Opening Up Old Wounds

Posted on by

The Paris attacks are like a bad storm that blows through and reveals a lot long forgotten items that were buried under the water. The people who put them under the water are not happy they have come to the surface. Everyone else is shocked by their existence and can’t be distracted from their sudden appearance. This is what jumps out  about this story.

Jews are fleeing terror-hit Paris because of growing anti-Semitism in France, one of Britain’s most influential Jewish journalists said today.

Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, spoke out after an Islamic terrorist took six people hostage and held them captive in a Kosher supermarket in the French capital.

This afternoon police ordered all shops in a famous Jewish neighborhood in central Paris to close.

The mayor’s office in Paris announced the closure of shops along the Rosiers street in Paris’ Marais neighborhood, in the heart of the tourist district and less than a mile away from the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo where 12 people were killed on Wednesday.

Hours before the Jewish Sabbath, the street is usually crowded with French Jews and tourists alike.

Mr Pollard said today’s terror attack in Paris, linked to the massacre at the office of Charlie Hebdo, will force more French Jews to flee the country.

Many are moving to Britain or to Israel, according to a report published in the newspaper last year.

He said the fact that a terrorist had chosen to target a Jewish store was no ‘fluke’.

In a series of tweets he said: ‘Every single French Jew I know has either left or is actively working out how to leave’.

‘So, it’s a fluke that the latest target is a kosher grocer, is it?

‘What’s going on in France – outrages that have been getting worse for years – put our antisemitism problems in perspective’.

The hostage situation in the Porte de Vincennes part of the city is ongoing today.

But amid fears the terror attack may be linked to anti-Semitism police have also demanded that shops on Rue des Rosiers, in the Jewish quarter of Paris, to close early ‘as a precaution’ in case of further violence.

18 months ago France had around 500,000 Jewish residents – the largest population in the EU – but this may now be below 400,000, Mr Pollard’s newspaper said.

In America, Jews are all over the place. There’s a tendency to think all the Jews are in New York City and Los Angeles, but that’s not the case. Maryland and Massachusetts, for example, are 4% Jewish, almost all of whom live in suburbs and exurbs. In Europe, Jews are still packed into cities. In France, almost all of their Jews live in Paris, making them an easy target for Muslims.
Despite the aftermath of you know who, continental Europe has maintained a mild antisemitism. It’s not official or overt, but it’s there if you look. The waves of Muslims invited in by French elites are now exposing that for the world to see. The Paris attacks not only highlighted the insane immigration policies; they have reminded the world that the French are still not all that fond of Jews.
The low countries have been struggling with the same problem. Jews have been chased out of some cities while the authorities stand aside, hoping no one will notice what is happening or maybe not caring. It’s reminiscent of the pogroms that erupted with the onset of the Black Plague in the 14th century.  Many Jews fled east to what is now Poland and the Ukraine.
This time around the plague sweeping north and east is the tide of Muslims invited in by European rulers, angry with their people for wanting to share in the bounty of modern life. The Jews of France are unlikely to flee west this time, despite Putin working hard to invite back the Jews who fled after the fall of the Soviet Union. Maybe this time the people will take it out on their rulers, instead of the Jews.

4 thoughts on “Opening Up Old Wounds”

  1. Jewish people are the Canary in the Coalmine for the West. The French Jews are smart to get out, and lucky that they have Israel to go to. Where will the millions of French go? Down with the ship. Based on French history and the fact that the West in general does not yet have the will to do the tough work of ejecting Moslems from our lands, I predict that in the end, France does nothing but post more policemen in their largest cities. If they somehow manage to remember the brutality they exercised during their Revolution, then they may save themselves yet. Sweden is already gone. At this point France could go either way.

  2. I doubt the French or Dutch or any other native European population is significantly more anti-Jewish (I don’t like “anti-Semitic,” with its faux-scholarly and at the same time evasive ring) than are North Americans. In decades no ordinary Claude’s or Knud’s or Gianni’s or Martin’s haven’t killed any Jews now, to the best of my knowledge (that excludes hard-core lefty terrorists of course, in the 70s and 80s, maybe even 90s).

    It’s over-overwhelmingly the resident Muslims who are responsible for anti-Jewish threats and acts in Europe these days. No amount of residual white French anti-Jewish attitudes, real or alleged, has ever led to anything remotely comparable to the present exodus phenomenon. Scandinavian Jews will be the next to follow suit.

    • I don’t think Putin means that in a bad way. Putin and Israel have been making nice and Putin has been trying to attract Jewish migration back to Russia. Gentiles think Jews are monolithic, but that’s not the case. Chabad and Reformed, for example, detest one another. Hasidim are doing OK under Putin: http://forward.com/articles/183459/russian-chief-rabbi-tells-jews-to-back-off-on-crit/?p=all

      My read on Putin’s embrace of the Chabad is that he sees them as a part of the larger Russian heritage. That and they are steadfastly opposed to Western Jewry as represented by The Weekly Standard crowd. Putin is a vastly more sophisticated guy when it comes to these issue than his Western counterparts. It’s why our media likes to paint him as Hitler.

Comments are closed.