Concomitant with the minimization of antisemitic sentiment on the part of the French public, prominent public figures in France, including Lionel Jospin and the editors of Le Monde (4/8/02), are increasingly arguing that communautarisme is a greater threat than antisemitism itself. By communautarisme they mean ethnic solidarities and allegiances that threaten to override Republican unity. This concern is largely incomprehensible to Americans who have learned to embrace the realities of their multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society, but it is deeply rooted in French political culture, going at least as far back as Rousseau's suspicion of particular interests that undermined the general will. The effect of this concern, however, is, to some extent, to blame the Jews. The call is being made for Jews not to over-react for fear that they might at once regress into their own communal identities and strengthening that of the Muslim community. A number of Jews similarly fear that the appearance of communautarisme would itself strengthen antisemitism. Thus, when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced that French Jews "could find themselves in great danger," and encouraged them to make aliyah, the French Jewish community was horrified, seeing the statement as communautarisme and seeking to dissociate themselves from it. Likewise, the Jewish historian Esther Benbassa wrote to Le Monde (12/18/01) to denounce what she considers to be an over-reaction by Jewish leaders and to reject the dangerous "mirage" that there even is a Jewish community. "We are not victims," she declares. A Jewish adjunct mayor with the ironic name of Henri Israël attacked Jewish community leaders for encouraging the belief that Jews are guilty of a "sentiment of double allegiance, of double attachment" (Le Monde 1/16/02).

So, the conventional wisdom in France is: antisemitic attacks are merely thug violence, Muslim anti-Zionism is different, mainstream anti-Semitism is rare, and the real problem is communautarisme.

2.      Some non-official stories

There are a few in France who disagree. They argue that there is a growing strain of anti-Jewish hatred that bridges both the beurs and the general population. This hatred is difficult to isolate mainly because it operates under the guise of anti-Zionism, which has long been obligatory in politically correct circles and has been official policy since 1967. This longstanding French anti-Zionism is fundamentally a form of compensation for centuries of anti-Arab hatred: brutal colonization, Orientalist contempt for Arab culture, Catholic scorn for Islam, the Algerian war of 1954-1962 (featuring the highly publicized systematic use of assasination, torture, and gang rape), and since then a racism far worse than anything Jews have encountered in post-1945 France. For the last thirty five years, the French have been in contrition (even as it continues to sin), and Anti-Zionism is part of that phenomenon.

Yet the recent attacks in France have demonstrated the emergence of what commentators are describing as an "absolute" anti-Zionism. Besides denying Israel's right to exist, this ideology assumes the functions, forms, and imagery that have historically been the province of antisemitism. It substitutes an imaginary Israel endowed with fantastic attributes for the real thing, projecting a demonic abstraction that deligitimates and ultimately negates Israel, Israelis, and inevitably Jews. This virulent anti-Jewish hatred can be found, of course, among some in France's Muslim population. But of greater concern in the ongoing public debate is the rise of such hatred on the part of the French left.

To understand "absolute" anti-Zionism, it is useful to bear in mind historian Gavin Langmuir's helpful distinction between Christian anti-Judaism, which is a theological doctrine based on ostensible facts about the Jews (e.g., they rejected Christ) and antisemitism, which is a fantastic doctrine based on untruths (e.g., they drink blood). The same dichotomy applies here: anti-Zionism is ostensibly based on facts, antisemitism on fantasy. In the case of absolute anti-Zionism, we can clearly see how the two mix.

Last Spring, a delegation of activists left for Ramallah to wrap Palestinian President Yassir Arafat in a "human shield." The group included José Bové, perhaps best known to Americans as the farmer who vandalized a McDonalds in the late 1990s. (Bové was until recently the leader of the Confédération Paysanne, a farmers' group dedicated to fighting globalization and genetically modified crops.) Bové's published description of the scene in Arafat's candle-lit headquarters conveys all the devotion of a Renaissance Adoration of the Magi. Arafat is at once the baby Jesus and the virgin mother of the Palestinian nation. As for Israel, Bové compared the Israeli offensive to the Holocaust and later described it as "war of ethnic purification." Upon his return to Paris Bové made an intriguing allegation. Asked about the string of attacks on synagogues in France, Bové suggested they were the work of an Israeli conspiracy (Libération, 4/3/02). "One must wonder who profits from the crime. I denounce all acts aimed at religious sites. But I believe that the Israeli government and its secret services have an interest in creating a certain psychosis to make people believe that an antisemitic climate has taken hold in France in order to deflect attention."

[1]       [2]       3       [4]       [5]       [next->] Image: Jose Bove and Yasser Arafat (AP)