During the Second World War, French Jews were persecuted like never before. They lived in Paris and its suburbs for centuries, and were always left alone. They truly felt French… or, to be more precise (anyone who knows anything about Paris knows that the inhabitants consider themselves different from the rest of the country), Parisian.
Hitler and his Nazi scum couldn’t have cared less about any of that, however. They considered Jews to be subhuman and sent them to concentration camps where they were systematically slaughtered.
After the Americans, British and Canadians liberated France, Frenchmen discovered what had happened to their Jewish neighbors. They immediately made clear that they would never allow something like that to happen again. “Never again” became an international rallying cry.
Well, with “never” they apparently meant “until 2016“:
Jews who have lived peacefully in the suburbs of Paris are now having to move to other parts of the country or head for Israel to escape anti-Semitism.
When Alain Benhamou walked into his apartment near Paris in July 2015 and saw the words “dirty Jew” scrawled on the wall, he knew it was time to leave.
It was his second such break-in in less than three months and the 71-year-old no longer felt welcome in Bondy, a Parisian suburb he had called home for more than 40 years.
“Until the years 2000-2005, the town was nice and quiet, with 250 to 300 Jewish families and synagogues full on the Sabbath,” Benhamou says.
“Now, only about a hundred Jewish families remain.”
Benhamou is one of many Parisian Jews who have decided to move elsewhere, in his case to Villemomble, where there is a bigger Jewish community. Like other persecuted minorities, French Jews now find peace and security in numbers. Separated from other Jews, they are easy victims of the new anti-Semites who have taken over large parts of France’s big cities and especially its capital.
And guess what group is responsible for history repeating itself.
Jerome Fourquet of polling firm IFOP says the change started around 2000 following a fresh surge of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, known as the second intifada.
With France also home to Europe’s largest Muslim community, which counts around five million members, the bloodshed in the Middle East unleashed a wave of unrest, particularly in the Paris region which saw a surge in anti-Semitic acts and threats, he says.
Not a day goes by without some Muslim group crying about “Islamophobia” and pretending that bigotry against Muslims is the new antisemitism. The fact of the matter is that “Islamophobia” is virtually non-existent and — due to the mass immigration of Muslims — Jew hatred is rapidly making a comeback in Europe.
It’s shameful what’s happening in Europe right now, and what’s even worse is that European leaders don’t give anyone the impression they’re determined to stop this new wave of antisemitism. They’re simply too afraid to confront Muslim immigrants about their bigotry.
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