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Antisemitism on the Rise: A First Person Account of Being a Jew in France
French President Emmanuel Macron at a ceremony in Paris to commemorate French victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel. Photo: Reuters/Gonzalo Fuentes
My friend, Marc, lives in a medium-sized city in France with a medium-sized Jewish community. He considers himself a “medium” Jew. He wears a Star of David necklace, but not a kippah. On Friday nights, his family gathers for Shabbat dinner and lights candles, but they watch TV afterwards. He goes to synagogue for bar and bat mitzvahs, but otherwise prefers to relax at home on Saturday mornings. He usually goes to Israel once a year for celebrations with family members who live in the north of the country — it’s a quick and inexpensive flight from France. He has two nephews and one niece serving in the Israeli military right now.
Since October 7, his life has changed because of antisemitism. Not “grab-the-suitcase” changed, but profoundly and pervasively changed.
Antisemitic incidents and terror attacks have plagued France for two decades, but it was different before. The antisemitism Marc knew was the horror of hearing about Islamist terrorists killing Jews at a Jewish school or at a kosher store. Attacks on the street seemed mostly to happen to Jews who lived in “bad” neighborhoods. Marc knew people who knew individuals who had been assaulted, but the worst his family had experienced was the time a car of young men drove in front of his synagogue and yelled, “F— the Jews.”
After October 7, Marc is no longer just a “medium” Jew. Now he’s a “stop-and-think” Jew.
Now he sees “Death to Zionists” graffiti on the street near his synagogue, which causes him to stop and think. He knows the synagogue is safe, because it’s protected by police and the Jewish community’s own security. But he’s heard about Jews in other cities who were assaulted on their way to synagogue, and he knows the police can’t be everywhere. He read that antisemitic incidents in France increased by 10 times from October through December. He stops and thinks: Is there a safer route to the synagogue, even if it’s a little longer?
Marc won’t take off his Star of David necklace. But before he leaves home, he stops to think whether he remembered to tuck it into his shirt. Why take the chance of having a total stranger yell at you that you’re a child killer?
Marc wonders what his acquaintances really think of him. He has been surprised to hear people accusing Israel of genocide, even in his presence, when they know he has family there and visits often. They don’t know his nephews and niece are in the IDF, and he would never mention that.
Spring break is coming up, and Marc stops and thinks about the decision to send his kids to university in France, not Israel. They have called several times to talk about their uneasiness when they hear calls for Israel’s destruction at the anti-Israel demonstrations on their campuses. His kids don’t fear for their safety, but they do worry for their people.
Only when he is in the company of other Jews at a Shabbat dinner, is he able to truly relax. He can let his guard down and not worry about any of the multiple ways antisemitism has permeated his life.
Marc stops and thinks about the article his friend recently sent. In December, the leaders of the Belgian Jewish community wrote an op-ed in a major Brussels paper, where they stated the choice before Europe’s Jews after October 7 was “between emigrating to Israel, a country without antisemitism but at war, or remaining in countries at peace but increasingly more hostile to Jews.” Not long ago, Marc read that immigration applications to Israel by French Jews were up 430%.
It is decision time for Marc. If he no longer stops to think, but decides to leave, that will signal the beginning of the end of mainstream Jewish life in Europe. The “medium” Jews like Marc make up the majority of those who affiliate with Jewish communities in Europe and sustain their institutions.
Many European leaders have said that Europe will not be Europe without its Jews. Now is the time for European governments to take decisive action against antisemitism to avoid that fate. They need to set a public tone of zero tolerance for antisemitism. They need to instruct police and prosecutors to enforce the laws. They need to take administrative actions available to them to ensure that Jews can live openly and freely as equal citizens.
Europe’s leaders need to stop and think, because after October 7, it’s decision time for Europe’s Jews.
Andrew Srulevitch is Director of European Affairs at the Anti-Defamation League.
The post Antisemitism on the Rise: A First Person Account of Being a Jew in France first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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