“As they persist, certain silences end up taking on the depth of real events.” Thus began the file entitled “The dark figures of anti-Semitism”, which L’Express had put on its front page in December 2001. Our newspaper, through the investigation of journalist Eric Conan, was the first to denounce the rise of a new anti-Semitism in France, which, that year, destroyed a synagogue in Trappes and burned down a nursery school in Marseille. On September 27, 2017, L’Express once again dedicated its front page – there had been others in the meantime – to the dismay of French Jews. A sixty-year-old, Sarah Halimi, had been thrown out of the window a few weeks before to the cry of “Allah Akbar”, in the silence of the media and politicians. For the first time, the intellectual Elisabeth Badinter spoke on the subject, and expressed her concern. But neither his alert nor the investigations which accompanied it caused much noise. That week, L’Express was well cited in the press review of a major radio station, but for a report on the inside pages entitled… “Sleep better”.
Over the past twenty years, the rise of anti-Semitism is a subject that has ultimately been little talked about. Of course, when a tragic event occurred – eleven deaths in fifteen years – the emotion was great and sincere. But between two tragedies, everything happened as if nothing was happening. Partly because certain political leaders are now embarrassed at the edges, when they are not outright accomplices of the worst. The new “dominant-dominated” reading grid which has imposed itself in the ranks of the LFI left, in particular, does not fit: it considers Islamists as Muslims radicalized by injustice, and Jews, as Whites, and therefore privileged. The former cannot therefore be entirely executioners, nor the latter entirely victims. Another reason for the silence is that there is no specific cure for the new anti-Semitism. It is one of the deadly symptoms of Islamism, and we basically deal with it as with the rest: between two angers, we forget (Read about it Anger and forgetting, by Hugo Micheron).
We will also forget this time. Since October 7, France has experienced an unprecedented outbreak of anti-Semitic hatred. Islamists, but also anti-vax conspiracy theorists, extreme right wingers… on social networks, the international of anti-Semitism is having a field day. In general, France has recorded 1,040 anti-Semitic acts in less than a month, that is to say more than in all of 2022. Among these facts: insults, threats, but also attacks. No later than Friday, November 3, in Avignon, a young man who was wearing a cap and a kippah was insulted and shoved by a woman who then spat on his kippah which had fallen to the ground in the altercation.
Finally, we must talk about these expressions which do not necessarily enter into the count but which nevertheless cause concern because of what they convey. Like the amalgamation of Israel, “Zionists”, and/or Jews with Nazism. This effort to reverse the stigma is anything but trivial. Had the holocaust of 6 million Jews made anti-Semitism infrequent? Making them the reincarnation of the Führer himself makes the “position” possible again. Generally speaking, the distinction, once natural, between the political choices of the Israeli government, which can rightly cause outrage, and the fate of French Jews, is blurring more than ever. And since October 7, no call to demonstrate for a “ceasefire” and in “solidarity with the Palestinian people” has included the fight against anti-Semitism in its slogan.
Since the year 2000 and the second Intifada, the curve of anti-Semitism in France has systematically followed the surges in tension between Israel and Palestine. The phenomenon should encourage public officials to turn their tongue in their mouth seven times before speaking on the subject. Quite the opposite is happening. Jean-Luc Mélenchon now accuses BFM TV and Release of “lies” about the number of participants in a pro-Palestinian demonstration because of the identity of “their owner” (Patrick Drahi, former shareholder of L’Express, is no longer the owner of Release), whose Jewishness is no secret. Spoken to the far right, these words would have scandalized. Today they are greeted with a purr. This purr is a tragic event.