Those Who Forget the Past (26 page)

In brief, had the
Times
been truly neutral in reporting on Hitler's war against the Jews, it would have done a newspaper's proper job of ferreting out the painful but necessary truth about Hitler's war against the West. And the same holds true today, when embarrassment over Jewish causes still governs
Times
coverage of the Middle East and elsewhere, resulting in the same betrayal of professional standards. Had the
Times
been truly neutral, and doing its proper job, it would have long since reported in copious detail on the unmistakable signs of growing Arab extremism, an extremism that erupted with spectacular force in the attacks on America of September 11. The reluctance to expose dangers to the Jews suppressed recognition of much that threatened, and still threatens, the West.

Not that the
Times
is alone in this submission to anti-Semitic regimes. The same pattern prevails everywhere today in the academic community, which if anything is even more sensitive than the press to questions of “access.” Scholars who work in politically controlled areas of research are rewarded for their sympathies and punished for their criticisms, sometimes in bizarre ways. A professor of ancient Middle East studies has told me that his German colleagues are embarrassed by Arabs in the places where they conduct research who congratulate them on what “they” did to the Jews; they dare not reveal their discomfort lest it prejudice their working relations with local personnel. More often, what begins as passive accommodation becomes active acquiescence. In American universities, the belief that Israel is to blame for the manifold failures of Arab society is by now such a corrupting feature of Middle East studies departments that it has assumed the status of a natural condition, like smog in Los Angeles.

Arab terrorism against Israel has exacerbated this situation without raising a peep from university administrations. Citing the difficulty of securing proper insurance coverage, Harvard recently followed the lead of other American universities in forbidding travel to Israel on Harvard funding. A longstanding archeological dig in Israel had to be abandoned this past summer, and students and faculty had to cancel programs of study and research—this, at the very moment when Harvard is promoting a new commitment to study abroad as a direct way of learning about the world.

Meanwhile, Jewish students attending American-sponsored Arabic programs in Arab countries have been instructed not to reveal their Jewishness and have been provided with false identities: a concession to Arab anti-Semitism that has neither been officially protested by any academic official nor brought to the attention of the American public. Thus do universities casually accede to policies of genocidal hatred, all the while proclaiming their dedication to multiculturalism, pluralism, and anti-discrimination.

What is it that, in the end, the record of anti-Semitism in Europe suggests? It suggests that the Jews are just the warm-up act to farther-reaching political ambitions. The ease with which Hitler was able to isolate the Jews, disenfranchise them, blackmail them, and begin persecuting them gave him the confidence to expand his conquests; he used the war against the Jews to encourage his followers to flex their muscles.

Anti-Semitism in this sense is not just a generic term for discrimination against Jews or even persecution of Jews. It is not just a means of scapegoating, though it is assuredly that. Nor is it merely a projection onto Jews of the desire to dominate, to “rule the world.” More precisely than any of these, modern anti-Semitism achieved its power as a political instrument through its opposition to liberal democracy itself—as personified by the Jews.

Wilhelm Marr created the League of Anti-Semites in the 1870s to save Germany from what the Jews represented. “We have among us,” he said, “a flexible, tenacious, intelligent, foreign tribe that knows how to bring abstract reality into play in many different ways.” By “abstract reality,” Marr meant everything the Jews could be made to stand for, summarized in the freedoms—religious, political, economic—that undergird modern democratic culture.

Marr's perception of the Jews as incarnations of modernity harnessed ancient prejudice to brand-new fears in societies that were in the process of losing their religious certainties and shedding many aspects of their traditional way of life, including the sense of security provided by autocratic rule. What some Europeans were certain was progress seemed to others a mortal danger, and politicians found that they scored well when they concretized those fears in the image of the ubiquitous Jews—a small, highly adaptive people with arguably the largest image on earth, a people desperately seeking acceptance and targetable at no political cost.

As the Jews were the practice range for anti-democratic and anti-liberal forces in pre-Hitler Europe, so in the second half of the twentieth century the state of Israel took the brunt of the Arab/Muslim war against Western democracy. But, unlike the Jews of Europe, the Jews of Israel toughened under the assault, at least initially. Having acquired the means of self-defense, the Jewish state seemed to grow stronger the more it was attacked. And for a long time, in a reverse dynamic to the process I have been describing, the democratic West as a whole reaped the benefit.

“We may never know how much time Israel bought for us in our decades of negligence,” writes William Bennett, how many American lives it saved by its long-kept refusal to negotiate with or capitulate to terrorist murder and extortion, its resolve to use every means to track down, confront, and undo those who captured and killed its citizens, its crystalline message of defiance. What we do know is that all over the world, especially in the Soviet gulag and in the prisons of Eastern Europe, captive men gulped great draughts of hope whenever word filtered through of an act of Israeli rescue and punishment: palpable and too rare signals in those dark decades [of the cold war] that evil was not everywhere triumphant, everywhere accommodated, everywhere appeased.

Bennett is surely right that, apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lopsided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.

Israel
had
to be gritty; otherwise it would not exist. Nevertheless, in the 1990s it too began to tire under the perpetual assault. In systematic and sustained terrorism, the Arabs discovered the first weapon that really works against a democracy, destroying the trust, the openness, of an open society, and exploiting its precious freedoms to expose its acute vulnerability. Here once again Israel has served as a test case. How well
can
democracies withstand this new form of all-out foreign aggression? We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews.

PART FIVE

THE FACTS ON THE GROUND IN FRANCE

MARIE BRENNER

France's Scarlet Letter

IT WOULD TAKE many months for David de Rothschild to realize that what was happening to Jews in France was a powerful predictor of a war that was coming down history's long stream. In May 2001, when he and a group of French business leaders arrived in Jerusalem for meetings with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and members of his Cabinet, he reluctantly agreed to speak to a reporter from the
Jerusalem Post
. Then fifty-eight and the head of the French branch of his family's banking dynasty, he was just beginning to be aware of a wave of attacks on French Jews by French Muslims that would escalate into an unimaginable nightmare and affect France, the United States, and the Muslim and Jewish populations of both countries.

Street protests against American and British military action in Iraq have escalated into attacks by Muslim youths on Jewish demonstrators, sparking fears of a new wave of anti-Semitism across France.

—London
Sunday Telegraph,
April 6, 2003

Rothschild was actively involved in Jewish organizations in France, but, as he told friends, he was not particularly
croyant,
or religious, by nature. In restaurants, however, if he overheard a conversation that struck him as anti-Semitic, he was known to walk over to the table and silently present his card. That day in Jerusalem, he did not yet comprehend how dangerous the situation in France had become. The facts were these: Between January and May 2001 there had been more than 300 attacks against Jews. From Marseille to Paris, synagogues had been destroyed, school buses stoned, children assaulted. Yet very few of the incidents had been reported in the French media, which have a distinctly pro-Palestinian tilt. So Rothschild was largely uninformed concerning the accurate numbers. He and his friends were still operating in a near vacuum, because of what is called in France
la barrière du silence,
which minimizes and mystifies reporting on French Jewish matters and the Middle East.

Rothschild would later be disturbed that he had not been made more aware faster of the degree of violence, which would be perceived outside France as the return of classic antiSemitism and anti-Americanism and would infect France and much of Europe over the next two years. By the spring of this year, the number of hate crimes had risen above 1,000, and the relationship of the United States, poised to declare a war on Iraq, and France, implacably opposed to such a war, was glacial.

ABOUT SIX MILLION Muslims live in France, nearly 10 percent of the population, a potential voting bloc. In contrast, there are only about 650,000 Jews, but it is the third-largest Jewish population in the world, after Israel and the United States. The victims of the attacks appeared to live mostly in working-class areas in the
banlieues,
or suburbs, on the outskirts of Paris, a laboratory of assimilation where much of the unemployed Muslim population also lives. The situation, Rothschild later told me, was fraught with complexity. In addition to a large number of distinguished Arab intellectuals, France was also home to cells of terrorists, fundamentalist imams, and firms with strong business ties to Baghdad. When Rothschild arrived in Israel in May 2001, he had also left behind him another, subtler struggle, going on behind closed doors, between the establishment Ashkenazi Jews of central Paris and the
pieds-noirs,
French citizens formerly of North Africa, many of them lower-middle-class Sephardic Jews who live in the suburbs. The Sephardic communities in the Paris outskirts were the principal targets of anti-Western paranoia spewing up out of the Middle East. A widely shared position of the upper-class Jewish establishment in France was to let such things alone and not
jeter de
l'huile sur le feu
(throw oil on the fire).

Rothschild and the Jewish intellectual establishment would be caught in the vise of a vicious debate at a time of intense political correctness in France. Their country was marginalized as a world power and owed billions of dollars by Iraq for the brisk trade between the two countries. In addition, before the 1991 Gulf War, France had been a major supplier of weapons to Iraq. Yet France trumpeted its moral superiority. By the time Rothschild saw the reporter from the
Jerusalem Post,
France was too busy “feeding the crocodile,” as one historian remarked, to notice the danger that lurked within. In May 2001, Rothschild was worried principally about the growing popularity of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right-wing candidate for president. Notoriously anti-Semitic—Hitler's gas chambers were a “minor detail” in World War II, he has said—Le Pen had won 15 percent of the vote in 1995 on an anti-foreigner hate platform, and was strong in the polls for the 2002 elections. Rothschild believed, he told the reporter in Jerusalem, that the wave of attacks was likely coming from “neo-Nazis, a hostile, aggressive, anti-Semitic, right-wing population, among which you may have some Moslems. But it's not being led by the Moslems.”

Rothschild was careful with his language. “The Moslems who have chosen France live there normally, not with the aim of doing any terrorist activity,” he said. “I promise you that in the last ten, fifteen years I haven't received any kind of anti-Semitic letter, any swastika, nothing like that. . . . Possibly because I am privileged, possibly because I live in a protected environment. . . . I personally do not feel anti-Semitism.” Within hours of its publication, his comment would rocket through E-mails in the working-class areas of Paris and be talked about in catastrophic terms, inflaming an oddball activist cop who had taken the plight of France's Jews as his mission. It was but one small piece of a dilemma that would grow imperceptibly into a cataclysm as America and France came to a stunning break in their relationship on the eve of the U.S.-led war with Iraq. Rothschild was still trying to analyze the mystery that had led to an international crisis when he spoke on the phone with me this past March. His voice rose as he said, “Who was inhibited to talk? Why did it take so long? Whose fault was it? What was the reason?” He concluded sadly, “These are questions that are hard to answer.”

I HAVE A STORY to tell. It begins on the northern outskirts of Paris in the town of Le Blanc–Mesnil in October 2000. Le Blanc–Mesnil is half a dozen stops on the Métro line from Charles de Gaulle Airport, a community of matchbox row houses with red tile roofs and cafés where the menu of falafel specialties is written in French and Arabic. It is inhabited by factory hands, accountants, teachers, and garment-industry workers. Along with Drancy, St.-Denis, and a cluster of other towns, Le Blanc–Mesnil is part of District 93, the “Red belt” historically governed by Communist mayors, where for years the underboil of ethnic hatred has been rumbling. Since the 1980s, thousands of Muslim immigrants have moved into the Red belt, a former outpost of French colonials and Sephardic Jews who had emigrated from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco decades earlier.

In October 2000, seven months before Rothschild visited Jerusalem, Sammy Ghozlan was home on Avenue Henri Barbusse in Le Blanc–Mesnil, planning the coming appearances of his dance bands. Ghozlan had just retired from the French police force after a long career as commissioner of the department of Seine–Saint-Denis. He was at the top of his game, known all over the Jewish community of Paris as
le poulet
casher,
the kosher chicken, “poulet,” like “flic,” being slang for “cop.” Ghozlan was a pied-noir reared in Algeria. His father had been a police officer in Constantine, a man of influence until suddenly one day he was not, and fled, like thousands of others, during the Algerian war. Sammy Ghozlan was obsessed with his Frenchness. He loved Voltaire and drank the best wines. Ghozlan's greatest passion was music; he had played piano and violin all his life, and had developed a Vegas-style Hasidic act into a thriving business, with two Sammy Ghozlan bands working the French Bar Mitzvah and wedding circuit. Ghozlan, as conductor, always wore a fresh tuxedo, a white satin scarf, and a perfectly pleated cummerbund. What little English he knew came from lip-synching to Wayne Newton and John Travolta. “I Will Survive” was his signature closer. He was deeply religious and would not pick up the telephone from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday.

EARLY IN HIS POLICE CAREER, Ghozlan had become a minor celebrity when he stopped the violence in the projects at Aulnay-sous-Bois, the next town over. He was like a detective in a film noir; his method was to negotiate, to suggest to his adversary that they were allies. He was convinced that success had come to him because he understood the nuances of the term
compte à régler
(a score to settle). For the exile, life in the banlieues was all about settling scores. Ghozlan had learned Arabic in Algeria and spoke it frequently in the streets so that he could put himself in the skin of the Arabs he had grown up with. “When the Arabs arrived in France, they were humiliated by the French,” he said. “They were not appreciated. They suffered a lot because of that. This is the reason for their rage. They want to take their revenge for the Algerian war.” It was, he said, a way to show their identity.

On the night of October 3, 2000, Ghozlan was already missing police work, but his wife, Monique, had lectured him about not second-guessing or dropping in on the new commissioner of Seine–Saint-Denis. It was time to move on, she told him; he had no reason not to. He was making 5,000 euros per Bar Mitzvah and had months of bookings in France and Switzerland. Besides, mandatory retirement was not negotiable in France. At fifty-eight he was ready to hit the Sephardic European party circuit in his new life as not only
le poulet casher
but also the schmoozer and magnet for neighborhood crime gossip. He felt he had earned a festive third act, and he had all the celebrity he needed with a weekly show on 94.8 Judaiques FM radio. There, in his four-room office and studio up a narrow stairwell in the Fifth Arrondissement, close to the Panthéon and the Sorbonne, he could let fly, showcasing Jewish pop stars such as Enrico Macias, promoting the Ghozlan bands, and dispensing crime-protection advice to callers.

THAT SAME NIGHT at a two-room synagogue in Villepinte, a few towns away from Le Blanc–Mesnil, smoke billowed up from the kitchen and out the classroom windows of the religious school. Jacques Grosslerner, a leader of the Jewish community, immediately reached out to the most experienced person he could think of—Ghozlan. “There is a fire at Villepinte,” Grosslerner told him. “Are you au courant?” It was ten o'clock. Ghozlan dialed the prefect of the district and repeated the question: “Are you au courant?” Then he got in his car and drove to Villepinte. The prefect reached Ghozlan on his cell phone. “It is nothing more than a trash fire,” he told him. At the synagogue an hour later, however, Ghozlan ran into a detective he knew who told him, “It is no trash fire. We found six Molotov cocktails.”

Ghozlan went right to work. He dug a plastic bag out of his car and swept up bits of charred wood, blackened brick, and ash. Within months he would be on a collision course with the French police and several members of the establishment in Paris who ran major Jewish organizations. In Le Blanc–Mesnil, with no resources to draw on except his black plastic address book, Ghozlan was quickly enmeshed in the rising tide of what French Jewish intellectuals would tag “soft-wave antiSemitism,” a new form disguised as anti-Americanism and pro-Palestinianism. It would soon grow into a constant fear on the part of French Jews, a concern bordering on panic in synagogues across suburban America, and forums and articles in the American media. In Europe, however, terms recalling the Nazi era, such as Kristallnacht, were raised only occasionally, and then in a context that portrayed the Israelis as the new storm troopers. The title of an editorial in the New York
Daily
News
was succinct: “The Poison's Back: Europeans Call It Anti-Zionism, but It's Really the Old Anti-Semitism.”

Ghozlan could not foresee any of this as he quietly gathered soot and brick from Villepinte in the moonlight. But for the first time since he had escaped Algeria as a teenager— “You have three days to leave,” an Algerian policeman had told his family—he was feeling an unease that bordered on dread. Over the next ten days, four more synagogues were burned in greater Paris, and nineteen arson attempts were reported against synagogues and Jewish homes and businesses. It occurred to Ghozlan that soon he might be back in police work. Within months he had set up a hot line and a one-man investigative unit called S.O.S. Truth and Security to monitor the trouble. He financed the operation with the money he made from the Ghozlan Hasidic bands.

ON THE AFTERNOON of October 7, 2000, Clément Weill-Raynal, a reporter and legal correspondent for the France 3 television network, was walking through the Place de la République when he saw hundreds of people massed for a demonstration. Paris is the city of demonstrations—there are so many that a caption in
The Economist
once satirized the French love of public display as “Another Day, Another Demo.” At first Weill-Raynal tried to ignore the noise, the agitation, and the flags of Hezbollah, Hamas, and certain far-left organizations. “They were shouting, ‘Death to the Jews! Kill the Jews! Sharon is a killer!' It was the moment when we had arrived at the point that I was afraid of for many years. The junction of leftists, pro-Palestinians, and Arabs had created a new form of anti-Semitism,” Weill-Raynal said.

Anti-Semitism in France had been considered a right-wing phenomenon that historically had its roots in the Vatican and the libel of the greedy Jew as Christ-killer. It had fueled the crowds howling “Death to the Jews!” in the streets near L'École Militaire during the Dreyfus Affair in 1895, and seethed through Vichy with the deportation of 76,000 French Jews to the death camps. The new form of anti-Semitism, Weill-Raynal understood, was different: it was coming from the left, part of the movement known in France as
le néo-gauchisme,
and it was connected to the country's socialist politics and the difficulties of assimilating the large French Muslim population. It was camouflaged as anti-Israel politics, but the issue was immense and complex. Only in recent years has France recognized ethnic subcultures. It is illegal to count race or ethnicity in its census figures, and impossible to record accurate figures for its minorities. There is a spirit of universality in the school system, and a national curriculum. The Jewish issue was a dim, secondary preoccupation if it registered at all in French minds.