There are words that burn your lips. They seem unpronounceable. However, the reality is there, before our eyes. But we pretend not to see it. So, we invent circumlocutions. We use nebulous metaphors. We are calling for “calm”, to reduce “tensions”, to fight “hate”.
All this so as not to name anti-Semitism. Yes, good old anti-Semitism! What has happened in France and Quebec over the past five weeks, other than an explosion of anti-Semitic acts? The October 7 pogrom in Israel should have aroused a minimum of compassion in the world. On the contrary, he will have freed speech. France has 1,700 declared anti-Semitic acts. In Germany, it’s even much more. And what happened in Quebec, where Jewish schools were shot at?
And yet, the few who dare to name anti-Semitism with lip service immediately feel obliged to attenuate its meaning by referring it back to back to Islamophobia. Two realities that have nothing to do with each other. A bit like the school teacher who, instead of asking questions, sends two bickering children to think in a corner. She suspects that one is the aggressor and the other the attacked, but she doesn’t want to find out.
Anti-Semitism has always existed and finds its ontological basis both in the “deicide people” of Christians and the “disbeliever” and the dhimmi of Muslims. Which also led to the Shoah. Islamophobia is only a recent invention which often only serves to censor justified criticism of what, in Muslim religion and customs, offends our convictions. Whether we think of contempt for women, homophobia or the prohibition of apostasy, when what concerns personal piety generally does not pose a problem.
Even the extent of what could be described as anti-Muslim xenophobia, and which is therefore reprehensible, is incommensurate with anti-Semitism. Despite the horror of October 7, since then, only 131 anti-Muslim acts have been recorded in France. Throughout 2015, which was that of attacks against Charlie Hebdo, the Hyper Cacher, the Stade de France and the Bataclan, we could have expected a resurgence. In all, only 429 were counted. If we consider that there are a little more than 400,000 Jews in France, compared to 6 million Muslims, we arrive at figures which cannot even be compared. not.
It will be said that all this is linked to the obvious distress of the Palestinians. But what is special about this distress, compared to that of the Rohingyas and the Uighurs, who, although they also belong to the umma, do not arouse the shadow of such a start? The Palestinian cause is the only one that can reactivate the good old reflexes of anti-Semitism. The hatred of Israel offering as a bonus a patent of hatred of the West. An idea that is very popular today in our universities.
This is the whole point of this widely fantasized Islamophobia. By fearing it, we turned a blind eye to the anti-Semitic cancer. However, as the philosopher Élisabeth Badinter says in an interview with L‘Express, the old far-right anti-Semitism which had become a minority was hiding, while the new surfs on Islamism and young people in the suburbs. “We have let Islamism indoctrinate young minds who have been told, since childhood, that they will go to hell if they allow themselves to be seduced by our principles and values. »
It is therefore with the greatest candor that the imam of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Abdelali Mamoun, allowed himself to ask “where are these 1,200 anti-Semitic acts that there are in France? “. This denial is not new. In 2012, we quickly moved on to the anti-Semitism of Mohamed Merah, who shot dead a teacher and three children from the Otzar Hatorah Jewish school at point blank range. This 24-year-old Franco-Algerian, who grew up in the Mirail district of Toulouse, was immersed in an environment where anti-Semitism was pathological. “I am proud of what my son has just accomplished! » will say his mother. Exactly like this father who, on October 7, replied “God bless you!” » to his son who had just told him the good news: “Dad, I killed 10 Jews. »
In Nîmes, the imam of Beaucaire has just been sentenced for advocating terrorism. Five days after the Hamas attack, he wrote on social networks: “You will fight the Jews and have the upper hand over them so that the stone will say: O Muslim! Here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come kill him. » The imam found it quite natural to quote this text since it was taken from the hadiths, these collections of quotations attributed to Mohammed which, along with the Koran, form one of the theological bases of Islam. This is what we must be hearing these days in some of the 2,600 mosques in France.
It will not be enough to name anti-Semitism. We will still have to realize that its new version has nothing to do with the old one and that its main breeding ground has become Islamism. Otherwise, our virtuous speeches against “hate” will be of no use.
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