« Psychology Today Prints Asher Abrams' Letter | Home | Warrior humor »
April 02, 2007
French Jewish Leaders: Whistling Dixie Past the Graveyard?
Our French landsmen are in a state of high dudgeon these days over two matters that struck me as a case of synchronicity. First, Jewsweek reported this charming item (emphasis added),
A French newspaper revealed over the weekend that some 1,000 apartment buildings in the Mediterranean city of Nice have maintained a decades-old municipal regulation barring Jews from becoming tenants.The regulation was put in place during World War II, when parts of France were cooperating and collaborating with their Nazi occupiers.
French Jewish leaders expressed outrage over the discovery, and demanded the regulations be revised immediately.
Immediately? What's the big rush?
Then, in an example of holding two contradictory thoughts in mind at one time, there came this item. According to the JTA, 7,000 French Jews signed a petition asking Congress for refugee status in the U.S. because of religious persecution.
"We believe that the United States, known for its traditional welcome to those under threat in their native lands, must open its doors to us," the petition says.French communal officials reacted with outrage. "This petition is bizarre, stupid and out of place," Haim Musicant, director of CRIF, the umbrella organization of secular French Jewish groups, told Israel's Ma'ariv newspaper. "I don't feel threatened in France, and the authorities are doing everything they can to protect the Jewish community. French Jews don't need this kind of petition."
7,000 sounds like a whole mess of nervous Jews to me.
Far be it from me to tell Haim Musicant what to say or contradict his experiences in la belle France, but does not the, um, unpleasantness in France in the 1940s regarding Jews suggest that Jews should get out when the getting is good? Are 7,000 French Jews suffering from a mass case of delusional psychosis? Do they have some kind of "persecution complex"?
Did Chaim Rumkowski feel threatened in the Lodz ghetto?
Well, I hope M. Musicant has an accurate view of the situation in France and is not, in that charming American regionalism, "whistling Dixie past the graveyard."
Van | 04/02/07 at 06:19 AM | Categories: - Antisemitism watch
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.keshertalk.com/cgi-bin/mtb.cgi/6408
Comments
France has a history of anti-Semitism that bubbles to the surface repeatedly. Mix in Muslim fanaticism (now homegrown in France) and you have a scary prospect for the future of French Jews ! M. Musicant needs to get a grip !
Give Haim Musicant a break. He is a highly visible figure as director of CRIF and no doubt pressure would be brought to bear not just on him but also his constituents.
He is in France and not the US.
Cynic ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.keshertalk.com/nav-commenters.gif)
| April 2, 2007 01:21 PM
Haim Musicant is secular. He has no sympathy with religious Jews in France who suffer persecution at the hands of the Muslim mob on a daily basis. He is the sort of accommodationist who would have tried to cooperate with Vichy France.
Siobhan | April 10, 2007 11:27 AM
