The Paralympics begin in Paris tomorrow but the feel-good factor generated in France by the Olympic Games at the start of the month has long since evaporated.
Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist mayor of Paris, was perhaps a little premature in declaring on August 7 that the success of the Games had ‘crushed the far-right’s message’.
That message, according to Hidalgo, is one of negativity and division, challenging the prevailing progressive view of France as a country of happy multiculturalism.
By far-right she meant the ten million plus people who had voted for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in July’s parliamentary elections. ‘Something incredibly positive is happening, and even good news, I think, for humanity,’ added Hidalgo.
Within days of Hidalgo’s remarks, two members of the French Olympic squad were suspended. One, sprinter Muhammad Abdallah Kounta, was accused of posting inflammatory statements described as ‘anti-white, anti-France and anti-Semitic’. (Kounta suggested his comments had been taken out of context and said, ‘I sincerely apologise if anyone felt offended. I am against genocides and any form of racism or injustice, and I don’t think I need to prove how much I love my country.’)
The other, long-distance runner Hugo Hay, allegedly made derogatory comments about Jews and Arabs. (Hay has apologised and said, ‘I am no longer the stupid teenager who made these abusive and hurtful remarks.’) Hay is well-known for his left-wing opinions and had earlier in the Games denounced Emmanuel Macron in an interview with the radical left newspaper L’Humanité.
There were also a couple of disturbing videos that went viral, one depicting a man in Montpellier suffering anti-Semitic abuse on the city’s public transport system, and the other depicting a man of African origin hurling abuse at a frightened Jewish family on the Paris metro. The tirade, which lasted a minute, included the reflection that ‘Hitler was right’. Another troubling aspect of the tirade was the indifference of the others passengers in the crowded carriage.
But then should one be surprised? This is France, after all, arguably the most anti-Semitic country in western Europe, as I have been chronicling for several years on Coffee House.
In 2018 I claimed that France is the most ‘dangerous European country for Jews’, noting that anti-Semitic attacks had increased that year by 74 per cent on 2017. I returned to the theme in January 2020 in an article entitled ‘‘How long until there are no Jews left in France’.
Since Hamas unleashed it barbarous attack on Israel ten months ago, anti-Semitic acts have rocketed by 200 per cent, according to figures announced this week by Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister. Included in the figures are two attempts to burn down synagogues.
The first was in May when police shot dead an Algerian man as he attempted to set fire to a synagogue in Rouen. The second happened on Saturday when a man wearing a keffiyeh and a Palestinian flag carried out a similar act in a suburb of Montpellier, igniting the building and blowing up two cars on the street outside.
There was the customary condemnation from all political parties, including President Emmanuel Macron and the man who is still filling in as Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal.
Their words did not go down well with many of the country’s Jewish community. Chief Rabbi Haïm Korsia bemoaned ‘tears that look more like crocodile tears than tears of compassion’.
He accused Jean-Luc Melenchon’s far-left La France Insoumise of fanning the flames of anti-Semitism, as did Simone Rodan Benzaquen, director of the American Jewish Committee in France and Europe. ‘I consider today that La France Insoumise [LFI] has structurally become an anti-Semitic party,’ she said.
Similar accusations were levelled at the party in June by Serge Klarsfeld, France’s most venerable Nazi hunter, who has dedicated his life to bringing to justice those responsible for the Holocaust.
A rising star in La France Insoumise is Rima Hassan. ‘Outside Western hegemonic thinking, no one considers October 7 an act of terrorism,’ she said recently, not long after allegedly attending a rally in Jordan which paid tribute to Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of Hamas assassinated last month in Tehran.
Asked who he would vote for if he had to choose between Melenchon and Marine Le Pen, Klarsfeld said the latter because in his opinion she has purged her party of her father’s anti-Semitism.
Days after that interview, Macron and his government were given a similar choice before the second round of the parliamentary election. In their case, however, they had a third option: to remain neutral. Instead, the government sided with LFI and the left, telling voters it was their ‘moral duty’ to prevent Le Pen’s party coming to power. Their alliance stretched to grubby agreements in which candidates dropped out in close contests to boost their chances of defeating the National Rally. Gérald Darmanin, for instance, might have lost his seat to the National Rally had not the LFI candidate stood down.
No wonder French Jews are frightened about the future. Do they even have a future in France given that a large swathe of the political class is aiding and abetting the terrifying resurgence of anti-Semitism? I’ll repeat the question I asked four years ago: how long until there are no Jews left in France?
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