Paris, 3 February 2022
Published in 2002, “The Lost Territories of the Republic” (“Les Territoires perdus de la République”) was written by Georges Bensoussan, under a nom de plume “Emmanuel Brenner.”
The book revealed already the core of Islamist antisemitism in the classroom.
The French public school curriculum has an obligatory 3 sessions on the inter-War period 1914-1945. On occasion, a Holocaust survivor would be invited to speak to the upper-level classes. In schools of the slum rings around major French cities, this became impossible for the teachers, due to violent reactions from high-density classes of Muslim pupils, fed on Jew-hatred by their families, radicalized mosques and television reports on Israel and the Palestinians.
Jewish children were already moving from public to safer Jewish schools, although a murderous attack, in 2012, by an Islamist “lone wolf” on children and their rabbi-teacher-father in the Otzar Hatorah school of Toulouse, entailed the need for enhanced security.
As violence grew, especially following the Kosher supermarket attack in 2015, parents felt the need to move to new and expanding Jewish communities and private schools within the major cities.
Located in a Jewish Centre, the rooms next-door to our Paris office were used as a temporary kindergarten, until more appropriate facilities were found.
President Hollande had established a “state of siege” in order to defend Jewish institutions, especially schools, with armed military at the front doors. These were eventually replaced by trained community security personnel.
A Times of Israel interview by Cnaan Lipshiz, with CRIF (the umbrella organization of French Jewry) President Francis Kalifat, examines the current situation after 20 years of dangerous public school antisemitism.
The Wiesenthal Centre proposes several parallel options:
- Emigration;
- Building Jewish community zones in French cities, as in the Belgian city of Antwerp;
- To work with French Muslim friends and other allies, such as the Asian – mainly Vietnamese and Cambodian communities – who are also victims;
- ... And, above all, “to reclaim all territories of the Republic.”