France's latest unilateral adventure

[Beaver]

France has basically decided that it can invade countries whenever it wants, but it's wrong for the U.S. to do so.

How can they lecture the United States while playing the fascist bully of Africa?

[KEmperor]

Exactly.  I actually support the French action there, but you are absolutely correct about the double standard.

[patrick1]

To steal Mark Del's line: No blood for chocolate

[Peter]

I'm pretty sure this mission is authorised by the UN Security Council under UN Security Council Resolution 1464. Furthermore, the French, along with 6000 other UN peacekeepers are there trying to keep the government and rebel forces from slaughtering one another, and the ensuing human rights atrocities that occur as a result. Its not like they are trying to conquer the Ivory Coast or anything.

[Beaver]

I'm pretty sure this mission is authorised by the UN Security Council under UN Security Council Resolution 1464.

Ever hear of UN Security Council Resolution 1441?

The U.S. was not trying to conquer Iraq if that is what you are implying.

[Peter]

None of my post in anyway deals with the Iraqi situation whatsoever. Don't try to contort my post to make it sound like I'm trying to beat up on the US over Iraq, because I wasn't. All I was doing was correcting the pretty serious falsity of your original post

[Beaver]

None of my post in anyway deals with the Iraqi situation whatsoever. Don't try to contort my post to make it sound like I'm trying to beat up on the US over Iraq, because I wasn't. All I was doing was correcting the pretty serious falsity of your original post

Geez, you need to chill out. There was no falsity in my original post. You said "Its not like they are trying to conquer the Ivory Coast or anything". I never said they were. The purpose of this thread was to show how hypocritical the French are for "going it alone" in the Ivory Coast while critising the the U.S. for basically doing the same thing. So either you were reffering to the U.S. or you were making a statement that had absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand.

[Peter]

Well, lets look at this point by point:

The title of the thread: "France's latest unilateral adventure"
Its not unilateral, but rather multilateral since it has a UN mandate and UN peacekeepers with it.

Question of the poll: " Do you find France's unilateral action in the Ivory Coast hypocritical?"
There's that word again.

Your opening line: " France has basically decided that it can invade countries whenever it wants..."
Generally people invade when they have intent to conquer, the French don't. That is what I was referring to when I said that they're not conquering the Ivory Coast. Also France hasn't decided anything, the United Nations Security Council has, which IIRC the US has a veto on.

[AuH2O]

Of course the French are hypocrites, but that's because their communist government has to maintain appearances at home, with their large Muslim population.

However, when some primitives bombed French peacekeepers in Africa, the French military responded properly, by destroying the Ivory Coast "Air Force" and then terminating unruly rioters.

[Silent Hunter]

France isn't Communist. It's pretty right-wing.

[Kodratos]

France isn't Communist. It's pretty right-wing.

It can't really be put into a box. It's sort of like Nazi Germany in that respect. The Nazi's were left wing economically but were nationalist/racist at the same time, like France. Also the hatred of religion is similar.

NOTE: I'm am in no way comparing anything France has done to Nazi atrocities

[Jens]

It can't really be put into a box. It's sort of like Nazi Germany in that respect. The Nazi's were left wing economically but were nationalist/racist at the same time, like France. Also the hatred of religion is similar.

Hatred of religion. France is a secular nation, meaning that the state does not have a official religion. That doesn't mean the French hate religion, but the government doesn't allow religious symbols in schools, a reaction from the old days where catholic priests handled the religious teachings in the schools and did it in a very biased way

[Jens]

France has basically decided that it can invade countries whenever it wants, but it's wrong for the U.S. to do so.

How can they lecture the United States while playing the fascist bully of Africa?

Oh, and I refuse to answer the pool since its autheur knows absolutely nothing about the situation in Cote D'Ivoire nor French and UN policies in Africa.
I recomend United Nations Integrated Regional Information Networks for some background information

[Kodratos]

It can't really be put into a box. It's sort of like Nazi Germany in that respect. The Nazi's were left wing economically but were nationalist/racist at the same time, like France. Also the hatred of religion is similar.

Hatred of religion. France is a secular nation, meaning that the state does not have a official religion. That doesn't mean the French hate religion, but the government doesn't allow religious symbols in schools, a reaction from the old days where catholic priests handled the religious teachings in the schools and did it in a very biased way

I'll give credit to the French, they hate all religions equally(thier hatred of Jews is more race based), instead of dogging on Christianity. It has nothing to do with government policy, it has to do with the French people.

[Kodratos]

France has basically decided that it can invade countries whenever it wants, but it's wrong for the U.S. to do so.

How can they lecture the United States while playing the fascist bully of Africa?

Oh, and I refuse to answer the pool since its autheur knows absolutely nothing about the situation in Cote D'Ivoire nor French and UN policies in Africa.
I recomend United Nations Integrated Regional Information Networks for some background information

No matter how Beaver worded the question, the point is the same. France invaded a country that posed absolutely no threat to France or it's African neighbors. It was a pre-emptive attack on a foreign nation. France seems to hold the belief that they have to right to intervene in every African conflict, but it's wrong for the U.S. to do the same in the middle east. Whether each conflict has UN approval or not isn't relevant, because we both know how unbiased the UN is :rolleyes:.

[Jens]

France has basically decided that it can invade countries whenever it wants, but it's wrong for the U.S. to do so.

How can they lecture the United States while playing the fascist bully of Africa?

Oh, and I refuse to answer the pool since its autheur knows absolutely nothing about the situation in Cote D'Ivoire nor French and UN policies in Africa.
I recomend United Nations Integrated Regional Information Networks for some background information

No matter how Beaver worded the question, the point is the same. France invaded a country that posed absolutely no threat to France or it's African neighbors. It was a pre-emptive attack on a foreign nation. France seems to hold the belief that they have to right to intervene in every African conflict, but it's wrong for the U.S. to do the same in the middle east. Whether each conflict has UN approval or not isn't relevant, because we both know how unbiased the UN is :rolleyes:.

The USA could have vetoed the mission in Cote D'Ivoire but didn't. Why? Because it isn't a French invation. The UN force in CI is composed by troops from France and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) placed there to keep apart the two force, the rebels and the government, while a peace treaty wsa negociated. Claiming that it is a French invation is just silly

[Jens]

It can't really be put into a box. It's sort of like Nazi Germany in that respect. The Nazi's were left wing economically but were nationalist/racist at the same time, like France. Also the hatred of religion is similar.

Hatred of religion. France is a secular nation, meaning that the state does not have a official religion. That doesn't mean the French hate religion, but the government doesn't allow religious symbols in schools, a reaction from the old days where catholic priests handled the religious teachings in the schools and did it in a very biased way

I'll give credit to the French, they hate all religions equally(thier hatred of Jews is more race based), instead of dogging on Christianity. It has nothing to do with government policy, it has to do with the French people.

I don't know where you get this from, trying to picture the French like hating madmen. As I said it is a secular nation, but most French are religious in some way.
Your statement on Jews are appaling and frankly stupid (Don't like to use that word but I fail to find anything less harsh)

[Kodratos]

From The Jewish Week
Marseille, France --
Evelyne Sitruk always envisioned Marseille as a model of tolerance and diversity amid stodgy, stratified France, a Mediterranean port of 800,000 with a cosmopolitan mix of Italians, Armenians, some 70,000 Jews and North Africans.  Now she finds it downright hostile.
"I was strolling with my family at Pesach," she recalls, "and for the first time in my life, someone spat on me and called me a 'sale Juive' [dirty Jew]. It was like a slap in the face."
She is Orthodox, 48, and the sister-in-law of France's grand rabbi. A Socialist active in politics, she serves on the city council, volunteers as president of the Jewish library and teaches public school.
Lately, the label "Jew" sticks to her, not just on the streets as a venomous epithet. At a rally against Le Pen, a city council member accosted her with an almost accusatory question -- "So where is your grand rabbi?" -- as though she, as a Jew, was responsible for producing him. Political discussions often stop when she enters the room.
Anxiety is gripping French Jews. They've seen synagogues ablaze, cemeteries vandalized and walls painted with swastikas as they face what observers have called the worst spate of anti-Semitism since World War II. Hate crimes rose from just one in 1998 to more than 700 in the first five months of 2002. Observant Jews live in a state of siege. Police now patrol in front of the Jewish schools. Graffiti and swastikas appear almost nightly in Strasbourg. Rabbis exhort congregants in Marseille to cover their kipas in public. Jewish men guard the front of synagogues during services, walkie-talkies in hand, revolvers hidden in their pocket. Parents forbid their sons to play soccer because of a vicious attack in Paris. And the number of Jews considering leaving for Israel has skyrocketed in recent months, according to the Jewish Agency office in Paris.
The government's initial reaction to the wave of anti-Semitic incidents -- a refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem -- was almost as shocking as the violence itself. On its heels came Le Pen's surprising success in the first round of presidential elections.
Since Sept. 11, there's also more blatant discrimination against Jews. "It's no longer politically incorrect to be openly anti-Semitic," says Edith Bismuth, communications director of Marseille's Council of Jewish Communities (CRIF), an umbrella organization for secular French Jewish groups.
Turned away at a beauty parlor she had frequented for years, one young woman was told, "We don't want to take care of you people anymore." When confronted, the owner retorted, "Yes, I'm anti-Semitic and what are you going to do about it?"

HATE FROM LEFT TO RIGHT

Hate crimes target Jews nearly everywhere. In Creteil, a suburb of 82,000 outside Paris, a third of the residents are Jewish and a third Muslim. The town boasts six kosher restaurants, more than in Strasbourg or Toulouse. Residents lived in relative peace until the new intifada began some 20 months ago.
David Kessel, a 47-year-old artist, believes that some of the violence could have been avoided had the town's mayor reacted to the first hate crime 18 months ago. Kessel asked the mayor to intervene when Arabs harassed a Jewish family living in their midst and burned the car of friends who were visiting for Shavuot. The mayor, like other French political leaders, minimized the incident as "merely an act of juvenile delinquency."
In the last few months, Creteil has been the scene of several incidents: a Hebrew school classroom was torched, the synagogue's glass windows were smashed and tzedaka boxes were stolen. Last month, Jews found an anti-Semitic tract in their mailboxes.
"The Jewish community," says Sitruk with sadness, "is not very politically hip. It votes for the candidate who seems to support Israel the most and avoids thinking of the big picture."
"We belonged to the left, but now we've had to break off," says Yael Boussidan, a Conservative Jew in Strasbourg.
Felix Mosbacher, 64, president of Mouvement Juif Liberal de France, a Reform synagogue in Paris with 1,400 families that recently experienced vandalism, notes that the upsurge in vandalism tracks the second intifada.
Eric de Rothschild, 61, president of the Rothschild Foundation, worries about anti-Semitic incidents in the suburbs but notes that "statistically, non-Jews are targeted as often as Jews."
Older French Jews side with de Rothschild. Mostly Ashkenazim, they minimize recent acts, clinging to optimism reinforced by their own experiences. After all, they survived the Holocaust in France. They find comfort in the fact that fewer Jews from France -- 76,000, or 25 percent -- were exterminated than from other countries.
The younger Sephardim, more religious, often less wealthy, grouped in ghettos next to Arab neighborhoods, take issue with this view. Since they moved from North Africa after the 1960s, they have always felt like second-class citizens, slightly suspicious of a government that betrayed them when it abandoned its colonies.
"We were certain that synagogue burnings were part of our somber history, far in the past, and we were all wrong," says Pierre Levy, 60, CRIF's regional delegate in Strasbourg.
Strasbourg, home to 15,000 Jews and Europe's first Yiddish Institute, represents a case in point. The Jewish community had become complacent. Until recently, it had to press members to attend yearly organizational dinners.
"Our grandfathers were already very bleu-blanc-rouge, very patriotic," says Levy, who fought in Algeria with the French Army. "French Jews have always identified as French Jewish citizens with the accent on French 'citoyens.'

NEW FORM OF ANTI-SEMITISM

Taguieff, a non-Jewish intellectual, believes that French officials minimize the hate crimes against Jews and the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism. "Into this supposedly calm, sympathetic, open Islam seeps a religious fervor that hides fury and rage," says Taguieff in an interview at a Paris brasserie.
"When synagogues burn," he says, "it is always a sign of a grave danger."
"I don't announce that I'm Jewish nor do I deny it," Danemans says. "In my close circle of friends, we just don't discuss religion. French Jewry clings to the old principle that the less noise you make, the better off you are."
"I think Alsace has always been anti-Semitic. One of the expressions used every day here is 'You're worse than a Jew,' " says Gilbert May, born in Strasbourg into one of Alsace's oldest Jewish families.
As a soccer referee in the 1950s, he was often called a "dirty Jew." At his urging, the league suspended name callers for a month, with little effect.
May never shied away from controversy. When he joined the Resistance, the Jewish community shuddered with apprehension. "They were afraid they would all get arrested because of me," says May.
More recently, as guest speaker about the Holocaust at a public school, May advised a Jewish child who shyly whispered, "What do I do when kids shove me and insult me?"
May's answer was simple: "You have to beat them up. It's not a matter of courage but of survival." Jewish organizers of the event were none too pleased.

'WORST FEAR IS INDIFFERENCE'

Such diffidence among community leadership is typical. Because of it, the impetus for change has come from Jewish students, frontline targets of harassment.
"My male friends are kicked and pushed when they wear kipot," says Astrid Pouleur, 23, a university student in Marseille. "I feel that no one listens to me anymore when I talk about politics, as though my being Jewish pollutes my ideas."
Janine Elkouby, 55, a high school literature teacher, felt anguished and isolated after a Jewish school was burned.
"I always felt very French and very Jewish, proud of this double allegiance," she says. "After the anti-Semitic acts in our neighborhood, I started using the word 'they' instead of 'we' when I was talking about the French people."
Tasteless jokes are also making the rounds, says Samuels. One begins: Who are America's three greatest super-heroes? Superman, who flies over tall buildings; Spiderman, who climbs along tall buildings; and Musul-man (French for Muslim), who blows up tall buildings.

THE MEDIA WAR

Kessel and others blame French TV for some of the tension. The French media -- from its wire service AFP to Le Monde to French TV -- have portrayed Palestinian suicide bombers with sympathy as martyrs and "resistants" during Israeli "occupation" and Israelis as "colons" (colonialists). These happen to be loaded words in France, which is still expiating its dubious role in the Holocaust.
For years, Dr. Jean Daniel Flaysakier kept mum about his colleagues' pro-Palestinian bias at France 2 and other national television networks. Recently, France 2's reporting became even more one-sided. For days the network broadcast allegations of massacres of thousands of Palestinians in Jenin but ignored contrary information from nongovernmental organizations. The network also gave an inaccurate toll of Israeli losses. A few days later, the network reported that only 50 Palestinians died.
Ariel Abehsera, 35, an orthodontist in Strasbourg, already feels anxious about armed police guarding his son's Jewish preschool. Last month, he traveled to Israel to check out real estate, schools and professional opportunities.
"At universities, there is a move to isolate Jews," says Abehsera, who teaches dentistry. "I'm not packed and ready to leave France just yet," he says. "But I've cashed out of several investments and my passport is up to date."

This article was made possible by a grant from the Jewish Investigative Journalism Fund.

Published: Sunday, June 16, 2002

[Kodratos]

France and its Jews: Solving the conundrum
By: Maria Sliwa

Nathalie Soussan loves her native France but thinks she may have to build a life elsewhere.
At 21 she is an intern for the French House at Columbia University in NY City, and says she is afraid to return to France because of the pervasive acceptance of anti-Semitism and violence against Jews in her country. Soussan is Jewish.

There are about 5 million Muslims and 650,000 Jews in France, the largest number for both communities in Europe. Most of the attacks on Jews occur in Paris suburbs and other neighborhoods where Jews and Muslims live in close proximity.

"Since the French, Jewish and Muslim communities are both the largest, it is not surprising that misinformation and lack of education can lead to anti-Semitic hate crimes in France," Laila Al-Qatami, spokesperson for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League, said in a recent e-mail. "As documented by the recent national report on hate crimes in France, these quadrupled in 2002, with over half the attacks aimed at Jews."

The outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada on September 28, 2000 sparked a wave of Middle East related anti-Semitic incidents worldwide, with the largest number of European anti-Semitic attacks occurring in France: 1,300 recorded since 2001, the highest level since World War II, according to the Wiesenthal Center.

At the same time there has been an increase in the number of Jews leaving France to live in Israel. According to Israeli government figures, 2,556 French Jews immigrated to Israel last year. This is double the number a year earlier and the most since the 1967 Six Day War. Though the Jewish Agency in Paris said these figures were "more about protecting Israel than fleeing France," a recent poll published by the JTA Global News Service said that more than a quarter of the Jews in France are considering leaving in the wake of the serious attacks targeting the country's Jewish community.

As incidents increased, many French Jews gave up calling the police and claim authorities are downplaying anti-Semitism. Instead, they are logging complaints with the SOS Truth and Security Organization, a grass roots group established in Paris by a former police commissioner. Data on the incidents is compiled, analyzed, and published by the Wiesenthal Center.

"Though a lot of Jews in France feel very French, they also feel abandoned by their government because the officials have not acted strongly enough to stop the violence," says Soussan, who will return home to Paris in June.

Early last month, Agence France-Presse reported that Jacques Chirac called for the "utmost vigilance and firmness," in the face of racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic acts, noting he was worried that the war in Iraq would spark further tensions between Jewish and Muslim communities in France. Around the time of Chirac's statement, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy publicly briefed police officials on the new "double zero tolerance" security legislation against racism and anti-Semitism just passed by the government. As part of this new regulation, demonstrators will not be allowed to carry flags with swastikas and other anti-Semitic, non-neutral symbols. The French police also recently announced the formation of a new unit to investigate racist and anti-Semitic crimes, and stepped up police protection at synagogues and Jewish schools.

This was not the first time officials acted according to Gary Ratner, executive director of the American Jewish Congress West Coast Region.

"There was a beefed up police presence at Jewish institutions," Ratner said during an interview. He also noted a decrease in the number of incidents.

Anti-Semitism is not new to France. "France never purged itself of anti-Semitism, just hid it," said Daniel Pipes in a recent e-mail. Pipes, an expert on militant Islam, was recently nominated by President Bush to serve on the board of the US Institute of Peace.

Experts note that these impoverished Muslims feel they have become the victims of institutionalized racism, and see the Jewish community as more affluent and better integrated than they are.

Some Muslim experts blame the violence on the growth of radical Islamic movements. Dr. Gilles Kepel, a Muslim and director at the French Centre for Sociological Research, explained during an interview with an Arab weekly magazine, Ain-Al-Yaqeen, that a majority of these radical movements are the result of an alliance between poor urban Muslim youth, the Muslims of the petite bourgeoisie, (who feel marginalized and excluded from political privileges), and those he calls the "bearded engineers," or graduates of state universities, who distort the broad tenets of Islam to serve their political needs.

Other French Muslims, like deputy mayor of Sannois in Val d'Oise, Rachid Kaci, encourage the cultivation of an Islam that is cut off from the foreign influences of extremism, and are outspoken against anti-Semitism.

Extremism may be a factor of increasing anti-Semitism worldwide. According to Pipes, every militant Islamic organization across the globe preaches anti-Semitism, many in public, some more discreetly: Nearly all refer to a battle to the death with Jews. The assassination of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, for example, was filmed by Islamist executioners who forced him to look into the camera and confess his Jewish origin before they beheaded him.

Ihsan Alkhatib, an immigration attorney and doctoral student of international relations in Dearborn, Michigan, says the issue of Israel has created tension between Arab Muslims and Jews almost everywhere.

"Jewish support for Israel is due to tribal solidarity, regardless of the merits of the case," Alkhatib said in a recent interview. "The animosity displayed against Jews by the French Arabs or Muslims is also due to tribal solidarity or 'Assabiyeh.'"

In the wake of the violence, Kamins encourages Jews not to remain silent. "France is the third largest Jewish community in the world," she says. "It is important that the Jewish community of France assert their rights for protection. Pressure from other governments should also be exercised."

[Kodratos]

For Jews in France, a 'Kind of Intifada'
Escalation in Hate Crimes Leads to Soul-Searching, New Vigilance
By Glenn Frankel
Wednesday, July 16, 2003

PARIS -- The phone message is one of 10 waiting for Sylvain Zenouda at the local office of the Jewish Community Council of greater Paris: A gang of 15 North African teenagers, some of them wielding broom handles, had invaded the grounds of a Jewish day school on Avenue de Flandre in northeast Paris the previous evening. They punched and kicked teachers and students, yelled epithets and set off firecrackers in the courtyard before fleeing.

Zenouda is a commandant and 30-year veteran of the Paris police, but on this day, he is performing a different role: coordinator for the Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, a volunteer group. He phones the school, makes certain the principal has called the authorities and has insisted that the attack be recorded as a hate crime in the police report, then scribbles the details of the attack in his own battered blue notebook and on a red-and-white declaration form for the Jewish Community Council's burgeoning file of anti-Semitic assaults.

Elsewhere on this steamy July afternoon, he will meet with a businessman whose kosher restaurant was torched recently, a young man assaulted for wearing a Star of David necklace and a congregation of frightened synagogue-goers, some of whom are talking seriously of emigrating to Israel.

The file grows almost daily: 309 incidents in the past 15 months in the Paris region, according to Jewish council officials, and more than 550 since the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, broke out in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in September 2000. The National Consultative Committee on Human Rights, a government-funded body, reported a sixfold increase in acts of violence against Jewish people and property in France from 2001 to 2002.

Many incidents involve verbal assaults -- a taxi driver making an anti-Jewish remark to a passenger, a student harassed at school -- but nearly half involve violent acts of some kind. Most of the perpetrators are not the ultra-rightists and neo-Nazis who once were responsible for anti-Semitic acts, but young North African Arabs of the banlieues, the distant blue-collar suburbs where Muslims and Jews live and work in close proximity. Many of the victims are Sephardic Jews who themselves originally came from North Africa.

"We have our own kind of intifada here," says Zenouda, a Jew who immigrated here from Algeria. "But instead of attacking Israelis, they're attacking the Jews of France."

Equally important, the Jewish community itself, normally deeply divided, has coalesced in response to the attacks. What started as a shoestring effort by a handful of concerned activists such as Zenouda has become a well-funded, well-coordinated campaign of monitoring and public education.

For Jews here, many of whom had thought of themselves as French first and foremost, the violence and the initial tepid response of government officials have led to a crisis of identity.

A Policeman's Mission
Sylvain Zenouda, 53, a quiet, bearded man who wears his yarmulke under a baseball cap in public, is looking forward to his retirement in September after 30 years on the police force. He has two grown daughters, a disabled son and a new grandchild.

The last thing he needed, he said last week, was a new cause.

He came here with his family in 1962 from Algeria, one of hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen who fled the former colony when it gained independence. His father, who had been head of the officially sanctioned Jewish community organization in Algeria, died within a year, "of a broken heart," says Zenouda, who dropped out of school and worked a succession of blue-collar jobs until a friend helped him join the police department in 1973.

Starting as a traffic cop, he worked his way up to inspector, brigadier, captain and commandant. He knows what it's like to be a victim of violence: In 1978, while working plainclothes, he collared a pickpocket in the act near Montmartre. The man fractured Zenouda's skull with an iron bar and sent him to the hospital for seven months.

The alarm bells first started ringing for Zenouda in October 2000, as he watched television coverage of pro-Palestinian demonstrators in the Place de la Republique shouting "Death to the Jews" and other anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slogans. That month, five synagogues were firebombed and there were attempts against 19 other synagogues, homes and businesses.

"I was shocked," recalls Zenouda, who had voted Socialist all his life. "I felt like I was passing from being a Frenchman who happened to be Jewish to being a Jew who lived in France."

Zenouda soon joined with a few fellow Jewish policemen, led by a retired captain, Sammy Ghozlan. They began to keep records, make phone calls, put the puzzle pieces together and lobby for tougher laws and enforcement. With help from such groups as the Simon Wiesenthal Center, they began compiling their own statistics. Zenouda suddenly found himself with a new full-time crusade.

'They'll Have to Kill Me'
One of Zenouda's first stops this afternoon is the Cafe des Delices, a kosher restaurant in Epinay-sur-Seine, a northern suburb. Its ground floor was gutted in April in two pre-dawn arson attacks. The first was a small blaze that did little damage, according to the manager, Jean Claude Fitoussi. The attackers returned a week later and struck with five firebombs.

He is joined by Benjamin Fitoussi (no relation to the restaurant owner), 18, who describes how three young men approached him on the street for a cigarette a few weeks ago, noticed the Star of David around his neck and tried to yank it off. One called him a Jewish murderer, while the largest of the three punched him in the face. "I went to the police and they told me it serves nothing to make a complaint," he says.

There are different groups involved in these assaults, according to Zenouda. Many are teenagers who live in the bleak high-rise public housing complexes that dot the outskirts of Paris. They are often bored at school or unemployed, and seek to emulate what they see on TV networks such as al-Jazeera, he says. They often engage in spontaneous assaults or in gang activities, such as coordinated attacks on Jewish students. Then there are networks of activists who plan and carry out well-organized assaults such as the firebombings of the synagogues in October 2000 or the attack on the Cafe des Delices.

Taunts and Assaults
The violence has seeped from the suburbs into the center of Paris. One of the reports in Zenouda's notebook concerns Sacha Gironde, 35, a professor of philosophy at the prestigious Ecole Normale Superieure, and his wife, Yael Ifrah. They were taking her parents and their infant daughter to see their new apartment in the comfortable Gobelins neighborhood last October when they were confronted by a half-dozen young North Africans. A 17-year-old girl shouted, "Dirty Jews, we're going to kill you all!"

Gironde says he stepped between the group and his family, grabbed the girl by the arm and yelled to his wife to call the police. The girl's companions surrounded him. He let her go, but they proceeded to beat him, one of them wielding a metal bar. "I lost consciousness for a minute," he recalls. "It was really impressive. There was blood all over my face."

"These kids were very not cowed," said Gironde. "They were staring at me with a smile, mocking me. I complained to the judge about this behavior. She told me I should not interrupt."

The boys who beat up Gironde live in a housing project just down the Rue de Croulebarbe from their apartment, and occasionally he and his assailants eye each other warily on the street. There's a public park across the street with an elaborate children's playground, but the Girondes will not take their daughter there anymore out of fear of another attack. Their five-room flat is the ideal size and style for them, but they are seriously discussing selling it and buying a new place in another part of town
 
Zenouda's last stop is at Beit Gavriel, an Orthodox synagogue in the suburb of Noisy-le-Sec where, after evening prayers, a dozen congregants gather in the downstairs meeting hall. A 300-foot chain-link fence separates the building from the street. It was a gift from the town mayor after someone threw a Molotov cocktail at the front door on the first night of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, last September.

Local police, under orders to drive past here on their way to and from the station 100 yards around the corner, quickly caught the culprit, an Algerian, who was sentenced to three years for committing a hate crime, but he vanished before sentencing. "He went in one door, and out the other," says the rabbi, Shmuel Allouche, who is also from Algeria.

Ephraim Ben Roche says he no longer lets his children play outside because neighborhood children throw rocks at his backyard. Armand, who moved to Paris from Morocco in 1972 but refuses to give his last name, says he has moved his three sons to Jewish private schools because they were harassed at the public school they attended.

He tells the group he is thinking of moving his family to Israel. "Even with the terrorism there, I believe it's safer than here. We can't live like this anymore."

A recent poll by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency suggested that more than 25 percent of France's Jews have considered leaving.

No one is predicting a large-scale exodus. But later, in the car heading home, Zenouda says he wonders whether France can still be considered home. A bond of trust has been broken somehow, and he cannot see how it can be restored. "Maybe it's time for people to go," he says.

[Kodratos]

Report: Violent Hate Crimes Up in France

NATHALIE SCHUCK

Associated Press


PARIS - Violent hate crimes quadrupled in France in 2002 to the highest level in a decade, with more than half the assaults aimed at Jews, a national study has found.

Assailants carried out 313 acts of racially and religiously motivated violence last year, compared with 71 in 2001, according to the study by the independent National Consulting Committee on Human Rights.

In accepting the report Thursday, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said he was worried the war in Iraq would increase religious tensions in France.

"We must prevent international tensions from transferring to our national community," he said.

In the report, the committee said 193 of 313 attacks were against Jews in a "real explosion" of anti-Semitic violence. Last year, the group reported 32 acts of anti-Jewish violence.

The committee said increased anti-Semitic attacks came against a backdrop of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, and added that many attackers came from rough neighborhoods on the outskirts of France's cities.

In the last two years, France has suffered a wave of violence against Jewish schools, temples and cemeteries that coincided with new fighting in the Middle East.

The violence, which peaked a year ago when a Marseille synagogue was burned to the ground, has decreased. But Muslim-Jewish relations remain tense. France has the largest Jewish community in western Europe and one of the continent's biggest Muslim populations.

France's large North African community also was targeted.

Of 47 attacks against them, 25 of those were attributed to the extreme-right. One person of North African origin was killed - the only death mentioned in the report. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks stirred anti-Muslim sentiment, the report said.

Violence by France's far-right groups dropped in 2002. Nine percent of the reported attacks were blamed on the far right, compared with 14 percent in 2001, the report said.

[Kodratos]

I have more if you would like to read them. Do you find the level of anti-semetism and racism in France "appaling and frankly stupid", or just those that call it out?

[Jens]

I have more if you would like to read them. Do you find the level of anti-semetism and racism in France "appaling and frankly stupid", or just those that call it out?

I agree that parts of the French population especially among younger muslims have strong anit-jewish feelings and express them via violence, the most incompetent way to express ones feelings. But that does not give you the right to generalise and claim that "the French" hate the Jews based on race. Not all French hate Jews, most doesn't. France has come a long way since Dreyfuss and Emile Zola

[AuH2O]

Dreyfuss was guilty, btw.

[CARLHAYDEN]

I have more if you would like to read them. Do you find the level of anti-semetism and racism in France "appaling and frankly stupid", or just those that call it out?

A fine series of highly informative posts!