ZGram - 1/12/2003 - "Jewish anxiety rising"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

January 12, 2003

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Today two articles on Jewish fear - one about France, the other about Canada:

[START]

Jews in France Fearful of Attacks

By Jocelyn Gecker
Associated Press Writer

Washington Post | January 11, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42730-2003Jan11.html

PARIS -- Jewish parents tell their sons not to wear yarmulkes. A rabbi is
stabbed. Elderly women are frisked before entering synagogues - just in
case.

As the stresses of being Jewish in France multiply, some feel it safer to
hide their religion. Others have decided the only solution is to pack up
and leave - more
than twice as many as a year earlier, according to statistics released last
week by the Jewish Agency.

The agency, which arranges immigration to Israel, said 2,326 of France's
600,000 Jews left. They were 6.7 percent of the total reaching Israel in
2002, the highest rate since 1972.

At that time French Jews flocked there full of pride at Israel's victory in
the 1967 Six Day War. Today, their reasons are different. In synagogues and
at Jewish gatherings, people say they are frightened by a rise in
anti-Semitic incidents. Though the government has loudly condemned the
attacks, many wonder if France's leaders are committed to fighting
anti-Semitism.

"In Israel, at least we know the government is on our side," said Stephanie
Ohana, a 34-year-old Parisian Jew, at a prayer service this week for her
rabbi, who was stabbed. "It's paradoxical, isn't it? But we have the
feeling we'd be safer in Israel."

French and international Jewish organizations say the number and gravity of
attacks in France has dropped since peaking last year.

The U.S.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center lifted its travel advisory of last
spring urging "extreme caution" for Jewish travelers to France, said Shimon
Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris.

But relations are tense between France's large Jewish and Muslim
communities, and many fear a war in Iraq will trigger renewed violence.

"The intifada is brewing in France," Samuels said, using the Palestinians'
word for their anti-Israel uprising. "The question of an American
engagement in Iraq
hangs over us like a sword of Damocles."

The Israeli government links the immigration surge primarily to the rise in
attacks, said Arik Puder, spokesman for Israel's immigration ministry.

France has been stunned by last Friday's knifing of Rabbi Gabriel Farhi,
and by the way he was hunted down.

According to the Liberal Jewish Movement of France, a group founded by
Farhi's father, it started with a menacing letter on the morning of Jan. 3
that said:
"We want the skin of Rabbi Gabriel Farhi and will avenge the blood of our
Palestinian brothers,"

Later that day, Farhi was preparing for Sabbath services when the synagogue
doorbell rang. As he opened the door, he says, an attacker in a motorcycle
helmet lunged forward with a knife, shouted "God is great!" in Arabic and
fled. The man has not been caught.

Farhi, 34, was slightly injured and released from the hospital the same
day. Then, on Monday, his car was torched in his apartment parking lot.

"I want to believe that this was an isolated act," Farhi said, "and not the
prelude to other attacks and a new wave of anti-Semitism."

At an ecumenical prayer service held in support of Farhi at his Paris
synagogue this week, the turnout was impressive. Jewish, Christian and
Muslim leaders attended, along with four former prime ministers, seated
side by side and wearing yarmulkes, the traditional Jewish skullcap.

Nicolas Sarkozy, France's tough new law-and-order interior minister, also
attended. Sarkozy, who has launched an anti-crime campaign, guaranteed new
measures to prevent future attacks, Farhi said.

"It's clear that the government is listening better now," Farhi said. "I'm
waiting for concrete measures."

Last spring, President Jacques Chirac insisted there was no anti-Semitism
in France, even as Jewish groups said the number of anti-Jewish attacks was
at its highest since World War II.

Of late, he has taken a tougher tone.

"There is no room in our country for anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia or
for manifestations of religious intolerance," Chirac wrote in a letter to
the rabbi cited by Le Monde newspaper.

Sarkozy has ordered police to classify crimes against Jewish sites as
"anti-Semitic," rather than as generic vandalism, The Wiesenthal Center's
Samuels said. That would allow French authorities to keep better track of
incidents.

Authorities increased security at Jewish sites last year, following a wave
of attacks at synagogues, schools and cemeteries. In the most serious case,
a
synagogue in southern Marseille was burned down.

Most of the attacks since the start of the Palestinian uprising in 2000 are
presumed to have been carried out by Muslims of North African origin who
sympathize with the Palestinian cause, the government and Jewish groups
have said.

France's Jewish community is western Europe's largest, while its Muslim
population makes Islam the biggest religion in France after Roman
Catholicism.

Last month, tensions worsened when the governing body of an elite
university, the Pierre and Marie Curie campus of the University of Paris,
asked the
European Union to suspend ties with Israel. They argued that supporting
educational exchange programs was implicitly supporting Israeli policy.

The move provoked strong criticism. Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe called it
a "shocking act and a tragic error." At a protest Monday, writers,
philosophers
and politicians joined Jewish leaders and hundreds of others to condemn the
decision.

Speakers recalled France's Vichy regime in World War II which collaborated
with the Germans in deporting 75,000 Jews to concentration camps.

The university has since backed down from the campaign.

Meanwhile, some Jews are hiding their identity in public.

"My son goes to a Jewish school," said Francis Lentschner, vice president
of the liberal Jewish movement, the French equivalent of the Reform
movement in
the United States. "He can wear his yarmulke in school. But I prefer him
not to wear one outside."

Ohana wears a Hebrew letter on a gold chain around her neck. Lately, she
said, she keeps it tucked inside her collar.

"It hurts. It really does," she said. "We're starting to hide that we're
Jewish."

[END]

The next one is a Letter to the Editor:

Letters | Toronto Globe and Mail | January  9, 2003

It's not so good

ROCHELLE WILNER and FRANK DIMANT

Toronto --  The headline on Marvin Kurz's article about the growth of
anti-Semitism in Canada was unfortunately misleading, especially for those
who read only headlines (It's Good To Be A Jew In Canada -- Jan. 8).

Canada is now a country in which every synagogue and other Jewish
institution requires special security officers and where rabbis advise
their congregants to walk home from synagogue in groups for their own
safety.

The heading would certainly be accurate in comparing the situation today
with the dirty '30s, when hospitals, universities and many employers had
quotas or outright prohibitions against Jewish applicants.

However, in a country that prides itself on democracy and religious
pluralism, the very real dangers described in the article ought not to be
obscured by its headline.

-- national president [ROCHELLE WILNER], and executive vice-president [FRANK
DIMANT], B'nai Brith Canada

[END]