The role of institutions and public authorities: zooming in on the new faces of antisemitism - Part 3
“Connecting the two identities to live well”. What about the link between Jewishness and the French Republic? This third section on contemporary manifestations of antisemitism focuses on the role and weight of institutions and public authorities in France.
This article by Leïla Amar was originally published in French on Guiti News
Part 3
“Say it all, write it all”. Just a few months after the Paris court ordered Twitter to reveal the means of its online moderation, deemed far too casual and opaque by a myriad of French associations, the CEO of Tesla Motors and founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, is buying the social network for the princely sum of 44 billion dollars (41.8 billion euros), or the GDP of a country like Cameroon over one year, notes Numerama. For the magnate of electric cars and the conquest of space, this purchase would be motivated by an intention of total freedom of expression, objecting to a moderation that he considers too strict (having for example banned the former U.S. President Donald Trump).
“Free speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital public square where issues vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk says, without seeming to consider that it is through the same that hate speech travels at the speed of light from one corner of the globe to the other.
So, faced with online hate and more broadly with its expression in the public space, what can institutions do? For our third part of our long-read on the new faces of antisemitism in France, we have chosen to meet with various bodies. The Central Consistory of France, chaired by Maître Élie Korchia since 24 October 2021, is one of them.
The Consistory, which is chaired by Élie Korchia, also intends to address an atheist public that is “respectful of civic and republican values”. Photo credit: Rudy Waks.
The lawyer, who is a civil lawyer but also trained in criminal law, is well acquainted with the mechanisms of antisemitism, having been immersed in it by supporting the family of Samuel Sandler for many years during the trials of the Toulouse and Montauban killings (2012), which took place in 2017 and then in 2019, as well as of Zarie Sibony and Andréa Chamak, Hyper Cacher employees, during the trial last year of the January 2015 attacks.
So what about the mission of the Central Consistory? Created in 1808 by Napoleon, its aim is to administer worship throughout the country. More than 200 years later, it continues to federate and represent the various Jewish communities of the regional consistories (sixteen in number) and to oversee, together with the Chief Rabbi of France Haïm Korsia, the perpetuation of Judaism in France.
Since his arrival, Élie Korchia has added several thematic commissions to those already existing within the institution, including a commission dedicated to culture and interreligious dialogue, a sign that this subject has become key. Although initiatives have already been carried out in the past, the new board wishes to organise large cultural evenings centred on interreligious dialogue so that the different communities can get to know each other better, listen to each other and communicate; such events would even be open to an atheist public but respectful of civic and republican values, recalling the idea developed by the Coexister association that the "multi-belief" concept is more necessary than ever in the France of 2021.
From ordinary antisemitism to murderous antisemitism
For the president of the Consistory, there are two types of antisemitism. On the one hand, “ordinary” antisemitism, which has been long promoted by the extreme right and in recent years – against a backdrop of anti-Zionism – by certain extreme left-wing movements, and has become so commonplace that it eventually led to the murders of Ilan Halimi in 2006, Sarah Halimi in 2017 and Mireille Knoll in 2018. On the other hand, murderous antisemitism linked to a terrorist movement that has struck France, such as the attack on the Ozar Hatorah school (Toulouse) in March 2012 and then on the Hyper Cacher supermarket in January 2015.
“Clearly, 2012 was year zero of the new terrorism that killed French citizens who were targeted because of their profession or religion, namely soldiers and then a teacher with Jewish children in a school.”
Élie Korchia also regretted that the French public authorities did not become aware of the problem until too late in the late 1990s and during the 2000s.
“The Jewish community has been feeling fear and anxiety over the past 10 years, as have all French people, because of terrorism, but it is regrettable that there was no national awareness before the 2015 attacks, and that not everyone understood, as early as March 2012, that it was not only soldiers or Jewish children who were targeted, or journalists in 2015, but that all French people were in danger, as was sadly seen on the day the Bataclan and restaurant terraces in Paris were tragically targeted. He thus notes that awareness is too slow, or even that there is a denial at the level of the national education system, where, in the early 2000s, warnings began to be heard about growing antisemitism and the difficulty of teaching certain subjects in public schools – such as the Shoah – hence the growing number of children attending private Jewish schools. “At the time, some people had not considered certain truths that were apparent in the collective work published in 2002, "Les territoires perdus de la République" (The Lost Territories of the Republic), in which teachers from a public secondary school in the Paris suburbs explained how, little by little, sexism and antisemitism had dangerously gained ground. At the time, there was a certain denial of the antisemitism that was becoming seriously commonplace and of an anti-Zionism that was beginning to grow against the backdrop of the imported conflict from the Middle East; it was becoming more and more virulent and marked the turning point of what some have subsequently described as a new antisemitism,” explains Mr Korchia.
"It was outside the system that I really became aware of my Jewish identity".
“I was never a victim of anti-Semitism, but leaving your bubble suddenly like that is like leaving your mother's womb,” recalls Eyal, here at the piano.
Eyal, 25 years old, was born in the 12th arrondissement of Paris where he lived in a family that was half traditionalist and half religious. From the age of three, Eyal attended a Jewish school from which he was expelled at the age of 12, a year before his bar mitzvah, a pivotal event in the lives of young Jewish men. “I have never been a victim of antisemitism, but to leave your bubble suddenly like that, in which you feel comforted and safe, to join a public school, is like leaving your mother’s womb, a real jungle. There were only two Jews in the whole school, so we instinctively became close,” says Eyal. For him, this experience was most enriching thanks to the open-mindedness it brought him, unlike his former classmates, “it was outside the system that I really became aware of my Jewish identity.”
The young composer explains that problems can come from two different sources when growing up as a Jew in France: on the one hand, the closed-mindedness inherent in a communal Jewish environment that is closed off to anything that is not Jewish, and on the other hand, from people who simply do not like Jews. He admits that he has never spoken about his Jewishness to anyone, without having analysed it beforehand, as a sort of taboo.
“I don't think there is a binary or Manichean answer to the question of whether I feel more French or Jewish. It's like my right hand and my left hand.”
“The only time I experienced an incident with a colleague was several months ago during the bombings in Israel by Hamas. I had posted a story on social media and he decided to cut ties with me. But I associate this more with stupidity and political differences than with antisemitism.” Eyal, for whom being a French Jew is a single and inseparable identity, deplores the fact that French Jews know little about their history as Jews, French, and especially French Jews! “I don't think there is a binary or Manichean answer to the question of whether I feel more French or Jewish. It's like my right hand and my left hand. I'm right-handed so I use it more for my everyday life, that’s my centre of gravity, but I need both hands really when I'm playing music. I need equal mastery of both hands to create a rich performance, and it's the same with identity in my opinion: you have to connect your two identities to live well.” While for Eyal the question of French identity is not an issue, he nevertheless intends to live and settle in Israel one day, for reasons of safety as well as spirituality. “It's probably a fantasy because I know it's hard to live there, but after the attacks of 2015, I realise that things can get out of hand quickly, so for a country to open its arms to me as a Jew and guarantee my safety, ultimately I see it as my antibody, this country, my country, will know how to protect me.”
The complexity of legislating
At the end of 2019, Sylvain Maillard, an LREM deputy for the first district of Paris and president of the antisemitism group at the National Assembly, proposed a resolution to the National Assembly to redefine antisemitism, including anti-Zionism.
A resolution that was deeply contested. Some 127 “Jewish academics and intellectuals, from Israel and elsewhere”, as they defined themselves on the eve of the vote on this resolution, are fiercely opposed to it in an article published in Le Monde on December 2. What is the main issue for the signatories? The assimilation of anti-Zionism to antisemitism. “For the many Jews who consider themselves anti-Zionists, this amalgam is deeply offensive”, it asserts.
But in this resolution, the signatories also sees an interference of the State of Israel in French affairs. Thus, undermining the freedom of expression.
The collective also believes that the definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IRHA) - a group of experts and governments aiming to strengthen and promote education, remembrance work and research on the Holocaust - is “already being used to stigmatise and silence critics of the State of Israel, including human rights organisations (...)”.
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews that can manifest itself in hatred towards them. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism target Jewish and non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, community institutions and places of worship”. (...) “Antisemitism can manifest itself in attacks on the State of Israel when it is perceived as a Jewish community. However, criticising Israel like one would criticise any other state cannot be considered antisemitism. Antisemitism often consists of accusing Jews of conspiring against humanity and, in so doing, holding them responsible for ‘all the world's problems’.” (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance)
The controversial, so-called Maillard resolution was finally adopted on 3 December 2019.
While the number of antisemitic acts increased by 74% in 2021, considerable work remains to be done in terms of education, to deconstruct representations and clichés.
