Is Paris Burning?  
Vichy-style Jew-hating surfaces in Western Europe. 
Jonathan Mark
January 4, 2002
  
It’s been suggested that the next “evil” country the 
United States ought to invade is France, a country that 
not only coddles terrorists but is undergoing its most 
blatant anti-Semitic free-fall since Vichy. 

The-other week, threats from French-Palestinians forced 
a Paris theater to cancel a special “Harry Potter” Chanukah 
screening for Jewish children. Just before Rosh HaShanah, 
200 Arabs attacked Jews on the Champs Elysees. In recent 
months there have been more than 40 firebombings of Jewish 
buildings in France. Officials from two separate Jewish 
organizations told Reuters (Dec. 14) the climate was “like 
before World War II,” and the French media reflects that. 

The atmosphere in London is less violent but as vulgar. 
According to one recent column in the Spectator, “since 
September 11 anti-Semitism and its open expression has become 
respectable at London dinner tables.” Barbara Amiel seconded 
that concern in the Daily Telegraph (Dec. 17). Amiel is the 
wife of Lord Conrad Black, the major proprietor of the group 
owning the Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post, among other 
papers. 

Despite her well-known appreciation for Israel, Amiel writes 
that an “ambassador of a major [European Union] country politely 
told a gathering at my home that the current troubles in the 
world were all because of ‘that shi-ty little country Israel. 
Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of 
those people?’ ” Another paper, not Amiel’s, later identified 
that ambassador as Daniel Bernard of France, who denied the 
crude word but not the essence of the conversation. 

Amiel adds that a private lunch last month, “the hostess — 
doyenne of London’s political salon scene — made a remark to 
the effect that she couldn’t stand Jews and everything happening 
to them was their own fault.” There seems to be no shame to 
saying that anymore. 

Amiel says the British press reflects the mood. After the bombings 
of early December, a columnist wrote in the Evening Standard: 
“Palestinians kill Israelis. Israelis kill Palestinians. Who killed 
first? No one remembers and it does not matter.” 

In Germany, Rudolf Augstein, publisher of Der Spiegel (Dec. 17), 
penned a column comparing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s policies 
to the miscalculations of Adolf Hitler, with Palestinians “continuously 
humiliated” since 1967. 

Augstein says the German media has been too constrained about Israel. 
When criticized, he looked to France for consolation: “In France 
one can say that, but apparently not in Germany.” 

Andrew Sullivan, writing in the Sunday Times of London (Dec. 20), 
says Israel “has become, among many European elites, the object of 
hate that dares not speak its name.... Not since the 1930s has 
such blithe hatred of Jews gained this much acceptability in 
world opinion.... Sixty years ago such hatred of Jews — unchallenged, 
appeased, excused, ignored — led directly to Auschwitz. Its 
prevalence now in the Middle East should remove any doubt about 
the morality of Israel’s self-defense in these perilous times and 
shame anyone who traffics in it. ... How much more do we need to 
know about the nature of Israel’s enemies to know whose side we 
should truly be on?” 

Whose side is Newsweek on? Of course, they’d say they’re objective, 
but consider: Newsweek (Dec. 17) offered a pair of timelines 
matching Arafat and Sharon. Arafat, we’re told, helped form the 
PLO in 1964, “a new umbrella group created to liberate Palestine.” 
No word of it being a terrorist group or that in 1964 the 
liberation of Palestine meant nothing less than the destruction 
of the Jewish state in its entirety. In 1964 there were no Jews 
on the West Bank, not a single Jewish settlement; liberation 
meant “pushing the Jews into the sea,” as Arafat and every Arab 
leader said at the time. 

We’re not told how many hundreds of Jews were killed by Arafat, 
the most prolific killer of Jews in the last half-century. 
Sharon, though, is the one noticed for his “ruthlessness,” 
his Lebanese invasion kills “2,000 Palestinians,” though 
we’re not told that it was other Arabs who did the killing and 
Sharon won two libel suits to prove it. If Sharon is responsible 
for that Lebanese atrocity then the U.S. joint chiefs of staff 
are responsible for every Northern Alliance atrocity in 
Afghanistan. 

The Newsweek timeline says Sharon, in 2000, “visits Al Aqsa 
Mosque, sparking the [intifadah].” In fact, he never visited, 
entered, or came near the mosque, but walked on sovereign Israel 
territory on the Temple Mount, a Jewish holy site, with the 
consent of the Israeli government which, in turn, said it 
consulted in advance with Arab authorities. There has been ample 
documentation that Arafat planned the intifadah prior to Sharon’s 
visit, according to the Palestinian Al-Ayyam (Dec. 6), and 
several Arab papers before that. This war is hardly a spontaneous 
reaction to Sharon’s walk. But Newsweek takes the easy way out, 
reporting the Palestinian spin rather than the facts. 

When Garrison Keillor says “It’s been a quiet week in Lake 
Woebegone,” we understand what he means by quiet. When Gideon 
Levy writes in Haaretz (Dec. 16), “The last wave of terror 
attacks [in early December] came after two relatively quiet 
months,” what does “quiet” mean? In those quiet months 28 Jews 
were murdered and 174 were injured. And in the two days since 
Arafat’s speech (Dec.16) condemning terrorism — 31 terrorist 
attacks in 48 hours, according to Israel, or one terrorist 
attack every 92 minutes. Yet, even the most devoted followers 
of Israeli news would be hard-pressed to tell you about even 
one of those attacks for the lack of the coverage. Anything 
less than the bloodiest suicide bombing has apparently become 
too ordinary to notice. Some of these attacks didn’t even get 
a brief mention. 

Nevertheless, a terrorist attack that didn’t happen — the 
alleged JDL plot to bomb a Los Angeles mosque — was major news 
around the world. A journalist watching in Berlin says she 
learned from CNN (Dec. 12) that the FBI arrested “two Jewish 
leaders,” when, of course, the two JDL thugs were unknown 
when not despised. This stands in contrast to the coverage of 
the World Trade Center attack, when viewers were reminded for 
days that the hijackers didn’t represent Islam. The JDL, 
though, are “Jewish leaders.” 

While most coverage of the JDL focused strictly on their 
vengeful attitude toward Arabs, the Times of London (Dec. 13), 
which picked up the story, was unique in understanding how the 
JDL was born out of something more beautiful, however distant 
that now seems: “Its aims are based on the principles of love 
of Jewry, dignity and pride, ‘iron’ discipline and unity, and 
faith in the indestructibility of the Jewish people ... to 
change the Jewish image through all necessary means — even 
strength, force and violence.” The New York Times (Dec. 16), 
on the other hand, focused on the “militant... anti-Arab 
teachings,” with no mention of the love or dignity which long 
ago became antique attributes within the JDL. 

It’s one thing, however mad, if Jewish vigilantes surface in 
Europe or the West Bank. The real question is why even a remnant 
of the JDL exists in the gentle embrace of an America that has 
offered Jews so much sympathy, love and dignity, in stark 
contrast to the rest of the world. n