France is coming down hard on racism, but what actually constitutes a racist act in France and who are its perpetrators? Jeremy Landor investigates in Paris Alain Menargues, journalist, Middle East specialist and deputy director general and director of broadcasting at Radio France Internationale (RFI), is the latest of a series of journalists and writers to fall foul of the unwritten prohibition in France of criticising Israel. Yet he is also a controversial figure who does not quite fit into the shining armour of a defender of free speech. Menargues resigned from his management job at RFI, which is controlled by the French Foreign Ministry, on 18 October after journalist unions condemned his statement that labelled "Israel as a racist state". The statement came during an RFI broadcast on 30 September in which Menargues was explaining the content of his latest book, Le Mur de Sharon ó Sharon's Wall. It gives a historical explanation of Israel's separation wall as the creation of a Jewish ghetto ó rather than the more usual explanation of it as a Palestinian ghetto. On 12 October Menargues participated in a broadcast on an extreme right-wing Catholic radio station, Radio Courtoisie, which sympathises with the openly racist political party, the Front National. He explained his historical understanding of the reasons why Israel is building the wall. "I was very shocked by the wall. I went to see some people, some rabbis, some politicians. If you look at Leviticus in the Torah, what does it say? It is the separation of the pure and the impure. A Jew, in order to be able to pray, has to be pure. Anything which disturbs this purity has to be separated. Read Leviticus, it is written in black and white. Which was the first ghetto in the world? It was in Venice. Who created it? It was the Jews themselves, to separate themselves from the rest. Afterwards, Europe put them in ghettos." The contentious argument that Israel is building what has been called the "apartheid wall" for religious reasons, also implies that European Jews are the authors of their own misfortune. This carries serious implications for ethnic minorities everywhere. It is also a diversion from the real colonial reasons behind the wall. Menargues plays straight into the hands of those who want to paint every critic of Israel as an anti-Semite. Michel Diard, an official of the journalist union SNJ-CGT, told Al-Ahram Weekly, "no journalist worthy of the name would speak on Radio Courtoisie." At a press conference on 15 October a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that it shared the views of the journalists at RFI, that Menargues' assessment was "unacceptable". This is not entirely surprising since the French government is currently courting Israel. Foreign minister, Michel Barnier, has met Sharon for the first time since the bitter row between the two governments. This was a row which saw Israel using the spectre of rising anti-Semitism in France to try and weaken France's position as the apparent protector of Yasser Arafat in the EU. President Chirac's image was hoisted onto the mastheads of Israeli newspapers as "the face of anti-Semitism" and Israel claimed that 30,000 French Jews were about to escape to the security of Israel. Most of those targeted by supporters of Israel in France have been easier to defend than Menargues, with his off-the-wall analysis and lack of revulsion for the far right. Pascal Boniface, director of the Institute for Research on International Relations (IRIS) was forced to leave the hierarchy of the main French opposition party, the Parti Socialiste (PS) after publication of a book in which he challenged the block criticising Israel. Daniel Mermet, presenter of a popular radio programme on France Inter "Là-bas, si j'y suis" which specialises in giving a voice to communities suffering poverty and repression, was taken to court in June 2001 after he interviewed Palestinians. He won the case against a prosecution which claimed some of the broadcast messages from listeners were anti-Semitic. It was meant to scare off other programme-makers. The comic, Dieudonne, popular for targeting extremists of all types ó including Catholic and Muslim ó illustrated one of his sketches on Jewish extremists with a Nazi salute to Israel in protest against the massacre of Palestinians and as a result has been banned from major venues ever since. It is likely to become even more difficult to criticise Israel in France if the government takes the Rufin report seriously. The interior minister, Dominique de Villepin, commissioned the report by the former deputy director of Médicins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Jean-Christophe Rufin, on The struggle against racism and anti-Semitism. The finding, which made the headlines last week, was that "radical anti-Zionism" of the kind that "legitimates the armed struggle of the Palestinians" could lead to anti-Semitic acts. During his research, Rufin found that only a "relatively small number" of perpetrators' acts that had been described as "anti-Semitic", were of North African origin. Previously it had been assumed by the media and many commentators that the rise in anti-Semitism was related to the Palestine-Israel conflict and it must therefore be laid at the door of youth of Maghrebi descent who sympathise with the Palestinians. His conclusion is that the "new anti-Semitism" is linked to "social precarity" ó in other words, the insecurity which comes from poverty and unemployment ó rather than identification with the Palestinian cause. Nevertheless, Rufin makes a link between "identifying with the Palestinian struggle, perhaps converting to Islam, and taking part in anti-Semitic attacks." Rufin identifies another type of anti-Semitism which he associates with the left. "This modern anti-Semitism is born where anti-colonial struggles, anti-capitalist globalisation, anti-racism, third worldism and ecology meet. It is strongly represented in the far-left anti-globalisation movement and the greens." So according to Rufin, the movement which is committed to social justice and anti-racism is dangerously racist ó but only against Jews. "By legitimating the Palestinian armed struggle whatever its form," radical anti-Zionism, "amalgamated with ideas to which young people are sensitive," such as ecology and poverty in developing countries, "tends to legitimate actions committed in France itself". Especially when small farmers in France protest violently against globalisation, suggests Rufin, and these protests "turn into support for the leadership of Fatah." This is when young people who have little to hope for may start to attack Jews, he tells us. Rufin told Le Monde, "it is a kind of warning which says careful what you say and what you do when you attack a country like Israel."
