Following four days of nationwide hysteria and condemnations
by national leaders, France tried to restore equilibrium
after a young woman supposedly attacked by antisemitic Arabs
on a suburban commuter train admitted that she invented the
whole story. In his annual Bastille Day speech President
Chirac said the incident was distressing and the fabricator
must be punished, but he was not sorry over the denunciations
he and government ministers issued and the directives they
gave to fight antisemitism and racism even though it turned
out that the specific attack never took place.
"France is facing a period of increased racism and
antisemitism. People are harmed by it and this is
unacceptable and immoral. Therefore we must remain alert," he
said.
The young woman who fabricated the story, which journalists
said put them and the government to shame, spent Bastille Day
behind bars. Investigators say in her home they found the
marker she used to draw swastikas on herself and the scissors
she used to cut off her own hair. The swastikas appeared too
neat to have been drawn during the course of an attack, but
police recalled this detail once it was already too late. By
tapping her phone line they discovered that she had lied and
hadn't even been on the train.
Journalists blamed the government for failing to instruct the
police to corroborate the facts before issuing denunciatory
statements. The police publicized the story through the AFP
press agency without checking into the young woman's past
simply because of the sensationalism surrounding the story of
a non-Jew who claimed she had been attacked as a Jew.
Had a Jew claimed he or she was attacked in such a manner the
police would have checked painstakingly before publicizing
the story. Journalists and the police include the stabbing
attack of a yeshiva student at Epinee on the list of invented
antisemitic attacks, saying it was simply a criminal act by a
Muslim without any connection to hatred for Jews.
Le Monde apologized to the Muslim and African
communities in Parisian suburbs for writing that they "act
like Nazis." Organizations such as the Movement Against
Racism and For Friendship Amongst Peoples (MRAP) accused
France's Jewish organizations of defrauding state authorities
and taking advantage of the fictitious crime to strike out at
the Arabs in the suburbs.
CRIF Chairman Roger Cukierman expressed regret that public
opinion was misled, but said this does not diminish the
gravity of antisemitic attacks that have taken place
recently.
Larger Truth
In suburbs dominated by Arabs, residents say that even if the
story was invented it reflects the reality of daily life.
Among suburban Arab youths, attacking Jews and native French
non-Jews or shouting out antisemitic deprecations is in
fashion. They rob the French, but if the victim is a French
Jew they both rob him and beat him.
Dominic Chetruscanne, the representative from Sarcelles at
the French National Assembly, says it makes no difference
that the story proved false since it was certainly preceded
by 20 real attacks. The fictitious story at least
demonstrated what takes place in the dark realms of
France.
During the four days France was up in arms, French television
broadcast reports and passengers' testimonies on the hellish
train ride on the commuter line from Louvres via Sarcelles
and Garges to Gare du Nord and about daily life for Jews
living in Arab neighborhoods, where the atmosphere and
lexicon is Nazi-style antisemitism. Swastikas appear
everywhere and anti-Jewish expressions have worked their way
into day-to-day parlance. Experts say French Arabs are
obsessed with vengefulness as a reaction to their
oppression.
Nessira Sulimas, a lecturer at the University of North Paris
at St. Denis, says these Frenchmen of Arab descent inherited
a derisive tradition toward the Jews which is widespread in
both their families' Arabic culture and the tradition of
French antisemitism. Jews are denounced for having immunity
because of their suffering during the Holocaust while being
blamed for it at the same time.
Antisemitic speech is also heard in the Latin Quarter's North
African middle-class and intellectual circles. According to
one French writer, with Arab antisemitism so vile many wax
nostalgic for the 1930s antisemitism of writers like
Ferdinand Celine.
Bastille Day (July 14), the French Independence Day from
which all of France draws its universal values, provides the
government respite to once again delineate loyalty to the
values of equality and the unity of the republic. Today these
values are undergoing a trying period. The Arabs never
benefited much from equality. They were unable to assimilate
into French culture due to discrimination and the fears they
arouse and their own failure to adapt to Western society.
Two weeks ago in a series published in Le Figaro
called "What Does it Mean to Be French Today?," Pierre-Andre
Taguieff, an expert on French racism, claimed the French live
in a broken country consumed by antisemitism.
Chirac and other French leaders denounce antisemitism
sincerely but in an abstract way, without specifying the
source of the problem or altering the state's anti-Israeli
policy.
On the eve of Bastille Day the police intelligence division
also publicized information according to which 300
neighborhoods in France are turning into ghettos housing 1.8
million Arabs who live in an atmosphere of hatred toward the
French, antisemitism, violence, oppression, isolation from
French values and under the control of Islamic instigators
who deride the West. The pessimistic report said it is
already too late to halt the formation of these pseudo-
autonomous Arab enclaves.
Taguieff says France stirs up their already existing
antisemitic sentiments through its discriminatory attitude
toward Arabs. State television and radio as well as the
newspapers unilaterally demonize Israel and blame it for all
the trouble--including Arab antisemitism in France. French
television is also responsible for stirring rage among the
Arabs of the suburbs towards the Jews of France. The
government thinks it mollifies the hatred by sending the
Foreign Minister to visit Arafat when in fact this merely
stirs their wrath.
Arab television networks broadcast horrific images of
executions that incite them to violence. According to the
BBC, viewing Al Qaeda horror scenes is popular throughout the
Arab world.
"Over 200 Muslim preachers are more or less in control of 300
arrondissements," reads the intelligence report. "Their
propaganda wins them followers among the youth and closes
them off in an impoverished local version of Arab culture
expressed through a rejection of Western values. Instead they
construct a negative identity, an admixture of a brutal way
of life of power and violence in the arrondissements, where
the strongest and most brutal is the winner. The preachers
convince them they are victims of racist French
discrimination and fire up hatred toward the French."
In some of these neighborhoods all the schools teach only in
Arabic. A few of them have been closed by the State in an
attempt to stop the autonomy from developing. Sociologist
Didia Lafroni told Le Monde that the report
understates the severity of the problem. "Over one million
Arabs are shut in a ghetto devoid of all meaning."
"You shake hands like a Jew," boys say to one another.
"Nobody can lay a finger on a Jew," one suburban Arab
grumbles. With this powder keg in the backdrop one young
woman went to the police and spun a tale about an attack by a
band of Arab and African youths.
Harkening back to the France of yesteryear President Chirac
invited 6,000 diplomats, soldiers and regular citizens to a
dinner held at the Elysees on July 14th. After speaking about
the military parade on the Champs-Elysees he issued a call
for unity around the values of the Republic.
Meanwhile, in St. Denis, French Arabs were watching an Al
Jazeera broadcast of the execution of a Bulgarian hostage in
Iraq carried out by Al Qaeda.
