These Jews who fled France

Photo: Christophe Ena Associated Press A demonstrator carrying the Israeli flag protested with thousands of others during a march against anti-Semitism in Paris, in November 2023, on the sidelines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Christian Rioux in Strasbourg

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• Europe

“My friends and I think about it all the time. When are we going to go to Israel and make our aliyah ?” Nathanael said, using the Hebrew word for “ascension,” which refers to a Jew emigrating to Israel. “For now, I've decided to stay. But until when ? I don't know.”

The son of an Algerian father (Sephardic) and a Polish mother (Ashkenazi), this electrician laughingly calls himself a “bastard.” He has always lived in Contades, the peaceful Jewish quarter of Strasbourg with its elegant Haussmannian buildings. Between the passers-by doing their Sabbath shopping and the mothers walking their children in the large park of the Synagogue de la Paix, rebuilt after the Second World War, life seems peaceful.

But that’s just an illusion, says Nathanaël. “Here, life is not like it used to be. Today, when I leave the neighborhood, I take off my kippah, which I had never done before. Insulting remarks are common on the tram and the metro. When school leaves, parents no longer linger. It’s often a question of looks.” I too thought about leaving France. Here, we feel less and less welcome — it’s sad, this country has been so welcoming — but in Israel, there is war. We are caught between two fires.”

In front of the great synagogue, next to which the French flag flies, two police vans stand guard at all times. This is where a 15-year-old Chechen boy was arrested with a knife in October 2023. Earlier in the year, in the Meinau district, an individual attacked a mother and her children, as well as a plainclothes police officer who came to their aid, shouting “Allah Akbar”. At the police station, he declared: “You will all go to hell because of what you are doing in Palestine.”

While Jews represent less than 1% of the French population, anti-Semitic acts have increased dramatically, reaching 1,676 last year. In the three months following October 7, 2023, they jumped by 1,000%, according to the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). And in the first quarter of 2024, there were three times as many as in the same period the previous year, according to French government data.

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« Death to the Jews »

With around 20,000 people, Strasbourg is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in France. In this city where the first Jewish traces date back to the Roman era, not all anti-Semitic acts are on the scale of the attack on the Christmas market committed on December 11, 2018 by Chérif Chekatt, which left five dead and 11 injured. But they are commonplace. This is evidenced by the many young people who have joined the Islamic State group from Meinau, Schiltigheim and Wissembourg, where one of the Bataclan jihadists, Foued Mohamed-Aggad, came from.

Anti-Semitism takes more subtle forms there, such as that of the Algerian illegal immigrant who refused to deliver meals to Jews.

“The day after the pogrom of October 7, children who took the tram to school saw signs saying ‘Death to the Jews,’” explains Pierre Haas, president of the CRIF of Alsace. “Israel had not even reacted yet when we immediately witnessed a liberation of anti-Semitism. However, if there is a city where interreligious dialogue is practiced, it is Strasbourg. Jews are very attached to France, which is the first country in Europe to grant them citizenship.”

“Happy as God in France,” says an old Yiddish adage. Last September 27, we celebrated the 233rd anniversary of the emancipation of French Jews, in 1791, by the Revolution. Then came Napoleon, who, despite certain controversial measures, granted full citizenship to the Jews and created the structures that are still those of the Jewish faith in France. This is why every week, during the Sabbath morning services, the faithful recite the Prayer for France.

This has not prevented more than 1,600 Jews from making their aliyah since October 7.

If Strasbourg’s Jewish population remains stable, it is because hundreds of Jews are fleeing the Maghreb suburbs of Paris, Lyon or Toulouse to take refuge there. But hundreds of others have left the city. This is the case of Antoine Strobel-Dahan, who left Strasbourg for Toronto seven years ago. “We had first moved from the 14th arrondissement of Paris to live in Strasbourg with our three children because we had family in the area and it was a welcoming city with a very open Jewish quarter. An ideal place for a young family. But after the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks, it was no longer possible.” »

Editor-in-chief of the Jewish magazine Tenou’a, Antoine Strobel-Dahan personally knew the journalists of Charlie Hebdoand stayed a stone's throw from the Bataclan every time he came to Paris. “We couldn't stand seeing the police vans in front of our children's school any more – and everyone panicking when they weren't there. But above all, in this stifling atmosphere, we found ourselves among Jews. We had never lived like that. We didn't want to stay in a country where young idiots sing in the metro: “We are Nazis and proud.” We thought about Israel, but it is a socially harsh country and, with three children, there is the obligation of military service.”

Antoine Strobel-Dahan defines himself as a liberal Jew who is very critical of Benjamin Netanyahu's government. But nothing helps, “for a certain left, like La France insoumise (LFI), we are guilty as Jews.” “They do not criticize a government or a policy, but want the disappearance of a country.”

“My Maghrebian friends no longer speak to me”

The same kind of reasoning led to the cancellation of the Israeli film festival Shalom Europa, which had been held every year for 16 years. “Seven months after October 7, we are being ejected,” explains its spokesperson Alice Ullmann. “We are being accused of being accomplices of a genocidal state. But that makes no sense! Most of the filmmakers we present are very critical of the government’s policies. We are trying to highlight the diversity of Israeli cinema, which is also very free.”

It only took the threats from Palestine support committees and a lesbian collective, echoed on social networks, for the Star cinemas to pull out. Cinemas that also host a Palestinian film festival and until very recently hosted a lesbian film festival. Shalom Europe could soon be hosted in a large hall belonging to the City, but it will never be like in a real cinema, says Alice Ullmann.

This anti-Israeli activism finds its hard core at the University of Strasbourg, whose president, Michel Deneken, denounced the attack on three Jewish students who were putting up posters calling for the release of Hamas hostages and against anti-Semitism.

Nicole Milman knows something about this. “We’re going to find you. We know where you live. We’re going to do to you what you do to the Palestinians.” These are the kinds of messages that this Israeli citizen, who came to study in France five years ago, found one fine morning in her Instagram inbox. This is nothing exceptional. According to an IFOP survey published in September 2023, 9 out of 10 Jewish students in France have witnessed anti-Semitic remarks or acts.

A student of English-speaking world civilization and literature, she also gives distance learning courses to Canadian federal civil servants who want to improve their knowledge of French and English.

Seven of her acquaintances were killed on October 7, 2023, and her cousin was lucky enough to escape. One of the hostages lived in her neighborhood. “I didn’t feel any empathy. My Maghrebi friends with whom I studied no longer speak to me. If I speak Hebrew, I am insulted in class and people refuse to work in groups with me. These people tell me to go home, but at the same time, they tell me that my country must disappear. You should know!”

“Anti-Semitism has migrated to the left”

In Strasbourg, it is difficult to find a Jew who, after 15 minutes of discussion, will not talk to you about LFI. All are appalled by the refusal of the main left-wing party in France to call Hamas a terrorist and by the slogans “Death to the Jews” that we hear in its demonstrations.

“This liberation of speech has even become a voice,” says the rabbi of Meinau, Mendel Samama, whose brother is a rabbi in Brossard, on the South Shore, in the Montreal region.

“Strasbourg is the last shtetlof Europe,” he says ironically, using a term that referred to Jewish neighborhoods in Europe before the Second World War. Over the years, the Meinau has been radically transformed: the Jews who fled Algeria in the 1970s have gradually been replaced by Muslims from the Maghreb. “It’s no longer nice to walk around there with a kippah,” the rabbi acknowledges. “Here, we’re on a powder keg! Our threshold of tolerance has widened. The age of comfort is over.”

According to him, Emmanuel Macron made a serious political mistake by not participating in the major march against anti-Semitism on November 12, 2023 in Paris.

“Today, anti-Semitism has migrated to the left,” says Pierre Haas. “It hides behind the scapegoat of Israel. It has transformed into anti-Zionism, but it’s the same thing.” The same story at the Bas-Rhin Israelite Consistory. “Today, anti-Zionism has become the pretext for anti-Semitism,” says its president, Maurice Dahan. “It has become the seemingly democratic and proper way to express one’s anti-Semitism. That’s what we discovered with amazement on October 7. I say it, my France hurts!”

But for Rabbi Samama, “aliyah will not be the solution.” “It’s not by leaving one ghetto for another that we will solve the problem.” For this, the Jews will have to come out of their slumber and become militants again. The time of comfort is over, but the cause of the Jews in France is not lost.”