It is the story of a president who since October 7 has not found the right gestures or the right position to talk about anti-Semitism. And who, like in disaster sketches, kept making things worse by trying to patch up his mistakes. Let’s start from the beginning. Since Hamas committed a pogrom in Israel two months ago, France has recorded an unprecedented increase in anti-Semitic acts on its territory. In three weeks, the latter have exceeded the number of acts counted for the whole of 2022. The shift is palpable. “For the first time since the Second World War, many French Jews are afraid to the point of hiding,” Elisabeth Badinter recently expressed alarm on the front page of L’Express. Since October 7, in fact, many French Jews have removed their names from mailboxes, withdrawn from commercial applications, kept a “low profile”, for fear of insults, threats, or even worse.
France can be proud of having been the first (and one of the only) nations to organize a march to protest this global rise in anti-Semitic hatred. On Sunday, November 12, nearly 180,000 citizens mobilized in several cities across the country, including 105,000 in Paris. Those who marched were able to see processions dotted with blue-white-red flags, and hear, here and there, a Marseillaise intoned in a spontaneous burst of republican fraternity: it was a demonstration in the purest tradition of universalism. French. The president was not, he had argued that his role was not to demonstrate but to act. Of which act. He should have stopped there.
Because the sentences he added a few days later, to silence the critics, surprised many French people: returning to his non-participation in the march on the 12th, Emmanuel Macron tinkered, from Switzerland where he was traveling, some confusing formulas. Including one on the fact that “protecting French people of Jewish faith does not (was) pillory French people of Muslim faith”… As if marching to express solidarity with the former constituted a betrayal or a provocation towards the latter . More communitarian, you die…
But the worst was yet to come: in the columns of L’Express, we learned that the communitarian radio host Yassine Bellatar (criminally convicted of death threats) had been received at the Élysée, a few days before the march, by close advisors to Emmanuel Macron, to give his opinion on the situation. “He is a thermometer, a resource person,” explained one of the participants in this exchange. “He is one of those opportunistic sociologists who can alert people to the state of mind of certain parts of society.” The affair legitimately caused an uproar. Particularly among the French Jews, who did not understand that such a sad sire could have a word to whisper into the presidential ear on questions linked to anti-Semitism.
Is it to try to repair? Unprecedented, Thursday, December 7, Emmanuel Macron organized the lighting of the first Hanouka candle in the presence of Chief Rabbi Haïm Korsia in the Élysée Palace. What to say ? “Caramba, failed again”, as in the good Hergés. Does the president not understand this? Against anti-Semitism, French Jews need a Republic, not Hanouka at the Élysée. By offering the shelter of a common identity – French citizenship – republican universalism and secularism constitute a shield against identity-based hatred. They allow French Jews, like others, not to be reduced to their minority status. And therefore, not having to depend on the goodwill of the majority. And the president must be the guarantor of this shield.
The Republic is not supposed to recognize, nor welcome, nor console religions; it protects its citizens. If we lose sight of this specificity, then all the candles and other candles will not be enough to fight against the growing darkness.