YesOpposing the continuation of the war ravaging the Gaza Strip or worrying about the stagnation of Israel’s policies is not characteristic of a “community” or an “identity”, nor is it in itself an expression of anti-Semitism. You don’t have to be Arab to feel outraged by the massacre of civilians. Nor is being Jewish to be fundamentally attached to the existence of the State of Israel. In a country like France, which brings together the largest Jewish and Arab communities in Europe, an identification of the former with the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu and the latter with that of Hamas is not only false, but terribly dangerous. The events that occurred in Amsterdam during the football match between Maccabi-Tel Aviv and Ajax on November 7, marked by racist clashes provoked by Israeli fans and unbearable anti-Semitic attacks, sound a serious warning.
For Europeans, whatever the circumstances, the scenes of Jewish persecution in Anne Frank’s city cannot constitute an event like any other. But they cannot be analyzed independently of the ongoing war in the Middle East. Especially when the Israeli Prime Minister takes advantage of it to try to forget the anti-Arab slogans uttered in Amsterdam and describes“anti-Semites” attacks against his policies, as he has just done after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued, on Thursday, November 21, an arrest warrant against him.
“The fact is that many people in the world refuse to accept that Israel is returning Gaza (…) in the stone age »estimates Ehud Olmert, former Israeli prime minister, according to comments collected by the editorial writer of New York Times Thomas Friedman. Focusing on the ancient roots of anti-Semitism while ignoring the effect caused by images of devastation in Gaza, the latter comments, is “The most dangerous thing Jews around the world can do today”.
Multiple instrumentalizations
In France, it is especially necessary to take into account both the indignation sparked by the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths caused by the Israeli offensive and the fears related to the wave of anti-Semitic acts observed since the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023. It is also particularly complicated due to the multiple political manipulations to which the conflict is subject. While La France Insoumise (LFI) uses the tragedy of Gaza to flatter the electorate coming from North African immigration, the National Rally (RN) uses it in the opposite direction to stigmatize immigration and Islam, even to look at Jewish voters . We can imagine the horror that would constitute, in this context, a second round of the presidential elections between Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Especially since the manipulation not only concerns the war in the Middle East, but also anti-Semitism.
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