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| Europe | |
| French Jews emigrating to Israel, US, Canada | |
| 2016-09-29 | |
“French people think that it’s natural when Jews are targeted” in terror attacks, said Haccoun, 33, as she waited with her husband and their three children here at the airport. "The fact that the army must protect Jewish schools and synagogues isn’t normal.” She said her family watched in horror in July 2014 as a demonstration protesting Israel’s war with Hamas turned into an anti-Semitic rampage. Dozens of young men chanting “God is great” in Arabic and “death to the Jews” attacked Jewish-owned businesses with clubs and fire bombs. The number of French Jews immigrating to Israel rose from 1,900 in 2011 to nearly 8,000 last year, said Jacques Canet, president of La Victoire, the great synagogue of Paris. He said the country’s 500,000 to 600,000 French Jews — the third largest Jewish population in the world — “feel threatened." “Increasingly, Jews in Paris, Marseilles, Toulouse, Sarcelles feel they can’t safely wear a kippah (yarmulke, or skull cap) outside their homes or send their children to public schools, where Muslim children bully Jewish children,” Canet said. A poll by the French Institute of Public Opinion in January showed 43% of France's Jewish Community are considering a move to Israel, and 51% said they have "been threatened" because they are Jewish. Those with enough money have moved to more upscale areas within France or to Canada, England or the United States, Canet said. The wealthy, staunch Zionists and those who can’t afford to send their children to private Jewish schools go to Israel. Moshe Sabbag, rabbi of La Victoire, believes “100%” of France’s Jews are thinking of moving, but that prospect is daunting. The majority of France’s Jews immigrated to France in the 1950s and 1960s from North African Muslim countries. French Jews “love France, they love French culture, they want to stay,” Sabbag said just before leading Friday night services at the synagogue. “But Jews were targeted during huge demonstrations against the 2014 Gaza war. They were killed in Toulouse and Hypercacher,” he said, referring to the 2012 attack on a Jewish school that killed four people and the 2015 attack on a kosher Paris supermarket that left four dead. Muslim extremists carried out both attacks. Although 2015 was a record year for French immigration to Israel, the numbers this year are lower. As of August 2016, 40% fewer Jews had arrived, compared to the same period last year, according to the Jewish Agency for Israel. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #3 Hopefully, they'll be provided with voting guides. |
| Posted by: charger 2016-09-29 16:08 |
| #2 There is an entire neighborhood in Ramat Aviv which is "French": all the shop signs etc... |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-09-29 11:13 |
| #1 Well, diversity is a big deal. Except when it isn't... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2016-09-29 11:01 |