Anti-semitism in France? Where?

French Jews were poised for a Golden Age.

The fall, over the past three years, has been all the more breathtaking. The major reason for it is quite simple: The Jewish critical mass effect has clashed with a parallel critical mass effect – the rapid rise of a huge immigrant Islamic community, 10 or 12 times as strong as the Jewish community in number (estimates range from 6 to 8 million). In a perfect, ideal world, both groups could live together and integrate together into the larger French society. In the real world, Jews tended to sympathize for a while with the Muslims as fellow immigrants, and Muslims tended to reject Jews as Jews and Zionists.

Gurfinkiel then explains how French Jews have experienced this clash since it began in October 2000:

More than 20 synagogues and schools have been set on fire. Jewish children and Jewish teachers are routinely harassed at school. Rabbis are beaten or spat at in the street. An Islamic preacher who singled out liberal Jewish intellectuals – supporters of the Geneva Accord, actually – as dangerous “Jewish nationalists” has turned into a media icon. One or two recent murders in Paris may even be ascribed to anti-Semitism. And above all, the nation’s elite has been strangely reluctant to admit there is something wrong going on.