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Jean-Paul Fhima

France is my house. I shall not leave.

Already 7,000 Jews left France in 2014, twice more than the previous year. This programmed exodus, our country cannot be proud of it.

According to the report of the Department of protection of the Jewish community (SPCJ), created in agreement with the Ministry of the Interior in 1980 after the attack of the street Copernic, there is in France an antiJewish hatred “polymorph”. This one is not only a cyclical bound to the Arab-Israeli conflict, but also is structural, intrinsically stemming from the French society, as shown it with the Dieudonne affair and the demonstration ” « Jour de colère » (daytime of anger) on January 26th, 2014.

Yohav Hattab, Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen and François-Michel Saada, our fellow countrymen and brothers, died in the Hyper Cacher in Vincennes (near Paris) because they were Jewish. ” It is the most revolting deaths “, said Ségolène Royal, on January 13th of this year, in the cemetery of Givat-Shaul of Jerusalem, during their burial.

It is revolting and not the first time.
We are a shaken community.

Yohav Hattab, Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen and François-Michel SaadaYohan Cohen, Yohav Hattab, Philippe Braham, François-Michel Saada, killed because they were jewish.

On November 20th, 2003, a Parisian young person, Sébastien Sellam, is wildly murdered with fork and knife by his neighbor across the landing who says, after the facts, ” I killed a Jew, I shall go to heaven “.

In January, 2006, Ilan Halimi is tortured to death by the ” gang of the barbarians ” of Youssouf Fofana.

March 19th, 2012, the slaughter of the school Ozar Hatorah of Toulouse makes four victims among whom three children (Jonathan Sandler, his two sons and Myriam Monsonégo, girl of the director of the school). Mohamed Merah, the killer in the scooter, wanted ” to avenge the Palestinian children “.

On July 13th of this year in Paris and in its region, pro-Palestinian demonstrators shouted ” the Jews collusive in Israel “, ” to death the Jews ” and attacked synagogues not far from the street La Roquette, very close to the Place de la Bastille.

On December 1st, 2014, at noon, three hooded and gloved men, penetrate the apartment of a Jewish couple in the city of Créteil (south of Paris). The young man manages to escape and warns the help, but his fiancée is raped.

The shock, the fear and the trauma in a shaken, worried and bitter Jewish community follow one more time. Today, French people kill other French people.

A feeling of abandonment and rejection

” Kill the Jew ” is not any more a taboo in a number of our suburbs. It even became, let us say it openly, a rallying cry. In a report of “Further inquiry”, on France 2 TV, realized in Sarcelles in September, 2014, a young man expresses himself ” in open heart “:

” I have the rabies against the Jews (…) The Jews if we want, we kill them (…) Needs to tell the truth, they are not aggressive (…) Well, I want to light them all, all the Jews. ”

How the laic Republic, the one that I like and raised me, can let preach the call to the murder, on TV or in the street ? The National Office of vigilance against the anti-Semitism ( BNVCA) does not stop receiving complaints and alarmed calls describing every day a little more the daily humiliations, a lot of disdain, the gestures and the threats freed of any inhibition, the insults and the rude words.

” Harassments, incivilities, violence, this evil becomes commonplace (…) Often in unexpected spheres, in the bend of improbable alliances” (Eric de Rothschild, President of the SPCJ)

An irreversible course has been exceeded. A feeling of abandonment and rejection legitimately spread among the Jews of France. It seems to them that the implicit pact, which connected them for a long time to this country, came undone as damaged little by little in a kind of national amnesia.

I prefer to stay

The exodus is the solution for numerous Jewish French people who do not find any more their place in this society where the hatred settled down. For them, the secular pact of confidence and mutual respect broke. They felt the coming danger. Not the Republic, orphan of her own values of tolerance.

Nevertheless, the aliyah will not be massive. Israel cannot welcome everybody. A lot of us, as me, think that our future is in France.

Our country is deformed. We have to restore it a human face.

We have the right to do so, we have the duty of it. We are advocating Republic. We require to renew the link. We can, again, grow up together. If leave is not to choose, then I prefer to stay.

As an ordinary citizen, I look forward to restoring confidence in my country. An emergency collective was established in October 2014 by various Jewish associations which sounded the alarm bell as we announce an order of general mobilization.

” Let us mobilize “, I wrote myself :
” In front of the rise of the anti-Semitism in France, against the feeling of impunity which accompanies it, let us respond to the challenge in the face of the urgency! ” Yes, I must confess. I agree to fight. Better, I want it.

To react is not to leave.

On January 11, the Charlie day, I saw within the eyes and smiles, the helping hands and decided steps, a beautiful will to live together. I believe in it. I still believe in it.

Charlie Day

A sign ” I am Jewish, Charlie and French ” in front of the Hyper Cacher, on January 10th, 2015 (K. TRIBOUILLARD / AFP).

In Jerusalem, Ségolène Royal declared:

” The history created an indestructible relation between the Republic and the Jews of France … I know the justified concerns and fear which arouse such acts. But I want to repeat this with strength : every blow carried to a Jew is a blow carried to the French people. ”

Madame la ministre, I am ready to believe you with all my might. France is my house, nobody will throw me out.

We must unite in opposing all Merah, Nemmouche, Kouachi, Coulibaly, and all the others that we do not still know. We are going to fight their ideas, not to flee from them.

They want us to be dead, we shall stand.

 
 LE PLUS LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR, original article (french)

About the Author
Jean-Paul Fhima is an agrégé teacher of History and Geography. He specialized in History of Religions at Paris-IV Sorbonne, 1987. He also holds a post-graduate diploma in Education of the History of post-Soviet Russia. Fhima is also a columnist at Tribune Juive.