A watershed for French Jews

The French Jewish community had warned of their fear that the summer’s rise in anti-Semitic incidents was leading to deadly violence.

By BARRY SHAW
French officials observe a minute of silence during a session at the National Assembly in Paris in honor of the victims of last week’s attacks (photo credit: REUTERS)
French officials observe a minute of silence during a session at the National Assembly in Paris in honor of the victims of last week’s attacks
(photo credit: REUTERS)
On Friday, the Islamic fever that has infested France and most of Europe turned its fury away from a satirical magazine that poked fun at it to its greatest enemy – Judaism.
In Paris, a gunman linked to the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo massacre who had shot a policewoman in the back the previous day selected a Jewish target for headline effect.
He attacked the Hyper Casher Jewish supermarket, gunning down four shoppers in his assault.
The French Jewish community had warned of their fear that the summer’s rise in anti-Semitic incidents was leading to deadly violence. At that time hundreds of Muslims, backed by radical leftists, rampaged through the streets of Paris toward synagogues with fearful Jews sheltering inside. These Jews were at the center of a maelstrom of anti-Israel hate during the Gaza conflict. The summer violence of 2014 led to a doubling of the number of French Jews immigrating to Israel to escape the anti-Semitism of a Socialist France that neglectfully allowed radical Muslim voices to dominate its society.
France ceded sovereignty to its growing Muslim community by allowing over 700 “no go” areas to exist, in which Muslims are permitted to run their own affairs, including imposing Sharia law, and where French police do not tread for fear of violent reprisals. When a sovereign state surrenders territory and control to an intolerant and rejectionist minority it has lost the battle for multiculturalism and enlightenment.
This is when integrated minorities, such as Jews, who participate fully in the society of their host country, feel isolated and exposed. For the power of the dominating minority, in Europe’s case the Muslims, will insist that the host country bend further to their will.
Liberal politicians and media talking heads bleat that the recent bloody terror on the streets of Paris has nothing to do with “real” Islam even as the perpetrators pronounce that this is precisely what their actions are all about. One need only enter any mosque where the concepts of “dar al-islam” (Land of Islam) and “dar al-kufr” (Land of Unbelievers) are preached to understand that according to many Muslims, jihad may be waged by deception or violence until Islam is triumphant, and that any land that is not dar al-islam is dar al-harab – a Land of War.
This is something Israel and Jews are already fully aware of, but about which liberal-minded Europe is clearly still in denial. They have chosen not to see the truth – for to see the truth exposes their wrong-headedness.
They cannot admit that they have led their people into a dark culde- sac. Instead, they impose “Islamophobia” upon anyone pointing out the error of their ways and the frightening outcome of their policies of open immigration, failed integration and surrender of once-proud national values in favor of a “multiculturalism” that brought in masses of people who then rejected their now valueless society.
What Europeans did not appreciate sufficiently was that people do not truly emigrate from the Middle East. They bring the Middle East with them.
A reporter on the French news desk of i24 News, who had closely followed events surrounding the attack on the Jewish supermarket, disturbingly reported that the general French feeling was that this terrorist attack had little to do with France. That it was a side issue between Arabs and Jews and did not affect them as regular French folk as did the assault on the offices of French weekly Charlie Hebdo. The French apparently love and respect their satirical journalism a lot more than they love and respect their Jews.
The French have not yet grasped the reality that radical Islamic terrorism, rooted in the Middle East but nurtured by misguided politics on their own soil, may begin by targeting Jews and symbols of free speech and authority as personified by the fallen journalists and French police officers, but as with all totalitarian ideologies will eventually target everyone who do not bend to its will.
January 9, 2015, should be a watershed date not only for the Jews of France, but also for Jews anywhere.
The writer is the author of Israel Reclaiming the Narrative. www.israelnarrative.com