Despite extremist violence, France'€™s Jews unlikely to be swayed

Even as France reeled under the shock of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, an associate of the Kouachi brothers named Amedy Coulibaly launched his own killing spree. On Thursday he killed a police officer, and then, the following day, left four people dead when he attacked a Jewish supermarket in Vincennes, southeast of Paris. For France’s Jews, it was another troubling instance of being targeted in violence fueled by grievances with which they have no direct connection.

Paris police immediately recognized the danger of further attacks, and warned Jewish-owned businesses to close on Rue des Rosiers, a street in Paris’s historically Jewish Marais neighborhood. And politicians stepped up to reiterate familiar positions, courting support from French Jews for their own agendas.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the supermarket attack, offering Israeli assistance and requesting enhanced security at Jewish sites in France. He also sought to link France’s fight against extremism with Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians — Israel was angered by France’s recent support at the United Nations Security Council for a resolution demanding an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories within three years. And other Israeli leaders called on French Jews to immigrate en masse to Israel.

Attempts by Israeli leaders to speak on behalf of France’s Jews have previously caused tension between Israel and the French Jewish community. In 2004, during a spike in anti-Semitic attacks in France, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urged French Jews to “immediately” move to Israel, prompting outcry from the French government and Jewish community leaders. Israeli officials countered that urging Jews all over the world to move to Israel was part of the country’s raison d’être. Modern political Zionism originated as a response to European anti-Semitism — indeed, the movement’s founder, Theodor Herzl, wrote in his diary that it was in Paris, while observing the anti-Semitic protests around the treason trial of Alfred Dreyfus (a French Jewish officer falsely convicted of treason) that he “recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to combat anti-Semitism” and concluded that Jews should leave Europe and create a state of their own.

Although more than 60 percent of the world’s Jewish population lives outside of Israel, the country continues to deem itself as their “national home” and as a matter of government policy to encourage Jews everywhere to move there — Israel’s “Law of Return” grants automatic citizenship to Jews who seek it.

Approximately half a million Jews live in France, the world’s third-largest Jewish community after the United States and Israel. Many French Jews express pride and primacy in their French identity, particularly those of North African descent who came to France seeking a respite from being victimized by a rising tide of Arab nationalism in response to conflicts with Israel after its founding.

Even as France has slowly begun reckoning with the deep-seated anti-Semitism of its past — King Charles VI expelled the country’s entire Jewish population in the 14^th century, and during World War II various French authorities collaborated with the Nazis  to send Jews to Auschwitz — attacks on Jews have been on the rise in recent years. That has prompted some to heed Israeli leaders’ calls: the 4,500 French Jews that emigrated to Israel last year marked a 25-year high, and Israeli officials expect that number to grow in 2015.

But whereas the earlier era of French anti-Semitism had been rooted in a right-wing Catholic tradition, more recent attacks have been fueled by anger in France’s Muslim communities over events in the Middle East. During Israel’s war in Gaza last summer, clashes broke out when members of the Jewish Defense League, a violent right-wing Zionist group banned in the United States and Israel, attacked pro-Palestinian protesters. Days later, however, Palestinian sympathizers attacked Jewish owned-businesses and a synagogue in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles, known as “Little Jerusalem.” Jewish leaders attributed the attacks to the situation in Gaza, and some expressed frustration that European Jewish communities were being put at risk by the reverberations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Jewish grocery are also grist to the mill of the anti-immigration politics of France’s National Front (FN) party, which has in recent years sought to boost its support among Jewish voters. That’s something of an innovation for a party rooted in traditionally anti-Semitic white, Catholic identity politics — Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party’s founder and father of its current leader, was found guilty of Holocaust denial in 2008, and his daughter publicly criticized him for anti-Semitism last year.

Even if the FN now courts Jewish support and directs campaigning largely against Muslim immigrants, the party faces a considerable obstacle in its own roots in a version of French identity that traditionally excluded Jews. Still, a September 2014 survey by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) revealed that, in 2012, 13.5 percent of French Jews had voted for the FN — a jump from just 4.4 percent in 2007. And amid increasing anti-Semitic sentiment, some wonder whether this far-rightward trend among French Jews would gain steam, particularly after Friday’s assault.

But the backlash against the Charlie Hebdo attack draws the French Jewish community into a wider mainstream revulsion at violent extremism that has focused on uniting the country around secular French values, and the mainstream political parties’ response to the attacks has excluded Le Pen’s party. 

The outpouring of sympathy and support to the victims of the attacks certainly means that many French Jews won’t be feeling isolated by the recent wave of violence, or that they need to move to Israel for their safety. It is worth noting that opinion polls show French Jews as being largely satisfied with the government’s response to anti-Semitism, and many of those who have left for Israel cite economic and cultural reasons for their decision. Israel, additionally, isn’t the only destination for Jews leaving France: A number have reportedly moved, instead, to Montreal.

The track record of recent years suggests that last week’s attacks are unlikely to sway France’s Jews in large numbers to change their thinking on emigrating or on voting for Le Pen. But France’s Jews are hardly a monolith. The community spans multiple political and ethnic identities. Some will likely take the attacks as reason to leave for Israel. Others will see them as confirmation that French Jews share a common fate with the rest of liberal, secular France.