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January 13, 2015

European Jewish Congress calls for more security to protect institutions

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

The European Jewish Congress called on Belgium and other European Union member states to beef up security around Jewish institutions.

EJC President Moshe Kantor issued the call Monday as security professionals from Jewish communities across Europe gathered in the Belgian capital to drill for a scenario in which a car bomb explodes outside a synagogue.

Kantor as part of his call also said a mechanism must be put in place to ensure uniform policies to prevent and fight anti-Semitic violence.

The drill, which was scheduled months ago, was held three days after an Islamist killed four people at a kosher supermarket in Paris as part of a series of attacks in the French capital that left 17 people dead.

According to Kantor, the Belgian government has not yet allocated the $4 million it pledged in June to provide for additional security around Jewish institutions. The pledge was made several weeks after a gunman killed four people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels; the museum was not under permanent police protection.

Mehdi Nemmouche, a French national who is believed to have fought with jihadists in Syria, is on trial for the murders,which he has denied committing.

“When even after a terrorist attack, the Belgian government still does not keep its promises to fund and beef up security on communities, this is a scarlet letter and a major lacuna that needs to be addressed immediately,” Kantor said.

He said he would bring up the issue with Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign relations and security chief, later this week.

“We are demanding more resources, but also a uniform policy for combating and preventing anti-Semitic violence because the gaps that exist within the union are playing to the advantage of the assailants,” he said.

In a statement issued directly after the Jan. 9 attack on a kosher supermarket in France, Belgium’s umbrella group of Jewish French-speaking communities, CCOJB, urged the government to take “concrete steps” to enhance security.

The Jewish community of Denmark also has called on the government to increase security around its institutions, the Danish Broadcasting Corp. reported Tuesday.

“It should be evident to the justice ministry and the police that there is a need for better protection,” Dan Rosenberg Asmussen, the president of the Jewish Congregation in Copenhagen, told the Berlingske daily on Monday. “Therefore, we demand that the authorities review the situation.”

European Jewish Congress calls for more security to protect institutions Read More »

Israelis bury French terror victims in the Holy Land

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Israel, Lead Story, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

Less than a week after the murder of four French Jews in a kosher grocery store by an Islamic terrorist in Paris, the bodies of Yoav Hattab, 21; Yohan Cohen, 22; Philippe Braham, 45; and Francois-Michel Saada, 63; were flown to Israel for burial. 

Their grieving family members came, too, and lit small memorial torches in the company of Israel’s leadership during a funeral at a hilltop cemetery overlooking West Jerusalem’s expanding suburbs — forests dotted with small stone homes. The sun was out, but the air was cold. “I’m crying, but I know that you all cry with me, and I thank all of you for all of this,” Valery Braham, Philippe’s wife, told a crowd of hundreds, some of whom, like her, had flown in from France, and many of whom had walked uphill for over a mile to attend.

“They are my brothers,” said Roee Iluz, a young Israeli man who had traveled to the Jan. 13 funeral from the Tel Aviv area and was standing off to the side, arms crossed, in silence. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin and opposition leader Isaac Herzog all gave emotional speeches, warning of global anti-Semitism and terrorism while in the same breath mourning the private pain of the four families.

“This is not how we wanted to see you come home, to the State of Israel, and to Jerusalem, its capital,” Rivlin said. “We wanted you alive, we wanted for you, life.”

Mourners gather during the burial ceremony in Jerusalem on Jan. 13. Photo by Simone Wilson

Of the terrorist who killed them, Netanyahu said: “We shall not waste words on the contemptible killer, nor on those who slaughtered other innocents on French soil, as it is their actions that provide testimony of their murderous zeal, the poisonous fanaticism of the radical Islamic terrorist organizations that serves as the motivation for carrying out horrific acts around the world.”

And of the endangered Diaspora, he said: “I believe that they know deep in their hearts that they have only one country, the State of Israel, the historic homeland that will accept them with open arms, like beloved children.”

Members of the crowd, like their leaders, seemed half broken, half defiant. Some simply held each other and wept. Others waved signs with messages like, “I am dead because I am Jewish” and “I am Charlie, I am Jewish, I am Israeli, I am French, and I’ve had enough.” Political chatter was unavoidable; hushed conversations in the crowd touched on Charlie Hebdo cartoons, the French exodus to Israel, the elections, Netanyahu’s widely mocked trip to Paris.

Multiple Israelis at the funeral told the Journal they were skeptical that world support for Jews after the kosher market attack, hashtagged as #JeSuisJuif, was sincere or built to last. 

Iluz, 21, said that despite the hashtag, it was clear to him the France unity march was “not about the Jews.”

Israeli-American political analyst Josh Wander, 44, agreed. “I don’t believe there’s any solidarity at all,” he said. “If it was only Jews killed in France, would 50 of the world leaders come to support them? No. Their only fear is of Islamic extremists in their own countries.”

Yom Jasmer, 18, whose parents immigrated to Israel from France, said that even if the solidarity was temporary, the notion of French people marching in support of Jews lifted his spirits. “They understand us now — but I don’t know if it will last,” he said.

A man prays during the funeral in Jerusalem. Photo by Simone Wilson

The French minister of energy and environment, Segolene Royal, represented France’s government at the funeral. From a podium next to the four bodies, she promised to fight anti-Semitism back home. “France without Jews is not France,” she said.

Dina Sirat, a Paris native in the crowd who immigrated to Israel almost 20 years ago with her two children, told the Journal that promises from French leaders gave her little assurance.

“There is a lot of fear now in Paris,” said Sirat, bundled in a red parka, floral scarf and beret. “My sister in France has kids in Jewish school, and they’re afraid.”

The four men being buried in Jerusalem, she said, were killed “because they are Jews. It’s not, ‘I am Charlie.’ It’s not liberty of speech. It’s because they were Jews in Paris.”

Elsewhere in the crowd, French sisters Keren Israel, 17, and Esther Israel, 19, identifiably observant in their long skirts, said they had moved to Israel almost exactly one year ago. They said they hadn’t planned to stay forever, but after this attack, Esther doesn’t want to leave. And Keren, who was planning her return to France before the terror spree in Paris, isn’t so sure anymore.

“It was so hard in France,” Esther said. “You go in the street, in the metro, and they look at you like — I don’t know. Like you’re not normal.”

Funeral attendees carry signs remembering the victims.

High-profile funerals in Israel often draw thousands, but attendees at the burial of the four terror victims said that this one had been much less publicized, and was hard to reach. (Streets were closed for miles around the Givat Shaul cemetery, bringing traffic throughout West Jerusalem to a standstill and forcing many to walk to the funeral.)

Still, it was a dedicated crowd. After the bodies — laid on stretchers and draped in white-and-blue linens — were loaded into four ambulances, the crowd swarmed the caravan as it crawled down the hill to a new tier of Jerusalem’s largest graveyard. Mourners pressed their foreheads to the ambulance windows and mumbled prayers, their tears running freely.

At times, the grief-stricken families from France looked overwhelmed by the hectic procession and hordes of press. Hooked up to a loudspeaker, a funeral organizer yelled instructions to ambulance personnel. “Where is Philippe?” he bellowed. “No, this is Yoav!”

But as their bodies were lowered into the ground, an overwhelming sense of peace and group security enveloped the crowd, now still. Funeral prayers echoed through Jerusalem’s outlying canyons; mothers wept softly; strangers hugged strangers

“They’re home now,” said Noa Dreyfus, 18.

In France, said former Paris resident Sirat, there is little burial space, and bodies are often moved to morgues once next-of-kin have passed. “But if you are here,” she said, “it’s for eternity.”

Israelis bury French terror victims in the Holy Land Read More »

Echoes of Selma: Angeleno recalls Alabama summer of ‘65

Leave a Comment / Culture /

How big of a “We” were the Jews in “We shall overcome”?

Since the nationwide release of “Selma” a week before the national holiday commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., I have wondered about the extent of Jewish participation in the civil rights movement. Was it just the Selma marches? Was our support also financial, in the voting booth? Or something more?

Albert Vorspan and David Saperstein concluded in their 1998 book “Jewish Dimensions of Social Justice: Tough Moral Choices of Our Time” that “Jews served in the forefront of the fight to end racial segregation in education, public accommodations and voting.” But wanting to hear it from someone who was actually in the “forefront,” I spoke with a Jewish recruit in the fight.

David Sookne may not sound like someone who served on the front lines of our nation’s battle for civil rights. The semi-retired mathematician and computer programmer — a resident of suburban Los Angeles with whom I pray a couple of times a month — is exacting in speech and even tempered.

David Sookne in 2013. (Edmon J. Rodman)

He’s also blessed with an excellent memory: Sookne can name the people in the Roosevelt administration down to the level of the undersecretary.

So he vividly recalls his seven weeks spent in Alabama’s rural Crenshaw County as a foot soldier in the voter registration campaign for blacks organized by King through the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. It was the summer of 1965 — after the Selma marches but before the passage of the Voting Rights Act that would be one of their outcomes.

Sookne, then 22 and enrolled in a doctoral program in in theoretical mathematics at the University of Chicago, signed up after following the news stories about the Freedom Riders and Freedom Summer — a campaign to register black voters in Mississippi in 1964 in which several supporters and volunteers were murdered, including two young Jewish men.

After first driving home to Springfield, Md. — his parents didn’t want him to go — he headed for Atlanta.

Sookne had already had his first taste of the risks involved with working for civil rights.

During spring break in ’65, he was among three dozen University of Chicago student volunteers in Somerville, Tenn., helping to build a structure to be used as a meeting place for voting rights activities.

In the local home of the organizer, John McFerren, who was black and a World War II veteran, Sookne heard a car pull up outside, a “pop-pop-pop” and the car pulling away.

“McFerren went to the living room wall and pulled something out,” Sookne recalled. It was a bullet from “a .22,” he recalled McFerren saying.

“‘They are just trying to scare us,'” McFerren said, according to Sookne. “If they were trying to kill us, they would use something bigger.’”

“That was my introduction to the danger of voter registration,” Sookne said.

As part of the training in Atlanta, Sookne and hundreds of volunteers heard King speak, as well as Bayard Rustin, a pacifist and civil rights leader. He also went through about a weeklong training session that would help prepare him for the domestic battle ahead.

“We practiced various things like not reacting to insults,” said Sookne, who had a student deferment from service in the Vietnam War. “We also practiced curling up on the ground, protecting vital organs in case we got beaten up.”

At the end of the week, the volunteers were given their assignments, and Sookne drove his pale green Volkswagen Beetle in a caravan that stopped first in Montgomery, Ala. From there he drove to the small town of Luverne, where he met up with six others, including organizer Bruce Hartford, also Jewish, who had found the group housing in a local residence.

Sookne recalled that about five minutes after they reached town, they were met by the local police chief, Harry Raupach.

“He told us to write down name, address and next of kin,” Sookne said, “just in case something happened to us.”

He also recalled that Raupach, who was originally from the North — “and not a Klansman,” Sookne said — saved the group more than once from being beaten up.

Knocking on people’s doors at a time when the passage of the Voting Rights Act seemed imminent — the law would make registration easier — made signing up voters a hard sell. So the group members turned their efforts toward another goal: integrating local restaurants.

In the town of Brantley, they ran into trouble.

“They didn’t want their all-white restaurants integrated,” Sookne said.

At a nonviolence training session on a ball field there, he recalled “three carloads of young men in their late teens and 20s” pulling up, with perhaps five of them getting out.

“They told us we better get out of Brantley or they would beat us up,” Sookne said.

Hartford, who was also present, has written that the locals — he refers to them as “All Klan” — had “ax handles and chains and clubs.”

Sookne said the volunteers made a dash for his VW.

On the highway trying to make it back to Luverne, he could see that two cars were in close pursuit, with perhaps others farther behind. When the highway widened a few miles before the relative safety of Luverne, Sookne recalled one of the cars passing, pulling in front and boxing him in.

“We slowed to about 25 miles per hour,” Sookne said.

He took a turnoff and veered left “onto a winding gravel road where the VW had an advantage.” His car pulled ahead, but turning onto a second highway to Luverne, the Klansmen were still in pursuit.

Suddenly, Hartford recalled, a couple of cars “filled with black men armed with shotguns” got between the VW and its pursuers. Hartford, who was in the car, believes some people in Brantley had called them about the situation.

“They escorted us back into Luverne. The Klan didn’t want to mess with them,” Hartford wrote.

In the fall, back at college, Sookne received a letter from King sent to all the SCLC volunteers — 20 to 30 percent of whom were Jewish, both Sookne and Hartford estimate.

“It is a rare privilege in life to participate in the fulfillment of an idea whose time has come,” the letter began.

For Sookne it was also a way, he said, of expressing “Tzedek, tzedek tirdoff” — “Justice, justice you shall pursue.” Even if, as it turned out, he was also being pursued.

Echoes of Selma: Angeleno recalls Alabama summer of ‘65 Read More »

Tough love for Islam

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Is Featured?, Je Suis Charlie / Je Suis Juif, Lead Story, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, Opinion /

We’re conditioned to respect all religions. But what happens when we’re confronted with a religion that looks more like a political ideology? When I criticize Islam, I don’t criticize its spiritual beauty; I criticize the fact that in too many places around the world, the religion has morphed into a violent and totalitarian movement.

It’s not a coincidence that, since 9/11, more than 24,000 terrorists acts have been committed under the name of Islam. After the latest murderous attacks in Paris, even a staunch liberal like Bill Maher had the politically incorrect nerve to say what so many of us are afraid to say: “When there’s this many bad apples, there’s something wrong with this orchard.”

What’s wrong with this orchard? Well, for starters, it harbors an extremist and literalist interpretation of Islam that has morally contaminated large segments of the Muslim world.

While practices and beliefs in Islam are hardly monolithic, it’s disheartening to see such widespread support among Muslims for strict religious law (Sharia) as the official law of their countries. According to polling from the Pew Research Center, this support is most prevalent in places like Afghanistan (99%), Iraq (91%), the Palestinian territories (89%), Pakistan (84%), Morocco (83%), Egypt (74%) and Indonesia (72%).

When you consider that a strict interpretation of Sharia law can often mean cutting off the hands of thieves, lynching gays, stoning adulterous women and the death penalty for apostates, it’s not a pretty picture.

And yet, in much of the West, we act as if Islamic terrorism is simply the result of some “bad apples,” and, well, every religion has its fanatics. This cozy and convenient narrative has run its course. Islamic terrorism is not an isolated phenomenon — it’s a violent outgrowth of a global, triumphalist and totalitarian ideology that is on the march and hiding behind the nobility of religion.

When French President Francois Hollande says, “These terrorists and fanatics have nothing to do with the Islamic religion,” he’s being politically correct, but not accurate. Islamic terrorism has very much to do with the extremist interpretation of classic Islamic texts. Until we acknowledge that inconvenient truth, we have no chance of combating this disease.

Moderate Muslims who “condemn terrorism” and then defend Islam as a “religion of peace” are not taking responsibility for a malignant ideology that must be confronted and rooted out, and not simply denounced.

But how do we do that?

For my money, there’s no better approach than that of Ahmed Vanya, a fellow at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, an American-Muslim organization that openly confronts the ideologies of political Islam.

Vanya loves Islam, but his is a tough love. He doesn’t get defensive about the religion’s failings. He’s not out to defend Islam as much as to modernize it. In his must-read article “Beautifying Islam,” published on the website of the Gatestone Institute, Vanya confronts the monster head-on:

“A religion that prescribes killing or criminalizing apostates; condones institutionalized slavery, stoning, beheading, flogging, and amputations; which restricts and criminalizes freedom of speech and freedom of religion; commands the stoning of adulterers; develops a theory of constant state of war with non-believers; discriminates and demeans women and people of other religions is not only The Religion of the Bigots but The Religion of the Bullies.” 

He is clear-eyed about his own tradition: “Classical Islamic law, developed over the history of Islam, is definitely not peaceful or benign, and therefore not suited for this age; neither are its violent and grotesque progeny, such as Islamism and jihadism.”

But like any good lover, Vanya gives his beloved the benefit of the doubt: “If Islam is a religion that stands for justice and peaceful coexistence, then this policy of jihad cannot be justified as sanctioned by a just and merciful creator.”

To live up to these noble ideals, Vanya calls for a humanistic “reinterpretation” of classic Islamic texts: “If we Muslims want to stand up and challenge the literalism of the text-bound scholars and the militants who are beheading, enslaving and persecuting people around the world alike, we need to develop an interpretative methodology that balances revelation with reason as in other rational, religious traditions.”

In other words, it’s not enough to marginalize violence; we must also marginalize violent teachings. 

“Religious traditions have changed and evolved over time,” Vanya writes. “Therefore it is the duty of us Muslims, using reason and common sense, to reinterpret the scriptures to bring about an Islam that affirms and promotes universally accepted human rights and values. It is our duty to cleanse the traditional, literalist, classical Islam and purify it to make it an Islam that is worthy to be called a beautiful religion.”

When Muslim leaders and preachers start to spread that tough love message throughout the Muslim world, the modernization of Islam will have begun.

David Suissa is president of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal and can be reached at davids@jewishjournal.com.

Tough love for Islam Read More »

After attack, spike in emigration could deplete France’s Jewish community

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Taken alone, the attack on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket near Paris is nothing that French Jews haven’t seen before.

Arguably, the 2012 attack that caught the Toulouse community unprepared was more traumatic because children were killed. And the 1982 attack on the Goldenberg Jewish restaurant in Paris was deadlier than last week’s attack and involved more assailants.

Yet the deadly hostage siege at Hyper Cacher, which came amid a dramatic increase in attacks on French Jews, may nonetheless be the watershed moment that changes the community’s dynamics for the foreseeable future. That’s because it compounds the problems that are already depleting the community’s ranks.

“These events are having such a profound effect because they target people who go to synagogue and eat kosher — the group that in France is simultaneously the beating heart of the community and the population likeliest to leave for Israel because of its Zionist attachment,” said Avi Zana, director of the Israel-based Ami Israel association, which facilitates aliyah from France.

France has Europe’s largest Jewish community, with anywhere from 500,000 to 600,000 members. Most live in Paris and are Sephardic, and about half belong to some Jewish social or religious framework. Community life is robust, and the country has hundreds of Jewish schools.

But a number of coinciding factors — including attacks by Islamists with combat experience gained in the Middle East, the French far right’s rising popularity, economic stagnation and an increase in taxation — is creating record levels of Jewish immigration to Israel and elsewhere.

Last year, a record number of French Jews — more than 7,000, twice as many as the previous year and three times as many as in 2012 — moved to Israel.

Before the Jan. 9 attack on Hyper Cacher, where an Islamist killed four Jews, the Jewish Agency estimated that 2015 would bring 10,000 French Jews to Israel. But the attack will require a reassessment, Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky told JTA. Moshe Sebbag, the rabbi of the Grand Synagogue of Paris, said he expected 15,000 French newcomers to Israel this year.

The rise in French aliyah — Hebrew for immigrating to Israel under its law of return for Jews — can be tied at least in part to last summer, when several French synagogues and Jewish shops were attacked during demonstrations against the Gaza war.

“We may well see 30,000 Jews from that group leave for Israel in the coming three years, and that would mean the departure of 15 to 20 percent of the affiliated community,” Zana said. “This has the potential, unfortunately, of considerably weakening some of the community’s institutions. The community needs to prepare for it.”

Daniel Benhaim, the Jewish Agency’s chief envoy to France, speaks of 50,000 Jews who are expected to move to Israel by 2024.

“In an affiliated community of 200,000, that’s already a critical mass whose departure will deeply impact the internal dynamics remaining community,” he said, referring to Jews who are somewhat observant and attend Jewish institutions.

In parallel to the increase in aliyah, there has been in recent years an increase in emigration by French Jews to Canada and the United States, Zana said.

“There are not statistics on that movement, but it is definitely significantly smaller than the movement to Israel,” he added.

Schools are a major concern pushing Jewish parents to make aliyah, according to Zana.

“On the one hand, parents increasingly are apprehensive about enrolling their children in public schools because of rampant anti-Semitism there,” he said. “On the other, they are afraid to put them in Jewish schools because they are targets for attacks. So Israel seems like a good choice.”

Yvan Lellouche, a Jewish grandfather who is seeking to make aliyah in the coming months, told JTA on Sunday that he fears for the 15 children from his extended family who attend a Jewish school near Hyper Cacher.

“Every minute they are there, I fear for their safety. I fear for my safety as well,” he said.

Speaking at the Knesset on Tuesday, Joel Mergui, president of French Jewry’s religious affairs organ, the Consistoire, said children are likewise frightened.

“It is hard to describe how afraid our children are to go to Jewish schools in France,” he said.

Some Paris Jews are feeling the aliyah-related depletion already in their own synagogues, including Bernard Mouchi, president of the Jewish community of Courneuve — an impoverished and heavily Muslim suburb of Paris.

“Fifteen years ago this was a large Jewish community of over 1,000 families,” he told JTA at his synagogue, where 30 men congregated on Saturday evening under police protection. “Now there are 100 families, and we are actually a community of pensioners.”

“Many made aliyah,” Mouchi said. “Others left for safer areas around Paris.”

In light of this phenomenon generally, Chlomik Zenouda, vice president of France’s National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, said, “The community will need strong leaders who will know how to downsize the community’s institutions and basically shut it down.”

Meanwhile, the accumulation of French-speaking Jews in Israel is creating a snowball effect because it is drawing newcomers to join friends and family who left while reassuring them of a social infrastructure that would facilitate their absorption, according to Karin Amit, a researcher with the Ruppin Academic Center’s Institute for Immigration and Social Integration who has studied French aliyah.

“There seems to be a momentum for aliyah that is fueling itself in a way within the Jewish community of France,” said Amit.

After attack, spike in emigration could deplete France’s Jewish community Read More »

Noah Pozner’s parents suing over Sandy Hook massacre

Leave a Comment / United States /

The family of a Jewish boy killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre is one of two families suing Newtown, Conn., and its school board for alleged lax security.

The parents of Noah Pozner, as well as Jesse Lewis, filed the lawsuit last month, the Hartford Courant reported Monday. It reportedly is seeking more than $15,000 in damages, as is standard.

According to the suit, the school board and the town were negligent in not having classroom doors that could be locked from the inside and because the school did not have a more secure entranceway, including bulletproof glass on the front windows. The lawsuit also alleges a lack of security in the parking lot.

Noah Pozner, 6, was the youngest victim of the December 2012 massacre. Twenty children and six school employees were killed when Adam Lanza, 20, forced his way into the school building and opened fire. Lanza killed himself at the school.

Prior to the school shootings Lanza, who had attended the Sandy Hook school, killed his mother, Nancy, in the Newtown home they shared.

Ten of the families, including the Pozners and Lewises, also are involved in a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the gun used in the attack, according to the Courant. The families claim that the Bushmaster AR-15 should not be sold to the public because it is a military assault weapon designed for war.

 

Noah Pozner’s parents suing over Sandy Hook massacre Read More »

In Brussels, Jewish security professionals train for the next attack

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Seventy-two hours after a deadly attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris, dozens of Jewish community officials from across Europe were operating a hectic situation room at a hotel in the Belgian capital.

But crisis managers and community leaders were not dealing with the horror unfolding 200 miles away in the French capital.

Rather they were preparing for the next crisis situation, playing out a practice scenario with multiple casualties at a Jewish facility somewhere in Europe. Staffers were training to handle the deluge of queries, pleas, disinformation and even threats that often follow attacks on Jewish facilities.

It was said to be the first pan-European simulation of its kind and was the latest step in a plan by the European Jewish Congress’ Security and Crisis Centre, or SACC, after the killing last year of four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France.

The drill aimed to prepare communities to manage the consequences of the terrorist threats on a continent with nearly nonexistent national borders and vast disparities in law-enforcement and crisis-management standards.

“Unlike France or Germany or Austria, we have no known jihadist groups,” said Petr Papousek, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in the Czech Republic. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not exposed to that risk when Prague is a two-hour train ride away from Vienna.”

The drill comes as many French Jews, reeling from the attack last week that killed four at a kosher supermarket, have publicly questioned whether public authorities are capable of ensuring their security. On Monday, thousands of French soldiers and police were dispatched to protect the country’s 700 Jewish schools.

To Pascal Markowicz, a board member of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, the drill reflected a perceived need for European Jews to develop their own tools to deal with security threats. In the absence of those tools, Markowicz said there could be widespread panic leading to mass emigration.

“This morning, four children did not show up to my son’s Jewish school, which is situated a few hundred yards from where four Jews were murdered on Jan. 9, because their parents were afraid to send them there,” Markowicz said.

“We cannot rely solely on our security on police,” he added. “We need to take our own measures, which need to be pan-European if they are to be effective.”

In the situation room, staffers were prompted to respond to some of the situations that often occur in the wake of an attack. One drill dealt with handling callers who gloat, threaten or give false reports directly after an attack. Another aimed to prepare responders to deal sensitively with distraught relatives, even though urgent demands for information sometimes obstruct efforts to obtain that same information.

“Sadly, none of the people here need to use their imagination,” said Arie Zuckerman, who has overseen the SACC project since its inception. “This is a compilation of variations on situations that occurred in recent years in communities across Europe.”

Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress, initiated the SACC project in 2012 in response to the attack on the Otzar Hatorah school in Toulouse, after which some claimed the grief-stricken community was caught unprepared. The school had security cameras but no one monitoring the video feed. The school had no guard in place when the killer, Mohammed Merah, began shooting.

Ensuring a coordinated European response, Kantor said, is a “basic duty.” In a meeting later this week with Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign relations and security chief, Kantor said he will demand a EU-wide approach to defending Jewish security.

“When the EU wanted to tackle the drug trade, it set up a pan-European agency for it because this was the only effective policy,” Kantor said. “It should do the same with anti-Semitism.”

The effectiveness of a coordinated response was demonstrated last year during the deadly attack on the Jewish Museum of Belgium, Zuckerman said. The defendant standing trial for the killings, Mehdi Nemmouche, is a French national who was caught with an automatic weapon several days later in Marseille, home to France’s second-largest Jewish community.

“Within a few minutes, a situation room was up and running and alerts went out to all European communities that a killer was on the loose,” Zuckerman said.

The response of Belgian authorities, on the other hand, was less than exemplary, Kantor said. Following the attack on the museum, which had no permanent police protection, the Belgian government pledged to allocate more than $4 million for security around Jewish institutions. More than six months later the money has not yet arrived.

“When even after a terrorist attack the Belgian government still does not keep its promises to fund and beef up security on communities, this is a scarlet letter and a major lacuna that needs to be addressed immediately,” Kantor said.

 

In Brussels, Jewish security professionals train for the next attack Read More »

Paris victims’ families charged for Jerusalem funerals

Leave a Comment / Israel /

Israel’s burial association charged each of the families of the Paris kosher supermarket victims nearly $13,000 for their Jerusalem burial plots and funerals.

The charges were levied by the Chevra Kadisha, part of the Religious Services Ministry, after the families refused to bury the men in multi-story tombs, which would have been free, Ynet reported late Tuesday.

Some $10,000 was to cover the costs of the burial plots, and another $3,000 was to help absorb the funeral costs. The French Jewish community reportedly will handle the latter.

The men were buried in the Har HaMenuchot cemetery in Givat Shaul, Jerusalem’s largest burial ground. The families initially had been offered burials in the historic Mount of Olives cemetery but declined because of security considerations, Ynet reported.

 

Paris victims’ families charged for Jerusalem funerals Read More »

Jurors seated in civil trial over PLO role in Israeli attacks

Leave a Comment / United States /

Victims of attacks in Israel more than a decade ago will look to prove the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority were behind the violence and should pay up to $1 billion, after jurors were selected Tuesday in a civil trial. Six men and six women will consider whether to hold the defendants responsible for seven shootings and bombings from 2001 to 2004 in the Jerusalem area that killed 33 people and wounded more than 450.

The trial before U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan is expected to last 12 weeks, and adds a new dimension to the long-running Middle East conflict.

Victims and their families claim that the defendants helped carry out and finance the attacks, in part through support for Hamas and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which the U.S. government has labeled terrorist organizations.

The plaintiffs said this was done to coerce Israeli civilians, and the Israeli and U.S. governments, into accepting the Palestinians' political goals. Damages could be tripled to $3 billion if the plaintiffs prevail.

Both defendants have denied the claims, in which they are accused of violating the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act. Any award may be subject to appeals.

Among the jurors is a watchmaker, a fourth-grade school teacher, a man who works as a school aide during the day and a custodian at night, and an actor who takes what he called “survival jobs” while freelancing at a sports website.

Eighteen prospective jurors had been questioned. The two who told Daniels they have traveled to Israel were excused.

The lead plaintiff is Mark Sokolow, a lawyer at Arnold & Porter, who said he and family members were injured in a January 2002 bombing in downtown Jerusalem that killed one person and injured more than 150.

The trial is beginning less than a week after the United Nations confirmed that Palestinians will formally join the International Criminal Court on April 1. That decision clears the way for that body to potentially open probes into alleged Israeli crimes on Palestinian lands.

Palestinians wish to form a state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands Israelcaptured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Last September, a federal jury in Brooklyn found Arab Bank Plc liable under the anti-terrorism law for having provided material support to Hamas. A damages trial is scheduled to begin on May 18.

The case is Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Organization et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 04-00397.

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French Jewry 101: From Rashi to Dreyfus to Hyper Cacher

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Last week’s deadly hostage siege at a kosher supermarket in Paris has French Jews (and some non-Jews) proclaiming “Je suis juif,” or “I am Jewish,” in solidarity with the four people killed in the attack.

Who are the Jews of France? Here’s a primer.

How many Jews are there in France?

About 500,000, the most of any European nation and more than any other country in the world except for Israel and the United States.

How does that compare to other faith groups in the country?

France is home to some 66 million people; about 80 percent of them are Catholic. There are also between 5 million and 6 million Muslims, with many tracing their roots back to the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa and Turkey.

Where do Jews live in France?

Paris and its suburbs mostly, home to as many as 350,000 Jews.

The Marais, in Paris’ 3rd and 4th districts, is the city’s historic Jewish neighborhood. It remains home to many kosher shops and eateries, synagogues and religious schools. But the trendy quarter — known today for its fashion boutiques, gay culture and pricey real estate  — is much less of a Jewish residential neighborhood than it once was.

Jews today live throughout Paris, but particularly in the affluent 17th district, the more working-class 19th and 20th districts, and increasingly the lively 11th and 12th districts. Hyper Cacher, where Friday’s deadly hostage siege took place, is situated in the 12th district, on Paris’ eastern edge. The suburbs of Sarcelles to the north of the city, Saint-Mande to the east, Creteil to the southeast, and Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy residential neighborhood to the west of the city, also have significant Jewish populations.

In addition, there are about 80,000 Jews in the southern French city of Marseilles, and sizable Jewish communities in Lyon, Toulouse, Nice and Strasbourg, according to Toni Kamins, the author of “The Complete Jewish Guide to France.”

How did Jews get to France?

Jews have had a presence in the country at least since the Middle Ages, though it wasn’t until 1791 that French Jews were granted full citizenship. (Rashi, the famed Talmud scholar and commentator, lived in 11th-century France.)

France absorbed more than 100,000 Central and Eastern European Jews fleeing persecution in the years leading up to World War II. Today, however, most Jews living in France have roots in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Some 235,000 Jews arrived from those newly independent countries in the 1950s and 1960s, and this largely Sephardic population is widely credited with reviving religious Judaism in France after the Holocaust.

What happened to French Jews during the Holocaust?

The Nazi German military occupied northern France, including Paris, from 1940 to 1944. In the southern “free zone,” the Vichy French state was nominally neutral but actually was a puppet of Nazi Germany. During the war, some 76,000 Jews from France — including about 11,000 children — were sent to Nazi death camps. Most of them died at Auschwitz, but 2,500 survived. By 1945, some 235,000 Jews remained in France.

What are France’s most influential Jewish institutions today? 

The Consistoire, which dates back to Napoleonic times, oversees a network of some 500 synagogues and religious sites, such as cemeteries and mikvahs. The Consistoire, which has a number of local affiliates, also manages kashrut certifications and elects the country’s chief rabbi. The majority of Jewish congregations in France — and all of those under the auspices of the Consistoire — are Orthodox, though there is also a smaller number of Reform and Masorti (Conservative) synagogues in France.

The CRIF, the Council of Jewish Institutions of France, is a national federation of dozens of Jewish groups, including philanthropies, social services organizations and professional associations. The organization works to fight anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance, often closely with political leaders. Supporting Israel and promoting a peaceful two-state solution are also among its stated priorities.

The UEJF, France’s Jewish Student Union, represents the interests of some 15,000 Jewish college students. The organization, founded in 1944, is active in social justice issues, Israel advocacy and efforts to promote coexistence, and it offers meet-ups and travel opportunities for Jewish students.

France also has more than 700 Jewish schools.

Remind me, what was the Dreyfus Affair all about?

In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French army captain, was convicted of treason in a case that many considered even at the time to be a miscarriage of justice. The French writer Emile Zola came to the captain’s defense with a famous open letter titled “J’accuse,” in which he accused the French government of targeting Dreyfus because he was Jewish. Publicly stripped of his rank as thousands of Parisians called for his death, Dreyfus was imprisoned for several years on Devil’s Island. In 1899, Dreyfus was pardoned by the French president and released, and in 1906 a military commission officially exonerated him.

How are French Jews responding to the current surge in French anti-Semitism?

Last year, more than 7,000 French Jews left for Israel, which is more than triple the number who made aliyah two years prior. That comes on the heels of a 91 percent year-over-year increase in anti-Semitic incidents and a spike in violent anti-Semitic attacks.

The general increase in anti-Semitic incidents — in addition to several high-profile attacks such as the 2006 kidnapping and murder of Ilan Halimi, the deadly 2012 shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse, and firebombings of synagogues and Jewish businesses during last summer’s Gaza war — has created a more insular Jewish community, according to Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, the American Jewish Committee’s Paris director.

“I think, to some extent, for a generation of young people, they are less and less comfortable with their general French secular identity, so their Jewish identity is more important,” Rodan-Benzaquen said, noting that Jews are increasingly choosing Jewish schools over public schools for their children.

The majority of French Jews vote for the center-right and center-left parties. However, a small but growing minority of Jews, fearing anti-Semitic violence at the hands of France’s Muslim community, have embraced the far-right National Front. Though its current leader, Marine Le Pen, has put a more moderate face on the National Front, her father — the party’s founder — has been convicted of Holocaust denial and once referred to the gas chambers as a “detail” of history.

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