Anti-semitism in France: ‘the Beast in the …unconscious’

Anti-Semitism in France was described here by a French Jewish communal leader as “the beast that is buried in the French collective unconscious.” But according to Bernard Attali, a leader of the Fonds Social Juif Unifie, this latent, insidious anti-Semitism is directed against the corporate body of French Jewry not against individual Jews.

Attali told several hundred delegates attending a plenary session on anti-Semitism during the course of the Council of Jewish Federations’ 49th General Assembly that anti-Semitism in France in the recent period is due to French politics in relation to Israel, the rebirth of an extremist ideology among French new right intellectuals which is garbed in the language of pseudo-science and metaphysical philosophy, and the economic crisis which requires a scapegoat.

“There is a link between economic crisis and anti-Semitism, “Attali said. “With inflation, unemployment and uncertainty, there is a search for scapegoats.”

Attali noted that it is simplistic to limit the cause of anti-Semitism to France’s critical policy toward Israel and its flirtation with the Palestine Liberation Organization. While French official policy toward Israel is based on being “oil-minded” and France is not supplying Israel with military

hardware as it did in the past, “Israel still benefits from the immense reservoir of French friendship,” he said. Attali stated that the French Jewish community is taking action to assure that this reservoir does not dry up.

THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC DISCUSSION

In addition to the anti-Semitism fostered by the economic situation and the new right, another factor is the proliferation of articles in the French press on the nature of Judaism, the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, Attali observed. This has had both positive and negative effects on the French psyche, he said.

Insofar as the issue of anti-Semitism is being publicly debated it constitutes what he termed a “therapy of truth.” It also exercises the dilemma on the part of French Jews as to whether public discussion helps to clarify the issue or provides an arena for the enemies of the Jewish people to insinuate their views with impunity, Attali said. Negatively, the ongoing public discussion has tended to reduce the issue of anti-Semitism to a “banality,” he noted.

The present state of mind of French Jewry is one of anxiety and determination, Attali said. However, he stressed. “If the terrorists of the Rue Copernic (synagogue bombing last month) wanted to marginalize us, isolate us, or ghettoize us, they failed” because there was an almost universal condemnation of the bombing in France as well as abroad.

he pointed out that diverse elements religious, trade union, socialist, communist and human rights organizations–drew closer to the Jewish community in their avowal that there must be no more Nazism. Attali said that these elements may have acted for egotistic reasons, to publicize their own views, but there was no question that the general feeling on the part of all these elements was that the defense of Jewish rights was at the same time a defense of human rights.

Nevertheless, Attali warned that “we are only at the beginnings of our trouble. We must prepare ourselves for new trials.”

ANTI-SEMITISM COMPARED TO HAVING THE FLU

Unfortunately, the panel discussion that followed was, in the main, an exercise in platitudes, generalizations, nonsequitors and banalities about the danger of anti-Semitism in the United States and abroad. The grossest pronunciamento on the issue of anti-Semitism was offered by Joel Ollander. Assistant Director of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council (NJCRAC).

When a delegate, during the discussion period, asked the panelists for their assessment of the Moral Majority and other theo-politicians and domestic ayatollahs, and expressed concern that while these elements appear to be pro-Israel but nevertheless seem to bear the potential for becoming focal points for organized anti-Semitism, Ollander observed that anti-Semitism in the United States “is like having the flu; it may be uncomfortable, there may be a fever, it may produce headaches, but not pneumonia” because American society “is basically healthy” and the role of Jews within the society has been established in positive ways.

The danger, Ollander said is whether the Moral Majority may try to impose its particular stringent ideology an American society and insist that its views are the only correct ones based on their reading of the Bible. Asked by another delegate what kind of flu shots American Jewry needs to avert the fever and headaches, Phil Boum, Associate National Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress, opined that as long as democracy is strong the likelihood of organized anti-Semitism is negligible.

CONVENTIONAL ANTI-SEMITISM DECLINING

Boum said it is “a grass error” to identify the Moral Majority with anti-Semitism. He noted that the Moral Majority and the Christian right do not represent “conventional anti-Semitism” and the historical context within which they function is not the same as that which gave rise to classical anti-Semitism and Nazism in this century.

Boum said the new form of anti-Semitism regards the rights of the individual Jew to be above reproach but regards the common rights of the Jewish people as a whole to be non-existent. The anti-Semitism of Hitler, which openly attacked Jews as individuals, is on the decline and is diminishing to a point that it no longer poses a serious threat to the Jewish people Boum said.

Milton Ellerin, Director of the Trends Analysis Division of the American Jewish Committee, said terrorism “has become a political fact of life around the world, and I don’t believe we’re immune to it here in the United States.” The best antidote to the rise of neo-Nazism “is to make democracy work,” he said. “In every aspect of your daily life, create a climate where this poison will not work.”

However, the night before, Rabbi Richard Hertz of Temple Beth-El in suburban Birmingham warned the opening plenary session that “we are experiencing it again–anti-Semitism is back again.”

RESOLUTION ON ANTI-SEMITISM

A resolution adopted by the Assembly stated that increasing anti-Semitic activity in the United States “must be vigorously combatted” but that acts of violence against Jews and Jewish institutions in the U.S. “have not been as flagrant or numerous as those recorded in Europe.” Noting that increasing anti-Semitic activity is “a cause of concern to the Jewish community,” the resolution nevertheless stated that this activity is “not linked to a coordinated anti-Semitic campaign.”

The resolution “share(d) the judgement of the NJCRAC Joint Program Plan of 1980-81 that most Americans continue to reject overt forms of anti-Semitic activity. We regard the social climate in our country as inhospitable to anti-Semitism and perceive no likelihood of its imminent eruption on any considerable level.”

The resolution did not refer to the resurgence of neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan activity in the U.S., nor did it refer to the upsurge in the activity of the Moral Majority, the Christian Voice, the Heritage Foundation and the National Conservative Political Action Committee, all of which played a role in targeting Congressmen they considered too liberal for defeat in the recent national elections and have drawn up “hit lists” of Congressmen they want to see defeated in the 1982 elections. Nor did the resolution even call for the need to monitor these organizations.

Referring to anti-Semitic activity in Europe, the resolution expressed solidarity with and support for the Jews in France and called upon the governments of the United States and Canada “to exert their influence upon the French government to insure the protection of the Jewish citizens of France.” The resolution called on all people concerned with a democratic and peaceful world to “take on unequivocal stand against terrorism and resurgent anti-Semitism.”