NYT: "Can a Jew Love France?"
01/16/2018
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From the New York Times:

Can a Jew Love France?

By ALEXANDER ACIMAN JAN. 16, 2018

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

… But things are not so dreamy for Jews today in France. The country is struggling to maintain and protect its large Jewish population, the third largest in the world, which has been dwindling precipitously thanks to the wave of anti-Semitism that has gripped the country over the past decade. In 2015 — the year of the Charlie Hebdo attack — 8,000 Jews left France and headed for Israel. …

What hurts most about this realization is that it directly contradicts what Jews like me feel must also necessarily be true: France is our home, as if somewhere in the universe there is a real France, and the one in Europe is just a facsimile that keeps falling off the anti-Semitism wagon.

French-speaking Jews may have celebrated this year when Emmanuel Macron’s party, La République En Marche!, defeated the frighteningly far-right and anti-Semitic National Front, but this supposedly new France has done nothing to curb its Jewish problem. Every year in France Jewish storefronts are vandalized, including arson in kosher supermarkets this past week.

This attack was on the third anniversary of the Islamist attack on the kosher supermarket that followed the Islamist Charlie Hebdo massacre, so it’s pretty easy to guess whodunnit.
The general feeling of unrest is not unlike the one felt over 100 years ago during the Dreyfus Affair, when it became clear to many that Jewish life in France was ultimately unsustainable. For many, the situation has started feeling untenable again today. Anti-Semitism, as it turns out, is a flat circle.
Words not mentioned in this op-ed: “Muslim,” “Islam,” and “immigrant.”

Why do so many Jewish intellectuals consider it a wise strategy to ignore their people’s enemies and libel their people’s friends?

[Comment at Unz.com]
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