The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity.
Adolph Hitler, Table Talk
Hattip to Instapundit. One thing I have learned from a close study of history is that when anti-semites attack Jews, often there are going to be massacres of Christians by the same anti-semitic forces eventually. This report from Paris is therefore ominous on two grounds:
Go here to read the rest at The Volokh Conspiracy. I am often afraid that we are living in a time when these words of George Santayana are ever appropriate: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
There’s a saying in Islam, “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.” Islam’s history shows they first got rid of the Arabian Jews, then they disposed of the Arabian Christians. So remember not only who’s on first, but what’s on second.
The statement in the article that “the belief is that specifically doing anything proactively stopping anti-Semitic violence would be “provocative,” and the Jewish leadership, as a well-placed European friend told me, is too ineffectual to demand anything different,” does less than justice to the Jewish position.
Most of my Jewish friends are French and, for them, there is real concern that Anti-Semitism, thinly veiled as Anti-Zionism, and Islamophobia could, indeed, become linked as two sides of the same coin.
When the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, warned that France’s Jews “could find themselves in great danger,” and encouraged them to make aliyah, many French Jews were, frankly, horrified. People told me that it would be a disaster, for French Jews, to regress into their own communal identity, which could, in turn, validate that of the Muslim community. They were concerned that “the Jewish community” and “the Muslim community” could be seen as two mutually hostile minorities, separate from the mass of the French nation, especially as 60% of France’s Jews are, themselves, second-generation immigrants from the Maghreb.
The Jewish community is not cowering in hiding. Over 31 000 pupils are attending Jewish schools. Jewish studies have become more and more popular, including Hebrew and Yiddish classes. There is an active Jewish press, four Jewish radio stations in Paris and many more in the provinces, a Jewish television station and a second one in the pipeline, plus several Jewish web sites on the Internet. Jews are well represented in the French theatre and film industries and these often deal with Jewish topics.
“When the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, warned that France’s Jews “could find themselves in great danger,” and encouraged them to make aliyah, many French Jews were, frankly, horrified.”
Considering how the Vichy government turned Jews over to Hitler, I think the reliance of French Jews upon their status of being French protecting them from the consequences of being Jews long term in France is probably misplaced.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/21/world/europe/number-of-french-jews-emigrating-to-israel-rises-sharply.html?_r=0
If the overall demographics of the French migration to Israel mirrors that of those interviewed in the NYT piece, then it’s just a matter of time for the Jewish community in France.
Donald R McClarey
One might have thought that, as Jews, memories of Vichy would have given them some qualms; but no, with them, it was an article of faith that Vichy was not fascist, but counter-revolutionary – the last kick of the Throne and Altar conservatives against the great principles of 1789.
Back in the ‘Seventies, people like my friends, professional people or bureaucrats, products of the Grandes Ecoles, were so optimistic about their country and, in particular, its educational system. They were (and are) totally committed to its ideal of laïcité and they had unbounded faith in its capacity to eliminate communautarisme (that fertile source of all social ills) and to mould future citizens of the Republic, one and indivisible.
Now, they feel not only betrayed, by the growing anti-Zionism (and covert anti-Semitism) of the Left, which, in their imaginations, was always the old Left of Léon Blum and the Front Populaire but also disillusioned by the failure of the school system to integrate the second generation of immigrants and by the feral youth of the Zone.
My question is does the anti-Semitism rise as the Christianity declines in Europe and around the world
0?
I know that history of Christians and Jews is difficult, but I have been under the impression that people who really practice their Christian faith appreciate the Judeo-Christian connection, and in fact, share a protective concern for the Jewish people, beloved of God.
I teach and lead bible studies. I honestly had an adult student ask; “Do you mean Jesus was a Jew!!?”
Anzlyne asks, “My question is does the anti-Semitism rise as the Christianity declines in Europe and around the world?”
People need myths. As Robert Redeker put it, after the Cold War, the Left replaced “sovietophilia” with “islamophilia,” in which “Palestinians and the contemporary Muslim masses replace the proletariat in the intellectuals’ imagination” as the pure, ideal alternative to Western capitalism.
According to Taguieff, in this myth, the cosmic struggle between good and evil takes place between the “cosmopolitan Satan,” the unholy trinity of the United States/Israel/The West and the “dominated and the oppressed.” Thus, the new anti-Semitism recycles old stereotypes, the rich Jew and the dominating Jew under the “varnish of progressivism.” For many, humanitarians, Third-Worldists and anti-globalisation activists (with not a few Christians in their ranks, too), the Jew is once more the stand-in for capitalism, imperialism, cosmopolitanism, indeed the whole economic order.
Considering how the Vichy government turned Jews over to Hitler, I think the reliance of French Jews upon their status of being French protecting them from the consequences of being Jews long term in France is probably misplaced.
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There was considerable Jewish immigration into France after 1927. IIRC, the Vichy government was grotesquely unsentimental about these Jews and turned them over to the Nazis, but Jews with a longer settlement history in France were generally protected (IIRC, Robert O. Paxton estimated that 96% survived).
the failure of the school system to integrate the second generation of immigrants and by the feral youth of the Zone.
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They ruined their labor market with a stupefyingly verbose regulatory architecture, they damaged their housing market (and the public fisc) by puking megabillions into public housing development and making episodic forays into rent control, they constructed the most absurdly hypertrophied social security system in the occidental world, they ceded control of their immigration policy to Brussels, and their police behave like…unionized government employees. The purveyors of Frenchification via stereotyped national curricula had quite a headwind.
Anzlyne – My impression is that anti-Semitism rises on days that end with a “y”, unless we stand particularly on-guard against it. Sociologists can talk about the Other, and historians can talk about inculturation, but it is impossible to explain the persistence of anti-Semitism across history without reference to the supernatural. The moment someone says, “hey, let’s hate someone”, someone else says, “yeah, let’s hate the Jews”. You look at the classic temptations that humans fall into: lust, gluttony, pride, anti-Semitism – how in the world do you explain that last one on a purely natural basis?
And speaking of “Jews today, Christians tomorrow”, there are news stories out today about the departure of the entire Christian community from Mosul, Iraq.
I agree about the supernatural… what makes the “other”ness? Like Pinky, I don’t think the anti-semitism can be separated from the supernatural.
Perhaps some secular Jews may want to blur the distinction of otherness by denying their religion/heritage, but we know historically secular jews suffered the same fate, as have other jews who converted to Christianity (Edith Stein).
“Considering how the Vichy government turned Jews over to Hitler, I think the reliance of French Jews upon their status of being French protecting them from the consequences of being Jews long term in France is probably misplaced. ”
OMG I had no idea that the French government did this!!
Barbara Gordon wrote, “OMG I had no idea that the French government did this!!”
Not only the Vichy government, but in the Occupied Zone, too, the French authorities co-operated with the Germans in the deportation of Jews. Not a single German was engaged in the Vel d’Hiv Roundup of 16 and 17 July 1942, when nearly 13,000 Jews were rounded up, 7,000 of whom (including 4,000) children were crammed into a velodrome, before deportation to concentration camps.
President Jacque Chirac described it thus, “These black hours will stain our history for ever and are an injury to our past and our traditions. Yes, the criminal madness of the occupier was assisted by the French, by the French state. Fifty-three years ago, on 16 July 1942, 4,500 French policemen and gendarmes, under the authority of their leaders, obeyed the demands of the Nazis. That day, in the capital and the Paris region, nearly 10,000 Jewish men, women and children were arrested at home, in the early hours of the morning, and assembled at police stations… France, home of the Enlightenment and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, land of welcome and asylum, France committed that day the irreparable. Breaking its word, it delivered those under its protection to their executioners.” [La France, patrie des Lumières et des Droits de l’Homme, terre d’accueil et d’asile, la France, ce jour-là, accomplissait l’irréparable. Manquant à sa parole, elle livrait ses protégés à leurs bourreaux]
It is only fair to recall that three-quarters of the Jewish community did survive, thanks to the heroic efforts of thousands, who protected them at the peril of their own lives. Almost the entire indigenous Jewish community survived; they were easier to “hide in plain sight,” as it were.
We have an elderly friend, Catholic, who says his parents were Palestinian Christians (Catholics). He despises Israel and blames Israel for the disappearance of Christians from the area, for all the oppression. Every so often we get an email talking about the horrible oppression the Palestinians suffer under Israel. Never does it seem to occur to him that the Muslims might be partly to blame.
[…] Jews Today, Christians Tomorrow | The American Catholic. […]
They were concerned that “the Jewish community” and “the Muslim community” could be seen as two mutually hostile minorities, separate from the mass of the French nation, especially as 60% of France’s Jews are, themselves, second-generation immigrants from the Maghreb.
That is going to happen anyways, because the “Muslim Community” will insist on treating them as a separate group– and that targeting will make others believe it.
Never does it seem to occur to him that the Muslims might be partly to blame.
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I have forgotten who it was who said that when a man’s job depends on not understanding something, he will not understand it. Same goes for a man’s self-concept.
Foxfier wrote, “That is going to happen anyways, because the “Muslim Community” will insist on treating them as a separate group– and that targeting will make others believe it.”
That is why Jewish historian Esther Benbassa wrote to Le Monde(12/18/01) to denounce what she considered to be an over-reaction by Jewish leaders and to reject the dangerous “mirage” that there even is a Jewish community (In the sense defined above). Likewise, adjunct mayor, Henri Israël attacked Jewish spokesmen for encouraging the belief that Jews are guilty of a “sentiment of double allegiance, of double attachment” (Le Monde 01/16/02).
Anyone who knows France and the French press will know that there is great concern about communautarisme, by which they mean ethnic and religious solidarities and allegiances that threaten to override Republican unity. This concern is deeply rooted in French political culture, going back at least as far as Rousseau’s suspicion of particular interests that undermined the general will. Hence, the determination to keep the State and Civil Society, l’espace public and l’espace privé distinct and separate. Religious and cultural activities belong to l’espace privé
Very different sentiments, these, to the UK and American models of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society. Rather, they would endorse Teddy Roosevelt’s condemnation of “hyphenated Americans”; they would find the idea of someone describing themselves as “Italian-French,” or “Polish-French” as profoundly shocking. Of course the United States has, proportionately, a much smaller Muslim community, so the tensions are not as obvious.
I think you missed my point, and that you’d benefit from reading this:
http://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/07/23/one-american-looks-at-nationalism-alma-boykin/