A 12-year-old Jewish girl was allegedly raped by boys who hurled anti-Semitic insults at her over the weekend, stoking tensions over France’s attitude towards Western Europe’s largest Jewish community.
Centrist President Emmanuel Macron’s decision this month to call snap elections shocked even his closest allies, responding by denouncing the “scourge of anti-Semitism” in French schools. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has urged politicians to “refuse to trivialize” hatred of Jews, a thinly veiled attack on ardently pro-Palestinian leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who spoke out in June 2 called anti-Semitism in France “residual”.
The government said that in the first three months of this year, there were more than 360 anti-Semitic incidents in France, an average of four per day, an increase of 300% over the same period last year. In a recent incident that shocked the nation, the three boys are said to have dragged the girl into an abandoned building where she was repeatedly raped and humiliated.
The three boys, ages 12 and 13, one of whom previously knew the girl, are being investigated for rape, death threats and insults “due to their religious affiliation with the victim,” a prosecutor’s statement on Wednesday said. contact, the situation becomes more serious.” Two of them have been held in pretrial detention, the statement added.
The place of Jews in French society has become a prominent theme in the election as the National Rally party, led by the once anti-Semitic Marine Le Pen, whose anti-immigration stance is central to its rapidly growing popularity, has become a one of the main political parties.
In contrast, France’s Indomitable Movement, led by Mélenchon, has always strongly condemned Israel’s military operations in Gaza as “genocide.”
Such denunciations often appear to be outright anti-Semitic, with Mr. Mélenchon accusing Jair Braun-Peevy, the head of the Jewish National Assembly, of “camping out in Tel Aviv and encouraging massacres” and describing former National Assembly president Elisabeth Born. The French Prime Minister, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, expressed a “foreign point of view”.
Mélenchon said on Wednesday he was “shocked by the rape” in Courbevoie, a suburb northwest of Paris that prosecutors say occurred.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Rally on Anti-Semitism, described the Holocaust as “a detail” of history, while Macron last week described the far left as “guilty of anti-Semitism” amid sudden pro-Israel sentiments As the country rallied for confrontation, French Jews and others faced painful choices.
Given Le Pen’s party’s history of anti-Semitism and its xenophobic determination to seek a ban on the public use of Muslim headscarves if elected, out of distaste for France’s Indomitus movement led by Mr Mélenchon, they are really Can you bring yourself to vote for Ms Le Pen’s party?
In many constituencies, the confrontation in the second round of voting on July 7 is likely to occur between two extreme parties. Many former centrist voters have grown tired of Mr Macron and no longer want to vote for him.
Serge Klarsfeld, a prominent Nazi hunter and prominent French Jew, said this week that if he were forced to choose between the two, his mind would be made up. “The nation rallies in support of the Jewish people, in support of the state of Israel, and considering my activities over the past 60 years, between anti-Semitic parties and pro-Semitic parties, it is normal that I would vote for the pro-Jews,” he said in Said in an interview with LCI TV.
Others think this is not “normal”. In 2022, Klarsfeld co-signed an article in Liberation titled “Say No to Le Pen, the Daughter of Racism and Anti-Semitism.” It’s a measure of how far the national rally has come in two years, as the party is on the brink of a possible win that could clinch the premiership.
An article published in Le Monde on Thursday by scholar Michèle Cohen-Halimi; Francis Cohen, writer; and film director Leopold von Verschuer )’s headline: “Serge Klarsfeld short-circuits history, turns it on its head.” It calls his “unexpected legalization of nationwide rallies” a betrayal of Nazi victims, his research reveals The horrific fate of Nazi victims.
Alain Finkielkraut, one of France’s best-known public intellectuals and august member of the Académie Française, wrote in the weekly Le Point that he faced an almost impossible choice. , this is his personal “nightmare”.
He argued that France’s Insurrection movement was based on “hatred of Israel” and quoted Aymeric Caron, a member of the left-wing New Popular Front alliance, as saying that Jews were inhumane.
On May 27, Mr. Kalon said on the social platform
Finkielkraut wrote that voting for a national rally to form a bulwark against anti-Semitism had long been unthinkable to him. “I have not done it yet, but if there is no other choice, maybe at some point I will have to do it. It would be a nightmare. The current situation is heartbreaking for French Jews.
The country rallied to take part in a major demonstration against anti-Semitism in Paris in November. Mr Macron did not. Neither did Mr. Mélenchon, who said “friends who supported the Holocaust unconditionally have met.”
The erosion of the centrist center in French politics, represented by Macron, has further intensified. Macron’s Ennahda Party was defeated by the National Rally in the European Parliament elections on June 9. The National Rally and the New Popular Front are likely to be the two major forces in the parliament on July 7.
France’s main Jewish organization, which represents many of France’s roughly 450,000 Jews, has rejected the sudden pro-Jewish sentiments of Ms Le Pen and her young protégé Jordan Bardella.
“There are alternatives to the confrontation between the anti-Semitic left and the nationalist, populist far right,” Yonathan Arfi, president of CRIF, an umbrella organization representing French Jews, told France Internationale on Thursday.
“We know from Jewish history the cost of populism; we know that no matter what the leaders of the national rally say today, it has never been a bulwark against anti-Semitism,” Mr Alfi added.
Raphaël Glucksmann, a moderate socialist who led a successful campaign in the European Parliament elections before joining the New Popular Front, angered many supporters who loathed Mr Mélenchon .
He added that “the outburst of anti-Semitic rhetoric, behavior and violence since October 7 must serve as a collective wake-up call.”
National rallies to weed out anti-Semitism appear to be well underway. The party had to withdraw its support this week for Joseph Martin, candidate for France’s Brittany constituency, after the party revealed that Joseph Martin had made a statement on social media in 2018 in which he said “natural gas was responsible for the explosion”. The victims got justice”. massacre. “
Aurelien Breeden Contributed reporting.
