Fear on Rise, Jews in France Weigh an Exit

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/world/europe/fear-on-rise-jews-in-france-weigh-an-exit.html

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PARIS — French Jews, already feeling under siege by anti-Semitism, say the trauma of the terrorist attacks last week has left them scared, angry, unsure of their future in France and increasingly willing to consider conflict-torn Israel as a safer refuge.

“It is a war here,” said Jacqueline Cohen, owner of an art store on Rue des Rosiers in a Jewish neighborhood lined with falafel and Judaica shops where many businesses were closed Monday morning. “After what happened, we feel safer in the center of Tel Aviv than we do here in the heart of Paris.”

“In Israel, there is an Iron Dome to protect us,” she added, referring to Israel’s antimissile defense system. “Here we feel vulnerable and exposed. We are afraid to send our children to school.”

Residents said their worry intensified after Friday’s terrorist attack, when a heavily armed Frenchman, Amedy Coulibaly, stormed the kosher Hyper Cacher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris. Four hostages were killed in that episode. So acute is the sense of insecurity among Jews that Serge Cwajgenbaum, secretary general of the European Jewish Congress, said the four supermarket victims were to be buried in Jerusalem on Tuesday, partly because of fears that their graves would be desecrated in France.

Mr. Cwajgenbaum said that the attack at the supermarket was a tipping point for French Jews after a recent spate of anti-Semitic attacks, including the tossing of firebombs and attacks on synagogues and shops in Jewish neighborhoods in Paris that coincided with Israel’s incursion in Gaza last summer. A French-born man was accused of gunning down four people at the Jewish museum in Brussels in May.

France was the largest source of Jews moving to Israel last year, according to the Jewish Agency for Israel, which coordinates migration to Israel. Its director, Natan Sharansky, predicted that up to 15,000 French Jews would emigrate this year, and that more than 50,000 French Jews would leave in the next few years. There are roughly 500,000 Jews in France, which has Europe’s largest Jewish population.

“There is enormous anxiety, a lot of anger and bitterness and a feeling that the Jewish community in France is under siege,” Mr. Cwajgenbaum said. “It has become evident that there is an internal war against the Jews being waged by Islamic radicals in this country, and people are very upset that the judicial system and the security apparatus were not able to thwart the attack.”

Even before this latest attack, many Jews were afraid after Mohammed Merah, a Frenchman with Algerian roots, killed seven people in 2012 in southern France, including three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in Toulouse.

In January 2013, Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, a comedian of French and West African heritage, had a series of his shows shut down by the French authorities. He had said it was a shame that a Jewish journalist had not been killed in the gas chambers. He has also drawn criticism for popularizing a gesture that strongly resembles a Nazi salute.

On his Facebook page after Sunday’s unity march, Mr. M’bala M’bala wrote: “As far as I am concerned, I feel I am Charlie Coulibaly,” alluding to the “I am Charlie” rallying cry that took hold after the terror attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The Paris prosecutor’s office said Monday that it was investigating to determine whether Mr. M’bala M’bala had promoted terrorism.

The French authorities said Monday that thousands of police officers and soldiers would be deployed to protect Jewish schools and other “sensitive sites,” in one of the country’s biggest peacetime security operations. In the Marais district of Paris, two soldiers wearing camouflage gear and holding guns were seen patrolling near a Jewish school.

French leaders, fearing the consequences of an exodus of Jews from France, have issued robust expressions of support. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Saturday that “France without Jews is not France.” President François Hollande, wearing a skullcap, joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at a commemoration event at the Grand Synagogue of Paris on Sunday. He had already deplored the attack as a horrific act of anti-Semitism.

But Jewish residents said the new security measures were not enough to restore frayed nerves. Some said they were already planning to pack their bags for Israel, urged on by Mr. Netanyahu, who told French Jews on Sunday that they would be welcomed with “open arms.”

On Monday, Mr. Netanyahu stopped by the targeted kosher supermarket and met with one of the rescued hostages. A large group of Jewish residents roared its applause and waved Israeli flags.

Mr. Netanyahu, like many Jews here, singled out Islamic terrorism as the biggest threat to Jews in France and beyond. “A direct line leads between the attacks of extremist Islam around the world to the attack that took place here at a kosher supermarket in the heart of Paris,” he said.

Nicolas Jalil, 26, a student who said he is Muslim, went Monday to the site of the supermarket attacks, he said, to show solidarity with Jews. He said the attack was an act by a fanatic, and that most French Muslims were appalled.

“What happened has nothing to do with Islam,” he said. But a nearby Jewish resident rejected that argument, and asked him why more Muslims had not come out to voice their disapproval.

Mr. Sharansky said the attacks in Paris had helped reinforce the deepest insecurity among French Jews since World War II. He said a record 7,000 French Jews emigrated to Israel from France in 2014 — the largest number since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 and the largest last year among global Jewery to make “aliyah,” the Hebrew word for immigration that means “to ascend.”

He said that 1,000 people had arrived by 1 p.m. at a Paris fair on emigration to Israel held at the agency on Sunday.

“It is not just because of one terrorist attack, but a series of attacks against Jews,” he said. “Already, rabbis have been telling people not to wear” their skullcaps on the streets.

While some critics have accused Mr. Netanyahu of exploiting a tragedy by encouraging French Jews to flock to Israel, Mr. Sharansky argued that Israel, as the Jewish state, had a moral imperative to offer safe refuge to Jews. He said that Israel was not seeking to use terrorism to encourage people to emigrate, as “terror is bad for Zionism, as it encourages Jews to be afraid and to assimilate.”

Many Jews in the crowd outside Hyper Cacher on Monday said their French identity existed proudly alongside their Jewish one, and complained that criticism of the Israeli government and its treatment of the Palestinians was being projected on Jews. They said that the recent passage by the French National Assembly of a nonbinding resolution recognizing a Palestinian state had fanned tensions.

Sylvain Zenouda, the vice president of a French organization that campaigns against anti-Semitism, was among the crowd gathered to meet Mr. Netanyahu. He said he was having flashbacks to the 1960s, when he and his family fled Morocco for France amid fears about violence against Jews.

“In the 1960s, we packed our bags overnight and fled,” said Mr. Zenouda, who has three children. “This time we will take our time and won’t flee in the night. But Jews will leave for Israel where we can feel safe.”

Among the victims of the attack at the supermarket was Yoav Hattab, 21, whom the newspaper Libération said was the son of the grand rabbi of Tunisia. He was studying marketing in Paris, and often went to the supermarket on Fridays to prepare for the Sabbath.

Myriam Hattab, Yoav Hattab’s cousin, said Yoav had been brimming with ambition and excitement to live and study in Paris, and that the family, who had come from Tunisia to Paris to mourn, no longer felt safe here. “I have always loved France, but when I see that there are terrorists who can commit such acts in the heart of the capital, I am afraid,” she said.

Some Jewish residents said that in recent days they had found themselves looking resentfully and fearfully at women wearing head scarves and at young Muslim men.

“I don’t feel fear,” Ms. Cohen said. “I feel hatred.” Yet, she said, for the time being, she will not leave France. “Leaving would be caving in to terrorism,” she said. “If we leave, the terrorists win.”