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Half of French People Adhere to Over 6 Antisemitic Prejudices, 12% Happy to See Jews Leave Country: Survey

Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

Hostility toward the Jewish people has surged to alarming levels in France, where half the population adhere to more than six antisemitic prejudices and nearly one in five young people want to see the departure of Jews from the country, according to a new survey.

Ipsos, a market research and consulting firm, conducted the survey of the French public for the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), the main representative body of French Jews, to examine the country’s attitudes toward the Jewish community amid a surge in antisemitic hate crimes over the past year.

The findings, unveiled by CRIF on Thursday and first reported by the French news magazine Le Point, revealed a surge in antisemitic attitudes across France.

Among France’s general population, 12 percent of people are happy to see Jews leave the country, up from just 6 percent in 2020, according to the survey.

“It’s a terrifying figure,” CRIF president Yonathan Arfi told the radio station Europe 1 when asked about the finding.

The number goes up among people under the age of 35, of whom a striking 17 percent think that the departure of Jews from France would be good for the country.

“It is contrary to the historical trend,” Arfi told Le Point. “Young people are more receptive to antisemitic, Islamist, and conspiracy theories, which are invading social networks.”

As for people aged 18 to 24, only 53 percent think that the majority of Jews are well integrated into the population, compared to 84 percent of French people more broadly, the survey found.

Overall, nearly half (46 percent) of French people today adhere to more than six anti-Jewish prejudices, compared to 37 percent in 2020, according to the results. Meanwhile, almost a quarter of those surveyed think that Jews are not really French like the rest of their countrymen, an uptick of more than six points.

The numbers increase among backers of France’s main far-left and far-right political parties. Indeed, the survey found that 52 percent of those who support the far-right Rassemblement National (RN — “National Rally”) and 55 percent of those who support the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI — “France Unbowed”) adhere to at least six antisemitic stereotypes. And a third of LFI supporters indicated they adhere to at least nine such prejudices.

LFI is the largest member of the New Popular Front (NFP), an anti-Israel leftist coalition of political parties that came to power in France’s snap parliamentary elections in July. The coalition gained the most seats of any political bloc but not enough for a majority. Its leader, Jean-Luc Melenchon, has been lambasted by French Jews as a threat to their community as well as those who support Israel.

“It seems France has no future for Jews,” Rabbi Moshe Sebbag of Paris’ Grand Synagogue told the Times of Israel following the ascension of the NFP in July’s elections. “We fear for the future of our children.”

According to the survey, 20 percent of LFI supporters consider the departure of Jews from France desirable, compared to 15 percent of those who back RN.

Similarly troubling, the results showed that 25 percent of LFI supporters have “sympathy” for Hamas, and 40 percent refuse to label the Palestinian Islamist group as a terrorist organization.

Hamas, which has been designated internationally as a terrorist group, launched the war in Gaza with its invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7. During the onslaught, Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people, mostly civilians, wounded thousands more, and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating rampant sexual violence, including torture and gang rape.

The survey noted that one in two French people now suspect their Jewish fellow citizens of “double allegiance” to Israel — a reality that Arfi blamed in part on LFI’s fierce anti-Israel opposition.

“LFI has given antisemitism a political endorsement,” he told Le Point. “We observe this toxic porosity between criticism of Israel and the ostracization of French Jews. The Palestinian cause becomes a license to hate.”

The findings also showed that, among the French people surveyed, 64 percent believe that Jews have reason to be afraid of living in France, and 70 percent believe that the country has experienced an increase in antisemitism.

The survey results came as France has experienced a record surge of antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’s atrocities last Oct. 7, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. Antisemitic outrages rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported — greater than the total number of incidents in France for the previous three years combined.

This year, anti-Jewish hate crimes and demonstrations in France have continued to skyrocket.

Earlier this month, for example, a monument honoring victims of the Nazis located in eastern France was vandalized with graffiti reading “Nique Israël,” or “F—k Israel” in English.

Last month, a man wearing a sports jersey with the words “Anti-Jew” written in French was photographed riding the Paris metro, prompting an investigation by law enforcement and outcry from Jewish leaders who lamented what they described as public indifference to surging antisemitism in France.

Days earlier, a visibly Jewish teenager was assaulted by two youths as he was leaving a metro station in the northwest suburbs of Paris.

That incident followed three men brutally attacking a Jewish woman at the entrance to her home in Paris on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities. The victim stated that the assailants threatened her with a box knife, made antisemitic threats, and mentioned the events of last Oct. 7.

In September, a kosher restaurant in Villeurbanne, near the eastern city of Lyon, was defaced with red paint and tagged with the message “Free Gaza.”

The incident came days after French police arrested a 33-year-old Algerian man suspected of trying to set a synagogue ablaze in the southern French city of la Grande-Motte.

Two months earlier, an elderly Jewish woman was attacked in a Paris suburb by two assailants who punched her in the face, pushed her to the ground, and kicked her while hurling antisemitic slurs, including “dirty Jew, this is what you deserve.”

In another egregious attack that garnered international headlines, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a different Paris suburb on June 15. The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack. In response to the incident, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “scourge of antisemitism” plaguing his country.

Around the same time in June, an Israeli family visiting Paris was denied service at a hotel after an attendant noticed their Israeli passports.

In May, French police shot dead a knife-wielding Algerian man who set fire to a synagogue and threatened law enforcement in the city of Rouen.

One month earlier, a Jewish woman was beaten and raped in a suburb of Paris as “vengeance for Palestine.”

Such incidents are part of an explosion of antisemitic outrages across France that has continued since last Oct. 7.

In August, then-French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin warned that incidents targeting the country’s Jewish community spiked by about 200 percent since Jan. 1.

“Two-thirds of anti-religious acts … are against Jews,” he added, according to French broadcaster BFM TV.

Darmanin’s comments followed him stating weeks earlier that antisemitic acts in France have tripled over the last year. In the first half of 2024, 887 such incidents were recorded, almost triple the 304 recorded in the same period last year, he said.

Despite widespread concern among French Jews, senior officials including Macron have repeatedly said they are committing to combating antisemitism and supporting the country’s Jewish community.

According to Arfi, a whole-of-government response is needed to combat the surge in antisemitism, which he largely attributed to people spreading misleading information about the Israel-Hamas war and blaming Jews worldwide for false allegations leveled against Israel.

“The hysteria of the debate on Gaza has blown the last barriers,” Arfi observed, adding that elected officials are making the Palestinian cause “an electoral business” and using it for “criminal instrumentalization.”

“We need a systemic response,” he concluded.

The post Half of French People Adhere to Over 6 Antisemitic Prejudices, 12% Happy to See Jews Leave Country: Survey first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Welcome to ‘Paddystine’

A man walks past graffiti reading ‘Victory to Palestine’ after Ireland has announced it will recognize a Palestinian state, in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay

JNS.orgThe other day, during a discussion with a colleague about the wave of pro-Hamas, antisemitic hysteria sweeping the Republic of Ireland, I unthinkingly quipped that the people of Eire should rename themselves “Paddystinians.” I immediately regretted doing so because the term “Paddy” is an aging pejorative, conjuring up images of Irish drunkenness, the supposed Irish proclivity for casual brawling, and ingrained Irish idiocy—stereotypes any decent person should reject.

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried.

A couple of days after that exchange, I discovered that the hashtag “#Paddystinian” was being eagerly adopted on social media by Irish supporters of Hamas. The accompanying posts were variously obnoxious or downright stupid, with many of those mocking the assertion that their country is antisemitic seemingly unaware of the immortal line spoken by a character in James Joyce’s Ulysses that Ireland “has the honor of being the only country which never persecuted the jews (sic)” because “she never let them in.” (There has, in fact, been a minuscule Jewish presence in Ireland for centuries, numbering the current president of Israel among its offspring, and there have been several episodes of antisemitism during that time, including the present, but Ireland is more or less an instance of the “antisemitism without Jews” phenomenon.)

One might say that Ireland is little different from the rest of Europe when it comes to the volume and the venom of its antisemitism: France, Germany and the United Kingdom, among others, are current examples of a similar trend. But Ireland stands out because of the role of its government in stoking these poisonous sentiments, as well as the fact that antisemitic depictions of Israel sit comfortably in its major political parties across the spectrum. That perhaps explains why Israel has closed its embassy in Dublin.

To my mind, the most grotesque offender in this regard is the Irish president, Michael Higgins. An 83-year-old poet who has carefully cultivated an avuncular image with his three-piece tweed suits and swept back, thinning white hair, Higgins’ high-handed manner is at its most infuriating when he articulates—as he has done on a few occasions since the Hamas atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—conspiracy theories about Israel that lean heavily on the theme of shadowy, unaccountable Jewish power. Earlier this year, for example, he blamed a covert Israeli intelligence operation for leaking his fawning letter of congratulations to the Iranian regime’s newly installed President Masoud Pezeshkian and was subsequently too pompous to issue an apology when it was pointed out that the Iranians themselves had publicized his message first. Then, last week, as he accepted the credentials of the new Palestinian ambassador in Dublin, he waxed lyrically about Israeli assaults on the sovereignty of three of its neighbors: Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, where the Israelis apparently “would like, in fact, actually to have a settlement.”

In Egypt? Given that Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, not even the most seasoned supporter of Hamas could find actual material evidence that this is Israel’s intention. Higgins had met with his Egyptian counterpart, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, earlier that week, and it’s quite possible that el-Sisi told him something along these lines or had referred to the dispute between Jerusalem and Cairo over the Philadelphi Corridor that runs along the border between Egypt and Gaza. Whatever the content of their conversation, what is absolutely clear is that Higgins has a disposition to believe the most outlandish lies about Israel and that he will respond to any criticism by saying that opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies is not the same as antisemitism—encouraging his audience to think that his beef is with Israel’s leadership and not the Jewish state itself.

But as Dana Erlich, Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, pointed out in a recent interview with an Irish broadcaster, Dublin’s goal has been to undermine Israel’s ability to defend itself by launching lawfare against the Jewish state to chip steadily away at its sovereign rights. Ireland is supporting South Africa’s false claim of Israeli genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to the point of seeking a redefinition of the term “genocide” in which to shoehorn Israel’s actions against the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah, and their Iranian backers. It has promoted anti-Israel measures both domestically and within the European Union. And it has either ignored or mocked the concern that its actions are encouraging the spread of antisemitism in Ireland, including the revival of racial tropes reminiscent of the Nazis.

Two fundamental questions remain. Firstly, why has Ireland adopted this stance? In part, as the Irish commentator John McGuirk recently pointed out, because Ireland is essentially peripheral in the calculations of geopolitics. “We have, for most of our existence, pretended that we can say or do what we like on the international stage because everybody loves us,” he wrote. “The truth is that we’ve been able to be liked because we are irrelevant. Nobody has ever had to choose between Ireland and a powerful ally.”

Even then, as McGuirk argued, this moral grandstanding against Israel has its limits. It was Israel that closed its embassy and not the other way around “because the Irish government knew full well that a formal break in diplomatic relations with Israel would send a signal to the US and the E.U., and Israel’s other powerful allies around the world, that Ireland is a fundamentally unreasonable place that cannot be trusted to be an honest broker when it comes to the world’s only Jewish state.”

Secondly, why the obsession with Israel alone? Not a peep has been heard from the Irish about the revelations coming out of Syria regarding former dictator Bashar Assad’s machinery of murder—something unseen, according to Stephen Rapp, the former U.S. envoy for war crimes—“since the Nazis.” According to my old friend, the Irish writer Eamann Mac Donnchada, both “narcissism,” emanating from Ireland’s belief that the Palestinian war against Israel is a mirror of Ireland’s own struggle against the British, and “ennui,” the lack of purpose that has accompanied Ireland’s growing economic prosperity in recent decades, are key factors here. “Adhesion to [the Palestinian] cause makes many Irish people feel great about themselves while running no physical or economic risks, and that’s what it’s really about,” he wrote.

How should the rest of the world respond, given that, to cite McGuirk again, “not one single thing that the Irish Government has done since Oct. 7, 2023 has impacted Israeli policy one way or another.” Israel, as the offended party, has done what it needs to do. Many Jews have reacted with disgust, but that probably won’t extend to anything more than the odd prohibition on Jameson’s whiskey being served at a synagogue kiddush or bar mitzvah.

As for the United States, traditionally a great friend of Ireland, relations will likely worsen under Donald Trump’s incoming administration because Trump and his team are convinced that Ireland—in the words of future Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick—“runs a trade surplus at our expense.” Israel has nothing to do with that battle. But because Lutnick is a Jew and a noted supporter of Israel, you can rest assured that voices inside and outside the Irish government will eventually draw a connection where none exists. That it’s all so predictable is probably the grimmest joke of all.

The post Welcome to ‘Paddystine’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Tradition or Tragedy?

An employee tends to a medical cannabis plants at Pharmocann, an Israeli medical cannabis company in northern Israel, Jan. 24, 2019. Photo: Reuters / Amir Cohen / File.

JNS.orgI am writing these lines from the United States, where I am nearing the end of my latest speaking tour. I’ve been to New York, Toronto, Detroit, Philadelphia, and now Miami.

Coming from South Africa, where we suffer one of the highest murder rates in the world—more than 70 people per day are killed throughout the country—I was nevertheless shocked by the most recent school shooting here in the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” In what is stated by CNN to be “the 83rd school shooting in the USA this year,”15-year-old Natalie Rupnow opened fire at a private Christian school in Madison, Wis., killing a fellow classmate and teacher, and then turned the gun on herself. Besides others who were wounded, two more students were today listed in critical condition.

What on earth would motivate a 15-year-old girl to shoot up her classmates? Where did she get a gun? Were her parents negligent? These and more are the questions Americans are asking themselves.

And in other news this week (I must sound like a news reporter), music megastar Sir Elton John, who was just named TIME magazine’s “Icon of the Year” had this to say about one of the current moral dilemmas still being hotly debated around the world: “Legalizing marijuana in the United States and Canada is one of the greatest mistakes of all time.”

The rock star, who was affected by addiction to cocaine and other drugs in the past, said that his own experience leads him to argue that marijuana is addictive and leads to other drug use. “And when you’re stoned—and I’ve been stoned—you don’t think normally.”

Quite a confession from one of the music legends of our time.

By now, you may be forgiven for wondering what on earth all of this has to do with my usual theme, the Torah portion. Well, this week in Vayeshev, Joseph is sold into slavery and, at age 17, finds himself down in Egypt working for Potiphar, the head of Pharaoh’s abattoirs and butcheries. Here is a youngster of high school age, far away from home, with no family, no support—no one to assist or guide him in life.

Quite remarkably, all on his own, he manages to stay afloat and goes on to succeed at everything he does. Furthermore, when the lady of the house tries to seduce him, he finds the inner strength to withstand temptation.

How did he do it? Day after day, she would beguile him, entice him, try to charm him. And then, when there was no one home and no one would ever know the difference, he still eludes her smooth talk and blandishments. No one knew his origins. He was a stranger in a foreign land; he had nothing to lose. And still, he stood his ground.

Elsewhere, I have written about the image of Joseph’s father, Jacob, which appeared to him at that critical moment, giving him strength and courage just as he felt himself starting to slip and succumb. Is it not extraordinary to see how powerful the influence of parents and grandparents on young minds and hearts can be! In the heat of the moment when most people lose their moral grip and stumble into sin, Joseph was able to keep his head and resist the seduction so many might have fantasized about.

I remember in my own youth struggling with personal life choices. One part of me wanted to be a journalist. But I couldn’t bear to disappoint my father and grandfather, who were devout and dedicated Chassidim, so I decided to give yeshivah a chance. The rest is history. I was inspired by Torah—specifically, by Chassidic philosophy, which answered so many of life’s questions.

The other day in Philadelphia visiting our children, I was able to spend some precious time learning Talmud with my two grandsons, Ari and Tzvi. They understood it well and made me proud. I pray that I can have the same positive influence on them that my grandfather had on me.

This Friday is the 19th of Kislev, which marks the liberation from the antisemitic imprisonment in czarist Russia of the founder of Chabad— Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi—back in 1798. His release and vindication also spelled the beginning of a much broader dissemination of the teachings of Chassidic philosophy throughout Europe.

And the Jewish world has never looked back. Today, a wide range of communities around the world will celebrate this day and are inspired to study his life-changing work—the Tanya—and other profound teachings of Chassidic philosophy.

I can’t help thinking that had young Natalie Rupnow and a younger Elton John had those same influences as Joseph did, or even as I did, they might never have fallen into tragedy and addiction.

We should be eternally grateful for our heritage, our family legacies and the teachings of Torah, both revealed and mystical, that have inspired us and kept us on track and in check throughout the generations.

The post Tradition or Tragedy? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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After Hezbollah Supply Lines Cut in Syria, Tehran Will ‘Reexamine Options’

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS

JNS.orgIran’s arms supply lines to Hezbollah via Syria have been severed by the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, leading to an unprecedented strategic setback for Tehran and its Lebanese terror proxy, according to observers in Israel.

Tal Beeri, head of Research at the Alma Center, which specializes in Israel’s security challenges in the northern arenas, told JNS on Monday that “we’re talking about a very, very significant blow to Hezbollah’s Iranian supply chain.

The first reason for this initial near-term assessment, he said, is that the Syrian territory once controlled by Assad served as Iran’s primary conduit for transporting weapons into Lebanon.

“Practically all the weapons for Hezbollah were funneled through this corridor,” which encompassed land routes, air routes through Syrian airports—possibly including the Russian airbase Khmeimim—and sea routes stretching from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas in Iran to northwest Syria, mainly the port of Banias, from where weapons would be delivered to inland depots.

“That’s how the Iranians moved goods to Lebanon. Meaning, effectively, the entry gate of Iranian weaponry on Syrian soil has been cut off,” said Beeri. “In the end, control throughout Syria is in the hands of the rebel factions and Kurds, who, by the way, dominate all of eastern Syria, including the land entry routes. So currently, it is not possible to transfer weapons to Hezbollah through Syria.”

The second factor, he added, is the large-scale air strikes conducted by the Israel Defense Forces, targeting the entire Syrian military and its weapons depots. This prevented “a last-minute quick transfer of relevant weapons into Hezbollah’s hands,” according to Beeri.

“For these two reasons, there is basically a nearly complete severing of the weapon oxygen line to Hezbollah,” he said.

However, Beeri cautioned that Iran and Hezbollah might yet adapt and adjust to the new situation. “I estimate they will recalculate and make new efforts … possibly by attempting direct shipments of weapons to Lebanon” by air or sea. Such efforts could see ships and planes travel to Lebanon from Iran via third-party countries to try and deceive Israeli intelligence,” he added.

In addition, said Beeri, “money trumps ideology.” The Iranians could try to establish connections with rebel factions by buying them out, thereby attempting to rebuild the weapons corridor.

Professor Boaz Ganor, president of Reichman University and founder of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, told JNS, “The biography of Ahmad al-Sharaa [aka Mohammed al-Julani, the leader of the largest rebel umbrella group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham] points to fundamental hostility toward Israel. His senior membership in Al Qaeda, close to [Abu Musab al-]Zarqawi and [Ayman al-]Zawahiri, could indicate the future trends of Syria under his rule.”

Ganor warned that “we must not let the seemingly pragmatic position he presents recently mislead the world or Israel.”

Addressing moves by Turkey to exploit the situation, Ganor added, “Syria will not be able to exist without the aid of another country or countries. Those countries will become the patron of the new regime, and there is no doubt that Iran will try to bridge past hostilities with the rebels and establish ties with al-Julani through generous economic aid, emphasizing an anti-Israel ideological common denominator and concealing the religious tensions between Sunni and Shi’ite.” (The Syrian rebel factions are mostly Sunni Muslims, whereas Iran is Shi’ite.)

Ganor noted that Iran could have back-door influence on Al Qaeda through the organization’s leader, Saif al-Adel, who sought and received asylum in Iran after U.S. forces entered Afghanistan.

“If al-Julani returns to his ideological roots in Al Qaeda, Iran’s influence on him could grow stronger,” said Ganor. That might enable the reestablishment of the weapons corridor if Iran and the new Syrian regime found common ground, he added.

On Dec. 13, Israel Hayom reported that Hezbollah’s Secretary General Naim Qassem had acknowledged publicly the impact of Assad’s collapse on the terror group, including the loss of military supply routes in Syria. However, he claimed Hezbollah would work around this and look for new ways to smuggle weapons into Lebanon.

The post After Hezbollah Supply Lines Cut in Syria, Tehran Will ‘Reexamine Options’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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