IS THERE A FUTURE FOR FRENCH JEWRY?

Is There a Future for French Jewry? - Shmuel Trigano
Contrary to much of what is said today about anti-Jewish sentiment in France, its roots are to be found not in any specific Israeli policy with respect to the Palestinians. Rather, they lie deep within the French body politic. Political Zionism was itself conceived in Paris. As a young reporter covering the Dreyfus Affair in 1894, Theodor Herzl saw clearly how untenable was the condition of the Jew in modern Europe. Although Jews have been citizens of France for two centuries, in much of today's France, association with the Jewish community has become a basis for exclusion, and Zionism an unforgivable sin. (Azure-Shalem Center)

SEE ALSO: French journalists defame Israel
Two reporters and the directors of the Le Monde newspaper were found guilty of racist defamation for an article about Israel.

The Versailles court of appeals ruled on an article that ran June 4, 2002, called “Israel-Palestine: The Cancer.” The court ordered the directors, Edgar Morin and Jean-Marie Colombani, as well as the two authors, to pay a symbolic one Euro in damages to a human-rights alliance and to Lawyers Without Borders, and ordered Le Monde to publish a condemnation of the article.

Two particular passages were cited for their racist character. The first reads, “One has trouble imagining that a nation of refugees, descendants of the people who have suffered the longest period of persecution in the history of humanity, who have suffered the worst possible scorn and humiliation, would be capable of transforming themselves, in two generations, into a dominating people, sure of themselves, and, with the exception of an admirable minority, into a scornful people finding satisfaction in humiliating others.”

The second incriminating citation reads, “The Jews, once subject to an unmerciful rule, now impose their unmerciful rule on the Palestinians.”