Opposition to the continuation of the war that is devastating Gaza, or concern about the impasse in Israeli policy, is not intrinsically linked to a “community” or “identity,” nor is it in itself an expression of anti-Semitism. You don’t have to be Arab to be outraged by the massacre of civilians, nor do you have to be Jewish to be fundamentally attached to the existence of the state of Israel. In a country like France, where Europe’s largest Jewish and Arab communities coexist, identifying the former with Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies and the latter with those of Hamas is both false and deeply dangerous. The events in Amsterdam during the November 7 football match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax, marked by racist clashes provoked by Israeli supporters and intolerable anti-Semitic attacks, are a stark warning.
For Europeans, whatever the circumstances, the scenes of Jew-hunting in Anne Frank’s hometown cannot be regarded as just another incident. However, these events cannot be analyzed in isolation from the ongoing war in the Middle East. This is especially true as the Israeli prime minister seized on them to divert attention from the anti-Arab slogans shouted in Amsterdam and calls critics of his policies “anti-Semitic,” as he did recently after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him on Thursday, November 21.
“The fact is, many people in the world are unable to acquiesce with Israel turning Gaza (…) into the Stone Age,” Ehud Olmert, former Israeli prime minister, told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Focusing solely on the ancient roots of anti-Semitism while ignoring the impact of the images of Gaza’s devastation, Friedman said, is “the most dangerous thing Jews everywhere could do today.”
Multiple manipulations
In France, it is particularly necessary to respond both to the outrage provoked by the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths due to the Israeli offensive and to the fears aroused by the wave of anti-Semitic acts observed since the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023. But above all, it is made difficult by the many political manipulations surrounding the conflict. While the radical left La France Insoumise (LFI) exploits the Gaza tragedy to appeal to voters from North African immigrant backgrounds, the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) uses it conversely to stigmatize immigration and Islam, even attempting to appeal to Jewish voters. Imagine the horror of a presidential run-off between Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon in this context. This manipulation is aimed not only at the war in the Middle East but also at anti-Semitism itself.
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