France is suddenly concerned about its Jews, just b/c there was a violent attack on them? How hypocritical. I can't help wondering what the response to the kosher shop attack would have been had it occurred in the white-hot political heat of last August. I'll bet a large swath of French society would have shrugged its shoulders and said: "Terrible and regrettable, but you reap what you sow. An eye for an eye. Score one for those poor Palestinian schoolkids today." Yes, a response like that would have been perfectly believable.
France is wondering why Jewish immigration to Israel is rising? WTF? Try looking in the mirror? Was NOBODY but Newsweek magazine (who did a cover story on this very subject) noting what was going on with Europe's Jews last August, when innocent ordinary Jews, all over the European continent, that had nothing whatsoever to do the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were getting the full brunt of abuse in many countries? Being treated as if *they* were the IDF? Such guilt by association doesn't happen to most foreign ethnic populations in most conflicts. I'll bet most people didn't bother to ask what side of the conflict those everyday Jews in the street were on, before they decided to hurl verbal abuse at them in the street, spray-paint the synagogues, damage their property, or (in the case of one sweet-looking little elderly Christian lady in a Scottish department store) refuse to give them customer service (before hurling time-honored anti-semetic slurs at them....the words were actually"you filthy murdering Jew" .) Banning them en masse from social events, theater shows, fund-raising charities etc. Making them feel like pariahs at the very least, and killing them or damaging their property at the most. Such extreme reactions are not born b/c you turned on the TV one day and saw awful things. It comes instead from something latent, something deep-rooted, something not easy to expel from the cultural memory.
And don't anyone try to deny these things happened or are still happening on such a grand scale, there is so much eyewitness testimony from Jews to whom these things have actually happened, in Jewish publications, far from global media outlets. I had a talk with a Jewish co-worker a couple months ago and there is a lot of fear. She said the climate for Jews over there is like the '30's right now. And this isn't your usual knee-jerk reaction to any blip of perceived persecution. It's a wave of fear on a whole 'nother scale, indeed the worst since the '30s.
If the Jews kill innocent Palestinians (in Europe's eyes, there no difference between an Israeli and a Europen Jew, apparently--all its domestic population might as well be IDF) then they deserve to be harassed. But when they're the victims of Muslim terrorists in Europe, they're all of a sudden objects of sympathy. It's a complicated situation, to say the least.
Either us or Germany will be next.
