France is presently prey to one of the worst waves of anti-Semitism in its history ; this wave is not receding, rather, it is intensifying.
According to the annual report published by the Protection Service of the Jewish community, 2011 was a bad year; 2012 will be worse.
Since the killing of three children and a rabbi in the courtyard of a school in Toulouse on March 19 by Mohamed Merah, the number of attacks against Jews has exponentiated.
The vicious assault of three young Jews in Lyon on June 2 by a gang of ten men armed with hammers and iron bars was only the most visible and most obvious act among more than 150 other acts of the same kind in less than three months.
Since then, in just two weeks, dozens of new attacks have occurred. In one of them, an eighty-three year old woman was beaten, raped and left for dead in a Marseilles stairwell.
Most of the victims do not even go to the police: they know only too well that their complaint is likely to be dismissed. The police have orders: the risk of riots is in the mind of all those in authority. These orders are not transmitted in writing, of course ; their existence emerges when the police, angered by the role they are asked to play, organize protests. They are even more angry when they do their job and make arrests, only to see those arrested released by the judge even when the evidence provided is overwhelming. Judges also appear to have orders, also not transmitted in written form: some organize protests, others silently comply.
Those who were arrested may then seek revenge against those who complained -- who will be protected by nobody.
The situation has evolved as successive governments have accepted the existence and growth of no-go zones which are now effectively out of control.
The situation has also evolved as nearly all politicians, left and right, submit to the omnipresence of political correctness. To them, those who commit crimes are not really guilty, but are "victims of society."
Anti-racist organizations are always ready to mobilize against anti-Semitism, but they act and speak as if there were only one form: extreme-right anti-Semitism.
But as anti-Semitic crimes committed in France do not come from the extreme-right, but mostly from the Muslim community, these organizations remain blindly silent ; for them, Muslims are "victims of racism" and therefore cannot be racist.
As the mainstream media are also silent, Muslim anti-Semites feel free to act. And the more time passes, the more they feel free to act. When crimes are not followed by repercussions, criminals acquire a giddy sense of impunity.
Almost no one dare associate the words "Muslim" and "anti-Semite" in France anymore, and those who still do are immediately accused of "Islamophobia" and charged. A law that bears the name of a communist politician -- the "Gayssot law" -- states that any criticism of a religion is a form of discrimination, and criticism of Islam is generally considered to be much worse than discrimination against anything else.
When Muslim anti-Semites, knowing the demonization of Israel that reigns in the country, say they hate Jews because of what Israeli Jews do to "Palestinians," many journalists and "intellectuals" consider that excuse a mitigating circumstance, without even bothering to consider what the Palestinian leadership does to Palestinians -- such as stealing the funds sent to the Palestinian people by gullible Americans and Europeans, throwing Palestinian journalists and any other outspoken citizen in jail wholesale, teaching toddlers to be terrorists, and effectively rejecting all rule of law. And this is the leadership that would like its own state?
When Jewish schools had to be protected before the killings in Toulouse, those killings showed that security measures in place were not sufficient. Jewish shops and restaurants receive daily threats. Every week, windows are smashed or covered with insulting graffiti. Jewish radio stations dare not display their name on their studio doors. Jewish kids are spat upon in the streets.
French Jews feel very isolated and very vulnerable. They now know that simple things can be dangerous: wearing a skullcap in the street, going to the synagogue alone, placing a mezuzah on a door frame.
400,000 Jews live in France today, and the number is decreasing. Two thousand Jews leave the country every year; those who do not leave now know they have no future in France.
Six million Muslims live in France today, and their number is increasing. In addition to the risk of riots, the existence of no-go zones and the omnipresence of political correctness, politicians, left and right, know whom they must seduce, flatter, or appease to be elected.
Even if Nicolas Sarkozy usually complied with the "Arab policy of France," it did not help him: He was considered a "friend of the Jews".
Polls shows that France's new President, François Hollande received an overwhelming majority of Muslim votes, approximately 94%. On the evening of May 6, he was greeted at Place de la Bastille by a forest of flags of almost every country in the Muslim world. French flags were virtually invisible. Groups of veiled women were there, apparently happy. Any observable signs of Judaism would have been clearly inappropriate. Holding an Israeli flag would have been suicidal.
Although saying that France will soon be a country without Jews would be going too far, it is clear that daily life for Jews in France will become increasingly harsh and unbearable. This is what is happening in France today.
What is happening in France is happens almost every place in Europe: Jew hunting season is open in France and Europe. Even if the hunt lead to the horrors that stained Europe seventy years ago, it will not end any time soon.
An isolated hate crime is an isolated hate crime. But a hate crime followed by another hate crime is the beginning of a series.
When these crimes come in addition to hundreds of less-serious hate crimes, it indicates that this is more than a series. A noxious atmosphere is taking shape.
Dallas