Tensions in Mideast hurting French Jews

CRETEIL, France -- The call came in the middle of the night. When Rahamim Oliel picked up the phone, he learned that the Ozar Hatorah school he directed -- the Jewish place of learning he had cherished for 28 years -- had been set ablaze.\nThat same night, vandals tried to deface the only synagogue in Creteil, a grim suburb just south of Paris where the city blocks are studded with cheerless, socialist-style apartment complexes.\nDespondent, Oliel, a small man who wears the black hat and long beard associated with conservative Jews, said he realized then that a climate of open anti-Semitism had returned to France some six decades after the Nazi horror.\n"I couldn't believe it when I came and found the fire roaring," he said, surveying severe damage to several classrooms at one of the school's two buildings. "I saw this school grow from 14 students when I came in 1973 to more than 1,100 students. So you can imagine what it did to me to see it on fire. I can't even begin to tell you how I feel."\nThe incidents in Creteil on the last day of 2001 were not isolated events. The vicious conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East has apparently had a startling spillover effect in France, where officials report a sharp rise in the number of attacks on Jewish schools, synagogues and rabbis.\nThe Jewish community has been shaken to its core by the violence, which Jewish leaders blame on France's burgeoning population of Arab immigrants from North Africa who are angry about Israel's harsh treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.\nAnti-Semitic acts in France were extremely rare during the 1990s -- a period of relative calm in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza -- but have become commonplace as Israeli-Palestinian violence has intensified with the breakdown of the Middle East peace process, figures from the National Human Rights Commission show.\nIn 1998, one serious anti-Semitic attack was reported in France; in 1999, there were nine such attacks. But in 2000, the commission reported, there were 116 serious acts of violence against Jewish institutions, almost all of them taking place after the Palestinian uprising began in October of that year.\nThis ripple effect can be felt in dozens of towns and cities where Jewish facilities have been hit by Molotov cocktails in the middle of the night.\nMost perpetrators have escaped. The case in Creteil is unusual only because three men -- an African from Mali, a French citizen of North African origin, and another Frenchman born in France -- were arrested at the scene.\nJewish schools have been burned in Marseille, the synagogue in Goussainville has been firebombed, along with many others, and Jewish-owned businesses have been defaced with racist graffiti in most major French cities.\nIn October, arsonists burned part of a Jewish elementary school in southern France and left graffiti that read "Death to the Jews" and "Bin Laden Will Conquer," slogans often found in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but rare in France.\nEven seemingly innocent events -- like the screening of the Harry Potter movie for Jewish schoolchildren as part of the Hanukkah celebration -- have provoked confrontations. The Paris movie theater that had planned to show the film canceled the screening after receiving threats, the manager said.\nSome Jewish leaders said the atmosphere is reminiscent of the period before the outbreak of World War II, when many Frenchmen started to discriminate against Jews because of social pressures to do so.\nEmmanuel Weintraub, a member of the executive board of the Representative Council of French Jewry, said the government wants the Jewish community "to be quiet" about the worsening problem. He said the judicial system is failing to take racist crimes seriously, encouraging young people to feel they can attack Jewish sites in France with impunity.\nHe said, for example, that the three young men convicted of attacking the synagogue in Creteil, and thought to be responsible for the arson at the school, were not required to serve time in prison because the crime was not classified as anti-Semitic. It was treated as a common street crime and the men received suspended sentences.\n"That means they got off completely," he said. \nThe violence has had a chilling effect on French Jews who are now reluctant to walk to their synagogues because they are often jostled or insulted, Weintraub said.\n"So far, thank God, there have been no fatalities, but if there is one, all hell will break loose," he said. "We have angry young men as well, and they will want revenge, and it will be an explosive situation."\nThe Jewish community is also upset by what is perceived as the French government's tolerance of anti-Semitism, as reflected by comments made in late December by France's ambassador to Great Britain, Daniel Bernard. He used a vulgar term to describe Israel and blamed Israelis for bringing the world close to a third world war.\nThe senior diplomat was not reprimanded or removed by the French government after the comments were published.\nThe Israeli government has announced plans to increase financial assistance to French Jews who want to move to Israel, and Jewish community leaders report a jump in the number of people considering emigration. Israeli officials say France has become the most anti-Semitic country in western Europe.\nNational leaders of the growing Muslim community, upset about the attacks, have advised the imams at hundreds of mosques throughout France to preach a message of tolerance and brotherhood as spelled out in the Koran.\nKechat Larbi, director of the Adda'wa mosque in Paris, said the conflicts between the Jewish and North African communities in France have been exaggerated by the French press. But he said that televised images of Palestinians suffering at the hands of Israelis have inflamed tensions and that a just solution to the Middle East crisis would calm the situation in France.\n"Events in the Middle East make people here angry," he said. "People get angry when they see on television what is going on there. We have to find a way to live harmoniously and in peace."\nThe French president, Jacques Chirac, said after the attacks in Creteil that "great attention" will be paid to any anti-Jewish crimes and that those responsible will be "punished as necessary."\nFrench officials have been trying to downplay the violence, suggesting that it is not anti-Semitic in nature but is part of a larger societal drift afflicting much of France, particularly the crowded, working-class suburbs where jobs and educational opportunities are scarce.\nBut this position is rejected by Jews who say that when Jewish children are attacked on a school bus it is an anti-Semitic act, said Serge Klarsfeld, France's foremost Nazi hunter.\n"The Jewish community is extremely worried," he said. "It is a shame that these anti-Jewish actions are coming back and the political world prefers to close its eyes."\nNonetheless, he said the situation is not comparable to the circumstances of the Nazi era because the new anti-Semitism is not coming from the extreme right wing of the French political spectrum but primarily from young Arabs who identify with Palestinians.\n"It's not the same," he said. "What we fear is that young people in the Islamic schools are learning from imams from the Arabic countries who propagate the hatred of Jews. It can be very seductive for them to fight against Jews."\nJewish community organizers say they feel betrayed by political leaders who seem to have weighed the electoral clout of France's 600,000 Jews against the potential power of roughly 6 million immigrants from North Africa and concluded that it is not necessary to win support among Jewish voters.\n"People feel abandoned," said Andre Benayoun, a lawyer who is president of the Jewish Community in Creteil and neighboring cities. "The politicians from both the right and the left don't react to repeated attacks. It could be because Arabs are more numerous than Jews and we are in an election period now. But we don't understand how politicians can sacrifice our long-term integration and loyalty for purely electoral reasons."\nDespite his revulsion at the attacks in Creteil, and what he believes is an overly tolerant response from the government, Benayoun said he does not believe France has become an anti-Semitic country.\nHe said the anti-Jewish sentiments are confined to a relatively small group -- a view buttressed by the large public rallies in support of French Jews that have been held after several prominent attacks.\n"The great majority of French society condemns this," he said.