Islamophobia and racism are alive and kicking in France, writes Salil Sarkar from Paris France's Social Affairs Minister Jean-Luis Borloo pulls no punches. He pointed out that unemployment among the country's youth has risen from 15 to 22 per cent in the past 15 years. And in what the minister calls the "700 sensitive zones" -- suburbs housing immigrants and their descendants -- joblessness among the less-than- 25 year olds has skyrocketed from 25 to 55 per cent. Meanwhile, racist attacks, the minister added, have shot up from 180 a year in 1999 to 800 today. Africans and Arabs are often victims of police repression, sometimes violent, but their sorry lot hardly draws media attention. Instead, they are systematically blamed for real or imagined anti- Semitic aggression. Ministers, politicians, intellectuals all unite in vociferous condemnation when a Jewish person or property are targeted. On 9 July, a young non- Jewish woman lodged a complaint to the police about being attacked. She claimed she was robbed by six Africans and Arabs, in a suburban morning train near Paris, who drew swastikas on her belly. In the wake of this incident, a verbal maelstrom of insults and abuse were hurled at immigrants. "Nazis from the suburbs" shrieked the pro-Israel League Against Racism and Anti-semitism. Without checking facts, French President Jacques Chirac expressed outrage at such "anti-semitic" action, recommending severe punishment. "For 13 minutes," wrote the Paris daily Le Monde, "Marie was Jewish in the eyes of six bad boys of African origin." "The Jewish community lives in fear ... anti-Semitic aggression is on the rise", chimed in Socialist Party bigwig Ségolène Royal, a French presidential hopeful. Barely two days after the alleged aggression, police inquiry revealed that the complaint was pure fabrication. No apologies were made to France's immigrant community, with the exception of editorials in two dailies. Indeed, raising anti-immigrant and pro-Israel hysteria is becoming a national pastime among the elite. The wonder is that, despite the racist tom-tom beating, the average French person generally keeps a cool head, displaying a maturity and tolerance rare among decision-makers and the media. Take former finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, another socialist hopeful for the country's top job. For him revelations that the "victim" had made up violence stories to nail Arabs and Africans hardly takes away from the fact that Jews in France are being attacked 20 times a week, by his extravagant count. True, racially-motivated violence is on the rise, but reliable numbers are hard to come by. France's national Consultative Commission on Human Rights says there have been more racist and anti-Jewish attacks in the first six months of 2004 than in the whole of 2003. For the first half of this year, says the Commission, there have been 207 racist attacks and 94 anti-Jewish aggressions against 128 and 47 respectively the previous year. Figures from France's interior ministry do not tally: 95 racist attacks and 135 anti-Semitic attacks in the first half 2003, as opposed to 92 and 127 all of last year. The trouble is some of the complaints of anti- Jewish violence or attacks on immigrants have proved fake. In March 2003, a Jewish woman student falsely complained of being assaulted by masked men calling her a "dirty Jew" and carving a Star of David into her arm. In December 2002, a 30-year old Tunisian was charged with beating up ticket checkers in a Marseille bus, but had to be released when the vehicle's internal video showed him beaten up by transport officials instead. More recently in Paris, it was revealed that a rabbi claiming to have been stabbed by a man crying Allahu Akbar had mutilated himself. Last year, a Talmudic school north of Paris was burned to the ground provoking strident accusations of anti-Semitism from commentators and politicians, but no evidence of it was ever found. In another case, police unmasked the head of the Zionist Federation of France who was sending himself anti-Jewish messages as proof he was being victimised. These days in France, statistics of racist and anti-Jewish violence are plentiful if suspect. But beatings, arbitrary detention and torture at the hands of the police are strangely absent from those lists. France's best-informed paper, the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé cites the very official Security Ethics Commission, a body monitoring illegitimate police violence. The commission notes that incidences of illicit police repression has tripled between 2001 and 2003. The commission's chair, veteran judge Pierre Truche expressed surprise at the predominance of Africans and foreigners among the victims. Le Canard Enchainé commented: "that is another example of tough repression unleashed against the poor by former French police minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Currently finance minister, he is openly challenging his party elder, president Jacques Chirac, for the country's top job. Sarkozy, as finance minister, visited Washington DC, last year to attend the World Bank group meetings. He found time to lunch with virulently pro-Israel lobby groups, received awards from them, and came back accusing France's former Socialist-led government of not doing enough to battle anti-Semitism. There are around seven million French citizens and permanent residents in France, who emigrated from the country's former colonies. As for the French Jewish community, they number about 400,000, many of whom support the establishment of a Palestinian state and fight for peace and justice in the Middle East. However, a minority that hovers around the staunchly pro-Likud Representative Council of Jewish Institutions (CRIF), has been running a campaign for France to line up behind Israel's government. The president of France-Israel, retired amiral Michel Darmon says, "for the last 10 years, France's Jewish community has been fighting the wrong battle". The enemy is not the far right, he says, "but France's foreign policy", which he and his friends deemed viciously anti-Israel. Writer and philosopher Pierre André Taguieff has written a book entitiled The New Judeophobia in which anti-capitalist globalisation activists, left- wingers, anti-zionists and Islamists are all lumped together in one bag as Jew haters. Do you all remember the murder of 12-year-old Mohammed Durra by Israeli soldiers? This happened at the beginning of the Second Intifada in the fall of 2002. The footage of the boy's shooting was taken by a Palestinian cameraman from France-2 TV, a channel headed in Israel by Charles Enderlin. Swamped by tons of hate mail from Zionists worldwide, Enderlin says, "some people have been openly trying to get me sacked". Back in France, prominent French geo-strategist Pascal Boniface had to resign from the Socialist Party, for recommending a more pacifist approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. In some sections of France's ruling class, notwithstanding the government's brave stance on Iraq, peace in Palestine remains a four-letter word. A few years ago, French writer Michel Houellebecq had the main character in his book Plateforme blurt out: "Every time I learn of a Palestinian terrorist, a Palestinian child, or a pregnant Palestinian woman, shot down by bullets in the Gaza strip, I quiver with enthusiasm". Vengeance (against Islam) does exist, Houellebecq explained to the media shortly afterwards.
