Yet when discussing continuities and discontinuities between antisemitism past and present, Desbois distinguishes that the leading force behind antisemitism in France today is not native French, but rather immigrant Muslim communities. Contrary to common comparisons of modern antisemitism with Nazism’s rise in the 1930s, he states that the “story does not repeat itself. We are in a new situation.” While Adolf Hitler is dead, jihadist groups like ISIS have “new ideologies that say not only is it good, but it is something good in front of God, to kill Jews.”
Desbois stated that the “problem unfortunately is all from radical Islam, the violence. It is not publicly polite to say that but it is true…only the extreme right speaks about that.” “If you go into Paris you will not find an old, Catholic lady kicking you in the streets,” he noted, a message underlined by his slides citing jihadist killings of Jews in Toulouse (2012), Brussels (2014), and Paris (2015).
When I was in France about 4 years we found a man who was severely beaten in nearby park at 8 am. There was a police station nearby and we went there to get him help. Speaking in French, I told the policeman about the man, his injuries and where to find him. He stared bankly at me. I started to repeat it again. He stopped me and said I understand you, I just don’t know what you want me to do about it and told me to go away. They have lost their humanity.
Artist Michelle Vezina Peterlin responding to a report about a Jewish girl beaten in a suburb of Lyon, France when she was seen wearing on a necklace a Star of David.
“I’d like the crisis to come to an end so we can go back home” (0:48).
Six months is not a “crisis”.
Six months is a tragedy.
Governments had launched plans for a push-back for September 2013, but as has happened about six years ago in Somalia, the Al Qaeda-type forces (Al Shabaab in Somalia; Ansar Al-Dine in Mali) have wasted little time flexing their muscles in a weak state.
Ever hard to see starting out, “jihadists” have a way of becoming seen as they become entrenched.
One may note that in either space, Somalia or Mali, or elsewhere, if they pick up hard assets in machinery, such become visible and more easily draw retributive fire and associated thumping, but the same have the option of then responding with a lower visibility, Iraq-style, brush fire type of insurgency, provided redoubts and hideouts of one sort or another.
“Paris has already acknowledged that the rebels have turned out to be better armed than originally thought.” (0:48)
Later, same video with reference to the revolution in Libya:
” . . . a lot of the ones trained by the U.S. defected when they were needed most, taking guns, and trucks, and their new found skills to the enemy in the heat of battle. . . .”
So here we go.
NATO (unintentionally) armed and trained them, and today, with unrepentant and stung Malian citizens ready to fight, with French boots on the ground and welcomed, and with African forces in training, perhaps God Almighty himself has devised a demonstration for so unnatural a turn in humanity.
Deliberately ambivalent and ambiguous in the above statement — an indirect comment on language — I nonetheless wish the French, the Mali, and all of North Africa much luck and God’s grace in shutting down “Al Ansar” — as far from The Answer or any answer as can be (and the true translation “The Helpers” has a merciless and remorseless absurdity to it) — and the malevolent obscenity they have put before the witness of humankind.
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