The French socialist administration cannot afford to lose Muslim support.
« I am not aware that one single Jew on one single instance attacked one single mosque or Muslim place in France », Joel Mergui, the chairman of Consistoire (the National Union of French synagogues), remarked on i-Tele, a French TV channel, on July 31. On the same day, Liberation, a leftwing newspaper, was emphatically asking on its frontpage whether Ligue de Défense juive (LDJ), a group linked to the American and Israeli Jewish Defense League (JDL) should not be banned. Other liberal or leftwing media had been taking the same stand for days. According to them, the French Interior ministry « was about » to issue such a ban.
« People who behave against the law must be prosecuted, as long as conclusive evidence is gathered », Mergui elaborated. « However, one may wonder why only LDJ, a very small and peripheric Jewish selfdefence group, should be targeted ? Why not ban on the first place the organizers and sponsors of antisemitic demonstrations and those dozens of mosques which incite to anti-Jewish hatred and violence ? It the Jews that are under attack in France, not the opposite ».
On July 13, LDJ played an important role in the protection of the Don Isaac Abravanel synagogue on Roquette Street in Central Paris, when it was attacked by Muslim mobsters. It was soon rumored, however, that LDJ members had actually « provoked » Muslim activists on social networks. Videotapes pointing to alleged LDJ’s « violence » were posted.
Even as pro-Hamas and anti-Jewish violence soared in the ensuing days, culminating on July 20 in large scale pogrom-like violence in Sarcelles, a Northern suburb in Greater Paris, and no further incriminating evidence against LDJ was found, both senior officials at the Interior ministry and the liberal or leftwing media insisted that the Jewish organization should be « dissolved ». Pictures of individual LDJ members were circulated on social networks. On one occasion, an assistant to Justice minister Christiane Taubira privately retweeted them.
Many observers think that people in the socialist François Hollande administration or in the police upper echelon are interested in saying there was extremism on both sides, among « rogue Jews » as well as among Muslims. « It is the Hollande administration’s major conundrum », one pollster explained to The Jewish Chronicle. « President Hollande and premier Manuel Valls have expessed pro-Jewish and even pro-Israel views. But 86 % of the French Muslims voted for them in 2012 and were instrumental in their comparatively narrow victory – less than 2 % – over Nicolas Sarkozy. They have to retain the Muslim vote in order to survive politically ».
The fuss about LDJ seems to be part of a larger scheme to win back Muslim support. Another move was to have thirty three socialists members of the National Assembly and the European Parliament sponsor an authorized pro-Hamas demonstration, on July 23. Two days later, Le Monde, the distinguished leftwing newspaper, wrote flatteringly about the « #Gaza Generation ». Moreover, very few anti-Jewish mobsters were held by the police ; and those who were have been more often than not released for « lack of evidence ».
Simon Cohen, the LDJ’s spokesman, is confident that his organization « enjoys an unprecedented level of support among the Jewish community ». LDJ is said to count by now some five hundred members or sympathizers in the Greater Paris area. Smaller groups are burgeoning in Toulouse, Marseille, Nice, Lyons. All in all, about one thousand French Jewish youths may be involved. The LDJ’s website (www.liguededefensejuive.com) – which is well informed and completely free of racist rethorics – claims 75 000 visitors a day.
LDJ is not the only Jewish self-defence organization in France : there is also SPCJ (the Jewish Community Protection Service) which contribute to daily security at synagogues and other facilities. « We are political », Cohen says, « they are not. However we work closely together. There is no other option. »
© Michel Gurfinkiel & The Jewish Chronicle, 2014