A Frightening Look at the Rise of Anti-Semitism in France

by Guest Sun Jun 24, 2018 6:17 pm

Anti-Semitism is on the rise, and Americans need only look at their own commander-in-chief—a man willing to dub neo-Nazis “very fine people” and hire the likes of Steve Bannon—to witness that trajectory firsthand. Nowhere is this alarming trend felt more urgently, however, than in Europe, and particularly in France, home to the largest Jewish population on the continent (500,000), and fourth largest in the world, and the location of numerous attacks against Jews in recent years, be it the stabbing death of Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, in her Paris apartment, or the 2015 slaughter of four Jewish patrons of a kosher “Hypercacher” that was linked to the Charlie Hebdo killings. With an average of nearly two attacks against Jews per week, France has become the epicenter of our era’s new anti-Jewish hostility.

While there are many possible reasons for this upswing in French hate, be it the rise of nationalist parties (like the right-wing National Rally, led by extremist Marine Le Pen) or the burgeoning number of radicalized Muslims in the country (who, according to one recent study, are generally the perpetrators of these crimes), there’s no longer any reasonable means of denying that it exists. Laura Fairrie’s Spiral, which is now playing in theaters, addresses this reality with few of the devices so common to modern non-fiction filmmaking. No stats are presented via functional title cards. Talking-head interviews with scholars and experts are wholly absent. And a single theory to explain this phenomena is never proffered. A term-paper documentary this is not.

Nonetheless, Fairrie’s film isn’t lacking a position. Opening vistas of landscapes spied out the windows of moving trains suggest the inexorable forward-momentum of anti-Semitism in Europe, as well as the reaction with which some have met it. For the Durans, a lack of security has compelled them to abandon the French flat they’ve called their own for the past decade in order to relocate to Israel. It’s a move that none of them are happy to undertake, in large part because they all admit they feel more connected to France (their native land) than to their destination. Yet thanks to horror stories such as one told by their oldest son—in which a friend was being beaten by attackers, and a passerby, upon hearing that the assaulted kid was Jewish, told the thugs, “Well carry on, that’s fine”—they now feel as if their backs are up against a wall.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/a-frightening-look-at-the-rise-of-anti-semitism-in-france?ref=home