France: Blaming anti-Semitic and jihadist violence on Israel

Shmuel Trigano writes @ New English Review: Paris - January 11: A Disturbing Event

Coulibali, a "child of the République"
and Jew-killer 

[...] Contrary to what pundits chose to see and celebrate, the universal compassion manifested at the rally had nothing to do with an ethical sublimation of feelings of vengeance. It was an expression of resignation, of the silent willingness to be exposed as martyrs to blows (in the future). The fact is that a “war” (to cite Valls) without clearly identified enemies has no chance of being won.

The least you can do when you’re attacked, if only for your mental health, is to identify your attacker. The problem is that, for 15 years now, France has been unable to do so. From an analytical strategic standpoint, refraining from identifying and understanding the aggressor’s motivation and logic is a failure that could have fatal consequences. Repeatedly, we have heard politicians and journalists acknowledging their lack of understanding (“How could Amedy Coulibali, a child of the République, have done this?" was the title of a January 14 broadcast on FR2). This failure directly impacts the capacity to fight against the danger and prevent an act of aggression from taking place. Instead, again and again we hear pathetic attempts to regard attacks, from Boston to Canberra, as crimes committed by mentally unstable individuals. Fifteen years went by between the start of the wave of acts of aggressions in France in 2000 and the moment after the recent attack that François Holland spoke of an “anti-Semitic act.” 

For fifteen years then, the French governing classes denied that there was a problem, preferring instead to perpetuate the myths of “inter-community tensions” and an “imported conflict” and to incessantly offer up sociologizing explanations. The same reasoning is still informing the government’s attitude. On the very morning of the rally, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, speaking on the French radio station RTL, blamed the anti-Semitic attacks on the conflict in the Middle East – a code word for Israel. Against this unrelenting mantra, recent attacks have demonstrated the real wellspring of anti-Semitism. It proceeds not only from Islamic and Quranic sources against non-Muslims – and this is clearly stated by the terrorists – but also from the silence of “moderate” Muslims, who have never (with rare exceptions) clearly and massively taken a stand or fought against anti-Semitism. It also feeds on the incapacity of the French state to integrate Islam by reforming it (as Judaism and Christianity were in the 19^th century in order to become part of the French nation-state) and to protect French Jews. To hide all this, at the very height of recent events, members of the French government could still be heard implicitly pointing an accusing finger at Israel (which they do systematically in their policies), seeing it as responsible for everything that’s happening.

“Je suis Charlie, je suis un flic, je suis juif”
The slogan that was repeatedly chanted at the rally, “Je suis Charlie, je suis un flic, je suis juif,” speaks volumes of another form of resignation, internal this time. If “I” am all these things at once – Charlie, policeman, and Jew – then I am no one in particular. This means that I cannot be identified, that I choose not to own who I am, and thus be able to face my attacker in order to win the fight. But when it comes to neutralizing the identity of the victims, the Jews pose a problem: to conform to the resigned frame of mind, Jews must not leave the role they play as silent consenting victims, and this is precisely what they would be doing were they to decide to leave the country. The movement of aliya was thus presented on many French TV stations as a betrayal, a blow to “national unity.” On January 15, for example, a report on the evening news on FR2 went out of its way to demonstrate that the Jews do not want to move to Israel, that they want to remain French. This attitude is of course intimately bound up with the media portrayal of Israel over the past 15 years, as the country that symbolizes military force and “occupation.” It is more convenient to celebrate Jews in the role of victims, as sacred symbols of the Republic (“An attack on a Jew is an attack on the République,” was the way former president Jacques Chirac put it). This is extremely worrisome because of the proximity between the sacred and the terrifying taboo, which sustain one another and can easily switch places. 


The “pas d’amalgame” syndrome
Once again, as following all recent attacks in the West, the “pas d’amalgame” syndrome was immediately reactivated. “Pas d’amalgame” can be translated as “let’s not blur distinction” or “let’s not conflate” or “lump together,” it being understood, though not expressly stated, that the object of this confusion is between terrorists and Muslims. [...]  Tarek Oubrou, Imam of Bordeaux and an adherent of the Muslim Brotherhood, invited to comment on the departure of Jews, declared that Muslims too were leaving France, in a very typical attitude that can be described as a form of symbolic ping-pong. Then there were calls to bestow the legion of Honor on “the Muslim [expressis verbis] Malian hero of the kosher supermarket.” Six days after the attack, the president himself stated that, “Muslims are the first victim of fanaticism, fundamentalism, and intolerance.” And, in response to the threats against Jews coming from fundamentalist mosques, the government extended security measures to mosques. The “pas d’amalgame” syndrome thus serves to position Muslims in the category of victims and collaterally stamp out any consideration of a specifically Islamic form of anti-Semitism.

The fact is that the blurring of distinctions is widespread amongst political leaders on the highest level (Cameron, Hollande, Obama, and others). After every attack they repeat the selfsame profession of faith, asserting urbi et orbi that the publicly stated reason for the attacks – namely, Islam – is being falsely cited by the assailants whose acts are actually “unrelated to Islam.” It is obvious to everyone, however, that Islam is the unique motivation of the attackers, a fact that is corroborated by the rapidity with which some new converts to Islam commit terrorist acts for which they had no grounds prior to their conversion. The blurring of distinctions is thus surreptitiously reproduced whenever political leaders speak of Islam as an absolute or of the betrayal by these Islamists of Muslims as a whole. Their very need to defend Muslims as a whole, when there is no reason why they should ALL be held accountable for the fundamentalists among them (even if the latter claim to be motivated by Islam), is a sign that at bottom they believe there’s a reason for suspicion.  More.

The “pas d’amalgame” syndrome thus dialectically comprises a collateral “confusion,” unacknowledged to be sure, that involves blaming anti-Semitic and jihadist violence on Israel, in this case in the person of Netanyahu. Journalists outdid one another in the excessive language they used to define the Israeli ministerial delegation at the rally, described alternately as far right wing, ultra-nationalist, etc. while they presented the Palestinians, of course, as innocent angels. This is one of the specific characteristics of the new anti-Semitism, one that has been amply documented, and in which the French media have been playing a very serious role. The accusation against Israel and Zionism in the new anti-Semitism was clearly stated already in 2001 by Hubert Védrine, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, when he declared that he “understood” the anti-Jewish acts of violence in the banlieues in light of “what Israel was doing to the Palestinians.” He reiterated the thought on January 11 on the French news network BFM, as did Laurent Fabius, as we have seen, the very same day. Indeed, this is standard discourse at the Quai d'Orsay, an expression of France’s “Arab policy,” and it has a direct structural impact on anti-Semitism in the country.  More.