Iran has been openly funding and training actual terrorist organizations, as recognized by many countries. If fighting that is terrorism to you, then I’m not sure what you’re doing here on the enemy’s social media…
Switching over to another ecommerce provider is a massive undertaking. It’s like if someone asked you to move your residence because the smoke from your bbq hurts their lungs
> we haven't yet seen Belgian commandos coming to kidnap people in France or Luxembourgers launching rockets
Not all hate crimes involve rockets.
I know a few Jews who grew up in France, and all of them report antisemitic incidents that happened to them personally, some physically violent. I’m talking mid-day paris, not some otherwise sketchy circumstances. They all fear being identified as jews in the streets of Paris.
I have no idea how universal these observations are and cringe at things like "every X I know in Y sees Z" but I'll add I have friends in similar positions in France and the atmosphere there seems significantly worse than in the US. I don't believe I have any friends friends in Europe that are openly supportive of the current Israeli government.
Of course, that's not all Kushner said; he also apparently cast support for Palestinian statehood as antisemitic, which is obviously inflammatory. The more grounded in fact concerns about European antisemitism are, the more unfortunate Kushner's statement is.
That's sounds like an exaggeration: most jewish people won't deal with any type of discrimination simply because they aren't identifiable as jewish.
Regardless, antisemitism exists in France and elsewhere. It's just not the case that France doesn't do anything about it. These crimes are punished. Maybe not as severely as one would hope, but by French standards, it's pretty serious.
But as parent comment mentioned, the current situation has little to do with that.
> That's sounds like an exaggeration: most jewish people won't deal with any type of discrimination simply because they aren't identifiable as jewish.
As an identity, yes they still receive a lot of hate.
As individuals unless they wear distincrive signs like a kipa they will probably receive less hate and discrimination than say...people with red/ginger hair which is still super common. If they are transexuals and gay black redhead jews with rumanian nationality and and live with an asian partner, they are fucked.
And of the ones identifiable as Jewish, the ones where it's just because they wear a yarmulke or something similar probably also don't have problems.
And then there are going to be the ones festooned with Stars of David, and pushing for every conflict they can possibly get into so they can claim antisemitism. Those? Those I'd believe having problems, but they're not having problems because they're Jewish - they're having problems because they're assholes.
Is there antisemitism in France? I'm positive there is. Is there anti-Muslim sentiment as well? I'm positive there is. (side note, aren't middle-eastern Muslims generally considered Semites as in descendants of Shem?)
> (side note, aren't middle-eastern Muslims generally considered Semites as in descendants of Shem?)
Arabs and Jews are both Semitic (in the sense of speaking Semitic languages and having Levantine origins), but the word “antisemitism” refers specifically to Jew hatred. This is mostly a historical quirk of 19th century Germans trying to come up with a more scientific sounding phrase than Judenhass.
(Also, to be pedantic: there are non-Semitic middle-eastern Muslims, as well as semitic middle-eastern non-Muslims/Jews. It turns out that “semitic” itself isn’t a super useful category, which is why “antisemitism” should really be read as a single lexeme rather than “hatred of all semites”.)
> aren't middle-eastern Muslims generally considered Semites as in descendants of Shem?
This has the same energy as “technically Elon Musk is African-American”.
Sometimes words have come to mean something specific that doesn’t precisely correspond to their literal components or etymology, and pretending not to understand this just impedes communication.
But I'll stick by my position that for a lot of people feeling put-upon it's because they're generally unpleasant not because of their ethnic, religious or other background but because of their personalities.
Personally, I'd call the current Israeli government one of the "sovereign citizens" of the world - and while there's a certain "duh" element to that because indeed nations are sovereign, the connotation I'm trying to get at here is that they have the same "doesn't play well with others" energy of the US 'sovcits'
Counterpoint: all my french Jewish friends have reported no such thing. The group is not large, but relatively diverse, spread across 2-3 almost disjoint circles.
French Jew here. Antisemitism exists in France, like everywhere in Europe - we have some history about that going back at least a millennium. But Israel's propaganda interpretation of what antisemitism is and how much of it exists is laughably exaggerated... And it is used as a pretext by the far right to discriminate against Muslims.
The French far right only cares about anti-Semitism, women's rights and even LGBT+ rights when it allows them to bash immigrants and Muslims.
In a bizarre twist, activists from the far-right National Rally party set up a fake LGBT+ association that marched in the Paris Gay Pride parade with anti-Palestinian slogans.
It was such a mess that they were protected by three rows of riot police.
You'd have to be very naive to believe that such false and hateful people could be allies to anyone.
We sometimes make fun of Americans, but we also have some great bingo cards too.
How would people they are passing on the street know their names though? Even then, not every Jewish person has a Jewish sounding name, just like not every Jewish person is visually identifiable as such.
Kushner's piece in the WSJ [1] makes the claim that the French government's recognition of Palestine and public statements "haranguing Israel" has uniquely exacerbated this and asserts October 7th is the genesis of this behavior, with no mention of the behavior that Israel is being "harangued" for, which your comment seems to downplay.
The letter is a clear attempt to bully an ally into US style speech suppression by using someone that has both official position and a personal Presidential imprimatur.
This Kushner is a convicted felon and a major crook. He only got where he is because his son married Trump's daughter, and then he got pardoned, and then he gave some money to Trump.
It's insane that anyone listens to what he has to say. He should just be slapped in the face and sent home.
Not to minimise modern French antisemitism, it has deep roots which transcend this immediate political crisis. I am sure you know this. Dreyfus wasn't an origin event, antisemitism had been rife in French culture for ages before. I stop at that point because there is at least some political continuity to turn of the 19th century politics, the downfall of the third Republic aside.
I see modern day French antisemitism as a bizarre union of right wing echt French, le pen-type and modern era Islamic migration from Francophone former French colonies. Former enemies united in a common hatred.
Absolutely! But my (very implicit) point of substance is that for a US ambassador to declare fatwa NOW rather than at about 2000 points in the past, also not forgetting deep historical American institutional antisemitism, it's just bizarre. It's opportunist political theatre.
I don't think it's bizarre; I think there's been a step function in overt antisemitism in Europe, which is what he's seizing on. That he's an awful and ineffective messenger for that concern shouldn't blind us to the legitimacy of the underlying claim.
There has indeed been a step function. Fuelled from Russia and Iran amongst others. For example, Australia has just expelled the Iranian ambassador (the first expulsion of diplomats since WWII) for paying criminals to firebomb synagogues.
France's problems are a function both of history, and push politics. Some of it is endogenous, some of it is externally driven. I have no doubt the same is true in Germany, Netherlands, the UK. Sure, an underlying mass migration pressure is feeding this, but many of the migrants in france pass through, seeking better times in the UK. The ones who stay, are in the main francophone, and appear to bring with them weaker guard lines against radicalism. Thats a huge bummer.
He isn't signalling this because of conviction, he's signalling this because his government wants him to, to continue to back the Netenyahu government. I wouldn't cease trade or relations with France or any EU country on these grounds, its a political dispute about recognition of Palestine, not a statement for or against antisemitism.
You know, and I know, after this evil war ends, Netenyahu is in big domestic trouble. There will probably be another weak, rightist dominated government but the court system will catch up with Bibi. Now .. what does that parallel in the USA?
there has been antisemitism historically all over Christendom and Islamdom (in a similar way to the Jews of Jewdom declaring themselves God's chosen people). Viewed in that context, it's an error to describe American antisemitism as deep, it was always shallower than all the rest. As a result, America has a proportionately very high Jewish population, and with the 20th century decline of "class based" discrimination (generally in the form of WASP-control of social institutions) Jews in the US have flourished and appear at very high rates throughout the knowledge economy meritocracy.
