Uri Avnery
July 16, 2016
Welcome! Bienvenue!
FOR ME, France is the land of liberty.
When
I was just 10 years old, I fled with my family from Nazi Germany to
France, on our way to Palestine. We were afraid of being detained at the
border. When our train crossed the Rhine, leaving Germany behind us and
entering France, I breathed deeply. From tyranny to liberty, from hell
to paradise.
I never forgot this feeling. Whenever I visited France, it came back to me.
I
remembered it again this week, when I saw a much-toted TV
"investigative report" on "Anti-Semitism in France". It was a pile of
propaganda nonsense.
"ANTI-SEMITISM
IN France" is now all the rage in Israel. A huge propaganda effort is
invested in this campaign. The aim is to induce French Jews to come to
Israel, to "make aliyah" (an atrocious corruption of Hebrew).
Jews
in France, according to "investigative reports'' are faced with a
terrible danger. They can expect a second holocaust any moment. They are
attacked in the streets. They are afraid to wear kippahs in public. For
their children's sake, they must come to Israel. In a hurry. Now!
When
I started watching the TV story more closely, I noticed one
peculiarity: almost all the male Jews interviewed wore a kippah.
Strange. I hardly ever met a kippah-wearing French Jew.
Then
I noticed another peculiarity: it seemed to me that all the Jewish
interviewees looked North African. In particular, Algerian.
Also,
all the violent incidents mentioned were caused by Muslims. They did
not take place on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées , but in the banlieues,
where poor North African Muslims live crowded together with poor North
African Jews.
Why are these incidents happening? Why there? And what have they got to do with French anti-Semitism?
WHEN
I hear about "French anti-Semitism", I see in my imagination the long
tradition of Christian France's aversion to Jews. Even after the French
Revolution, which liberated the Jews too, there was a lot of
anti-Semitism in France. One has only to recall the Dreyfus affair at
the end of the 19th
century, when a French Jewish army officer was falsely accused of being
a German spy and sent to Devil's Island in French Guiana. Masses of
Frenchmen marched along the Champs-Élysées, shouting "Death to the
Jews!" One spectator was a Jewish journalist from Vienna, named Theodor
Herzl, who drew the conclusion that all the Jews must leave Europe and
establish a state of their own in Palestine. Zionism was born.
This
kind of Christian anti-Semitism, emanating (I believe) from the New
Testament story about the death of Jesus, always existed in France, as
it did in most other Christian countries. Since the Holocaust, it has
become a fringe phenomenon. I believe that this is so in France, too.
THE
MUSLIM-JEWISH animosity which is now being played out in the Paris
banlieues is something entirely different, and has nothing to do with
anti-Semites. It so happens that both sides are Semites.
It
started in Algeria a long time ago. The French conquered the country
and settled there in large numbers. Then they did something rather
clever: they conferred French citizenship on the local Jews, but not on
the Muslims, who constituted the vast majority. As the ancient Romans
used to say: "Divide et Impera".
When
the Algerian War of Independence broke out (in 1954), the Jews, being
proud French citizens, sided with the oppressor against the oppressed.
More
than that. When the French army showed signs of wanting to leave, the
settlers set up an underground military organization, the OAS, to
terrorize the Muslims. The local Jews were involved. Gradually, the
French settlers started to return to France, and the Jews remained, the
OAS then becoming almost a Jewish organization.
I
was somehow involved. The Algerian liberation organization, the FLN,
feeling that victory was near, was very concerned that the Jews would
leave Algeria. Since the Jews played a large role in Algerian economic
and intellectual life, the FLN leaders feared that such an exodus would
be a great loss to the emerging state.
They
approached me with the request to set up an organization in Israel to
support Algerian independence. When I set up the Israeli Council for
Algerian Independence, they asked us to publish material in Hebrew,
which they translated into French and distributed among the Jews.
To
no avail. In the end, Charles de Gaulle set a date for the French
army's withdrawal, more than a million French settlers fled almost
overnight to France, and with them practically all the Jews.
Algerian
Jews did not come to Israel. They were too well integrated in French
culture. Moroccan and Tunisian Jews split: the educated went to France,
all the others came here.
What
is happening now is the continuation of that Algerian conflict on
French soil. The hatred that once ruled the streets of Algiers and Oran
is being fought out in the streets of Paris and Marseilles.
Tragic? Indeed. Sad? Certainly. Anti-Semitism – not at all. It has nothing to do with this old European scourge.
TO
GET a real picture one has to compare the number of Muslim acts of
violence against Jews in France with the number of Christian French acts
of violence against Muslims.
I
have seen no such statistics, probably because France insists that
there is no difference between Frenchmen and women of all colors, creeds
and races.
However, I would confidently bet that incidents against Muslims vastly outnumber incidents against Jews.
French
neo-Fascism, led by the very able Marine Le Pen, is entirely centered
on hatred of the Muslims, while doing everything possible to flatter the
Jews. Some Jews are even active in her party. She admires us, she loves
us, she even threw her own father out because he could not restrain
himself from uttering phrases that reflected some residual
anti-Semitism.
SO WHERE is the present scare of French anti-Semitism coming from?
Ah, there are several good reasons.
Basically,
Zionism and anti-Semitism are twins. It is modern European
anti-Semitism that created modern Zionism. As mentioned, Herzl turned
into a Zionist when he saw the (French) anti-Semites. My family came to
Palestine because of (German) anti-Semitism. So, more or less, did all
the Israeli Jews.
One could say that if anti-Semitism did not exist, the Zionists would have had to invent it.
According
to Zionist ideology, the State of Israel exists as a refuge for
persecuted Jews. Wherever Jews in the world are in distress, we save
them and bring them here. (Never mind that Israel is perhaps the least
safe place for Jews in the world.)
When
anti-Semitism is too weak to do the job, we must help it along, as we
did in Iraq in 1952, when we planted bombs in synagogues to encourage
Jews to leave and come here.
Seems
that just now there is a dearth of anti-Semitism. Russian Jews don't
come anymore, nor do American ones. So France must fill the gap.
There
is also a more cynical explanation. Israel has built an elaborate
apparatus for bringing Jews here. There are immigration officers in
Israeli embassies. There is the Jewish Agency, a worldwide organization
devoted mainly to bringing Jews to Israel. What would happen to all this
host of emissaries, organizers, bureaucrats, political appointees and
such if there were no Jews aspiring to come here and kiss the ground on
arrival?
Fortunately
there is this "wave of anti-Semitism" in France, and everybody is fully
occupied. Politicians make speeches, journalists produce emotional
"investigative" series, the Zionist soul is stirring, Zionism is in full
swing. Planes full of kippah-wearing Jews arrive. Hallelujah!
WHAT HAPPENS to all these immigrants "making aliyah" once they come here.?
That
is a good question. Some bureaucrats are charged with dealing with
them. We have an entire ministry devoted to "immigrant absorption". (It
is arguably the least desired job for a politician, a kind of parking
space until something better comes along.)
Once
the new immigrants are here, many devoted Zionists seem to lose
interest in them. Practically all immigrants from Islamic countries
since the birth of the state, they and their descendants, now complain
of having been discriminated against.
The
problem is now at the center of a lively debate. A committee led by a
blind Oriental poet has just issued a vast report, demanding that all
history books be rewritten to make place for Oriental Jewish
politicians, rabbis, artists and writers, on a basis of parity with Jews
of European descent.
Semi-official
estimates are that about 30% of the new "French" immigrants will
eventually return to France. That seems to be accepted as normal.
But if 70% remain with us, that is a net gain. Bienvenue, mes amis!
|
Friday, July 15, 2016
Uri Avnery Guest Post: welcome! Bienvenue!
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