Je Suis Charlie, Je Suis Juif

Image by Boaz Guttman via Flickr

Amid Bennaim | Staff Writer

opinion@fiusm.com

Just a few days have passed since the horrific attack that left 12 dead and even more injured at one of France’s leading satirical publications. The world was united in anguish against a group of those who wish to silence the press. To most Westerners the idea of trying to oppress free press is a heinous crime which has no excuse. They attacked something that our society perceives as holly. That being said, they also attacked a Kosher supermarket.

Kashrut (or “Kosherness”) is the set of dietary laws that comes from the Old Testament (AKA the Torah) and which religious Jews abide by world wide. It is not very different from Halal, the Muslim set of dietary laws. The terrorists responsible for attacking free press are also responsible for taking hostages and killing people merely because they are Jewish. In France this is normal, and were it not for the attack on Charlie-Hebo the story of the attack on the kosher supermarket would likely have been ignored.

As hard as it might seem to understand this from the safety of the United States, the Jews in Europe are scared. As the growing Muslim population of Europe leads to social tension and the reemergence of ultra-nationalist parties in places like France, Greece and Sweden; it is the Jews of Europe that are being caught up in the cross-fire.

Part of the reason is that none of the ethnic or religious groups see the Jews as part of the normal population. To much of the French population, Jews are neither French, Christians or Muslims. Because of this, in the past ten years France has seen hundreds of attacks on Jewish targets. Just a few weeks ago a woman in the suburbs of Paris was raped “because she was Jewish”. Before that they killed a Jewish family in cold blood, and before that they firebombed two synagogues in Lyon. This does not take into account the daily insults and beatings that are not “news worthy”. All within less than 6 months.

The Jews in France are scared and they are fleeing in the face of what the Israeli exterior minister called the largest wave of anti-semitism since the Holocaust. While some French Jews have ended up in places like Miami, Toronto and New York; most are fleeing to Israel. The country is now home to thousands of French Jews who are too scared to stay in their home county.

While the authorities look the other way when there is violence against the Jews in France, it has fallen to the State of Israel to defend these people. It does this with the famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) Law of Return, which was passed in the early 1950s and ensures every Jew the right to immigrate to the State of Israel with automatic citizenship. The French Jews, understand the direness of the situation to the point that when Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu visited Paris in the wake of the Charlie-Hebo attack and spoke to the Jewish community inside the city’s main synagogue they chanted “help us Bibi “ and “only Israel can save us”.

Regardless of the role that the State of Israel plays in this, the Jews in France are terrified. For many years now all synagogues in France are on high alert, using secret doors and security systems that belong in Fort Knox. The situation has deteriorated to a point that young Jewish men have taken it upon themselves to train in the martial arts in order to protect their families and communities. However, they are not enough to protect one of the largest Jewish communities in the world. And as things stand now, the Jewish community in France is bound to disappear.