Are French Jews Facing Their Most Dangerous Threat Since WWII?

Thomas Murray | May 31, 2016
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In Europe’s attempt to open its doors to people who are the victims of discrimination and war from abroad, they are inadvertently pushing their own out.

According to Francis Kalifat, the newest president of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France (the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, or CRIF), “French Jews are in the most difficult situation they have experienced since World War II.”

Widely considered to be the main representative political body of French Jews, the CRIF is doing everything it can to stop the rise of anti-Semitic violence in France.

According the a press release earlier this year from the Human Rights First Organization, anti-Semitic hate crimes in France have more than doubled between 2014 and 2015. Despite the fact that Jews make up only one percent of the French population, half of all hate crimes were directed toward them. These include such extreme acts as shooting up a kosher grocery store and breaking into Jewish homes.

In response, the number of French Jews that emigrated to Israel in 2014 was more than double the number that had left the year before, up about 350 percent from just five years earlier. This past year, a record 8,000 Jews emigrated to Israel to avoid persecution.

The mass Jewish exodus follows a massive surge in mostly-Muslim immigrants from war-torn Syria.

France, even after the Paris attacks, agreed to take 30,000 Syrian immigrants, raising the number they originally agreed to take earlier in the year. The mass migration brings the population of French Muslims up to almost 66 million, while the Jewish population is only about 500,000. This extremely large population is at the mercy of ISIS, who are using websites and social media to recruit local families who are most likely young and vulnerable to that type of extremism. This is already building on deep-seated prejudices against the Jewish race for almost as long as the religions have existed.   

In the wake of the Paris attacks, after which Syrian immigrants were linked to the bombing, many French people began to view all immigrants or foreigners as a possible threat, including those that had been living in their country for generations.

The Powers That Be in France are also not in a position to help their Jewish citizens. Prime Minister Manuel Valls, taking the risk that he might antagonize his Socialist Party base, can only do so much and still maintain his party's pro-Islamic platform.

It seems the same people who are welcoming foreign refugees into France are not doing enough to stop the harm to the local Jewish communities that the influx of immigration is causing. While doing all they can to help their foreign friends, France's commitment to the safety of its own citizens has been all but abandoned.

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