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The A-Word
Extraordinary article on French anti-semitism in the Guardian earlier this week. The correspondent talks to Jewish victims of anti-Semitic attacks in the tough Paris suburb of Sarcelles, reports on rumours of Jews leaving France for safer lives in Canada, the USA and Israel, describes the mounting sensation of oppression that even middle-class Jews are experiencing in the country after the torture and murder of Ilan Halimi... but nowhere does the journalist mention who is actually carrying out these attacks.
A foreign reader could be forgiven for thinking that France was gripped by Dreyfuss trial style anti-Semitism. Or gangs of far-right skinheads were smashing up Jewish-owned shops and attacking children. No. France's foreign policy establishment is notoriously pro-Arab and anti-Israel. Far-right nutters have been blamed for vandalising a couple of Jewish cemeteries. But the overwhelming majority of attacks, whether verbal or physical, on France's Jews have come from Arab youths.
The Guardian's hack delicately tiptoes round the issue: Some Sarcelle Jews "have relations who speak Arabic." A footnote reports that around 600,000 Jews live in France, which is "also home to the continent's largest Muslim population, at 5 million." But nothing on the source of the attacks.
Is this dishonest reporting, or just the Guardian's latest attempt at being colour-blind? In the 1980s, left-leaning hacks rightly questioned why tabloids noted a mugger's race in their crime reports - is this what causes the reporter to drop any mention of Arab anti-Semitism? Back then, a mugger's skin colour was incidental to the crime - but the religion and culture of France's anti-Semites is crucial to understanding the situation.
EURSOC suspects that readers, even Guardian readers, can tell when their intelligence is being insulted. Just as when the BBC reports on the carnage "militants" have caused by setting off bombs in nightclubs and pizza parlours in Israel, the public knows the broadcaster is talking about terrorists. The Guardian cannot bring itself to name the cause of France's latest crisis, but its readers know exactly who or what is behind it. Why this discretion?
Contrast the Guardian's pussyfooting with a much more honest report in the Independent on anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala. If even the drearily PC Indie can mention the A-word, can't the Guardian?
