Friday, October 24, 2008

French "Strong" About Antisemitism? Naw.

French Police Break Up Attack on Two Orthodox Jews

French police arrested five youths, ages 16 to 21, for attacking two young boys wearing kippot [skullcaps] in the Paris suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine Wednesday night. A 40-year-old man and his 18-year-old son were also beaten, as they tried to defend their two nephews against the gang.

The attackers shouted anti-Semitic insults, according to the French umbrella organization CRIF, but French police said only that there is a "strong suspicion" of anti-Semitism in the attack. The victims were treated in a local hospital for light wounds.


The CRIF communique added:-

Police detained five youths aged between 16 and 21 after the aggression which took place in Vitry-sur-seine, southeast of Paris.

After they came in defense of their two nephews hunted down by a band of 10 youths, a 40-year-old man and his 18-year-old son were severely beaten. According to CRIF, the aggressors have shouted anti-Semitic insults.

“When police arrived on the spot, the aggressors threatened the two teenagers and shouted anti-Semitic slogans,” CRIF said in a communiqué.

The Jewish body said it was clear that the incident "had nothing to do with conflict between rival bands."


That bit about "bands" is a reference to an earlier report of Steven Erglander of the New York Times (where else?), formerly its chief correspondent in Israel, which tried to disguise the French antisemitism:-

On Saturdays, during the Jewish Sabbath, youth gangs, including gangs of young Jews, migrate to the park of Buttes Chaumont and squabble over territory. Sometimes the insults and battles that begin there are finished later on the Rue Petit, Morad Chahrine said, who directs the J2P social and cultural center.

"It's less about anti-Semitism than fights among gangs of youths, who create alliances of one district against another," Chahrine said, noting the influence of American movies on the styles and habits of the gangs. "This idea of identity of territory starts with economic reasons. This is the youngest and poorest arrondissement in Paris, with a lot of unemployment, and that explains a lot."

Dominique Sopo, president of the group SOS-Racisme, which works against discrimination, said, "We're faced with a layer cake, a logic of territorialization."
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And next, we'll hear that Hitler was a frustrated painter whose work was savaged by Jewish art critics.

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