Muslim identity and brings about the increase in antisemitism… In fact, during 2012, there has been a 28% increase in the number of anti-Muslim actions.
