I saw this article and had to parse it:
French Jews' status falls as Muslims' rises
The status of the French Jewish community has declined in recent years in direct proportion to the rise in status of the Muslim community, the JPPPI report maintains.
[Some might say the history of the Crusades and the pogroms that went along with them shows that the status of Muslims and Jews rise and falls together.]
The authors say the outbreak of the 2001 intifada accelerated a process by which Islam was absolved by the media and political elites, while the Jewish community was stigmatized for supporting Israel. This process, begun under former president Francois Mitterrand in the 1980s, is ascribed to post-colonial guilt.
[Translation; hatred and suspicicion of Muslims is one the wane, Israeli apartheid is under attack, what is the problem: "Post-colonial guilt." For those new to hasbara, the Israelis think that their own colonial ways are self-evidently blameless, so they maintain that Europeans critical of their occupation must be feeling guilty about the old colonialism, which is why they are so oversensitive about the whole stealing-the-land-enslaving-the-natives thing.]
Criticism of Islam became politically incorrect and was redirected at Jews, who were accused of tribalism.
[I'm sure if French Muslims declared en masse their loyalty to a foreign state, that wouldn't raise eyebrows.]
The French hostages affair in Iraq that ended at the end of last year, marked a new high point in the Muslim community's move to the center of consensus and the Jewish community's ouster. The French Foreign Ministry took the unprecedented step of officially appealing to the heads of the Muslim community for help with obtaining the hostages' release - in contravention of France's policy of the separation of church and state. "It is hard to imagine that the Jewish community could expect similar political treatment," the report says.
[That's the big, threating sea change -- Muslims were asked to help with the hostage crisis.
If the Jewish community in France wants to mediate on behalf of their nation with murderous co-religionists threating innocents lives, I know where they can find Jews to meet that description.]
On the other hand, the report's authors point to the fierce campaign against anti-Semitism that French authorities have waged in the past two years as one of the factors responsible for the drop in anti-Semitic incidents in recent months.
[Apparently, "falling status" is accompied by a "fierce campaign against anti-Semitism." So, besides the zero-sum logic that if Muslims rise, Jews must be falling, where is the evidence of "falling status"? Read on.]
However, in the authors' view, anti-Semitism has taken on indirect forms of expression in France, the most striking example being last year's harsh responses to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's call to French Jews to move to Israel.
[Look upon it in all its glory; the "new anti-Semitism." A foreign leader says France's Jews aren't safe and should all move to Israel. The French are offended. That's the new anti-Semitism: fierce pride in the community's safety and anger at the thought they might need to leave. Truly, the face of the ancient evil.]
According to the JPPPI report, the affair revealed latent anti-Semitism among the French government elite, on the one hand, and criticism against Sharon by some members of the French Jewish community that exposed its shaky standing and unity, on the other. (Amiram Barkat)
[Because nothing says "shaky standing" like community leaders with the guts to stand up for their own nation and against those from abroad you claim to speak for them.]
[ 12 July 2005: Message edited by: rsfarrell ]
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posted 12 July 2005 06:48 PM
