UK Feminists Against Antisemitism and Carroll Barry-Walsh, Lawyer/investigator specialising in financial investigations and whistleblowing, wrote this article.
Thinking before speaking is good advice and followed less often than it should be, especially by politicians, despite all the media training they receive. The first instant reaction - to a question or event - can be the most revealing of a person’s biases, about what they really think, about what they fear most. So it was with President Emmanuel Macron in his first statement following the attack in Trappes.
He said this:
“What happened today, I’ll say it is a turning point because it’s the first time there’s been a terrorist attack planned to kill our fellow citizens, our children, because of their skin colour or the religion attributed to them."
It goes without saying that what happened at Trappes was evil. It can and should be condemned without reservation. But what Macron said was wrong and offensive in two important ways. And what he did not say is also revealing.
It is not the first time there have been terrorist attacks in France targeted at people because of their skin colour or religion. Some examples.
-In 2015, the only woman murdered during the attack on Charlie Hebdo journalists was Elsa Cayat. Other women present were spared by the killers because, as they told them, “We don’t kill women". Elsa Cayat was Jewish and had received antisemitic death threats before her murder.
-Two days later, a kosher supermarket, Hyper Cacher in Porte de Vincennes, was attacked by an Islamist gunman who killed four Jewish men and held others hostage until the supermarket was stormed by the police and the hostages were rescued.
-In March 2012 in Toulouse, Mohammed Merah attacked a Jewish school with a gun, killing a rabbi, his two sons and the headmaster’s 8-year-old daughter, Myriam. She was a beautiful girl with long blonde hair. She tried to escape but stopped to pick up her school books. Merah caught up with her, seized her by her hair and shot her dead at point-blank range.
There have been plenty of other deliberate attacks on French Jews over the years.
-In the 1990’s, for instance, Algerian terrorists targeted a Jewish school as part of their bombing campaign.
Nor have Jews been the only targets of terrorist activity in France.
-In July 2016, Father Jacques Hamel, an 85-year-old priest, was attacked in his church as he was celebrating Mass and had his throat slit - an attack not just on a Christian priest but on, and during, the very essence of a ritual sacred to Christians.
Macron surely knows all this. Why then claim that what happened at Trappes was the first of its kind? He did not need to say this. The attack’s horrific nature did not need to be sexed up in any way. Saying this was - or could be seen as - offensive by suggesting that earlier similar attacks had been ignored or forgotten or were somehow less bad, as if there is a hierarchy of victims and some are more worthy of sympathy than others.
Did Macron not think for a moment how France’s Jewish community or the many other victims of terrorism over the years might feel at hearing his statement?
Little wonder that he later came out with a much more considered and impeccably well-drafted statement, which included the following:
“I also want to recall an essential truth and avoid any controversy: in recent years, our country has experienced attacks that targeted Christians because they were Christians and Jews because they were Jews."
But even here there is a refusal to confront an uncomfortable reality. One can see it clearly in the use of the use of passive, abstract language, devices often used to avoid saying clearly who the actors are.
“our country has experienced attacks that targeted Christians because they were Christians and Jews because they were Jews".
A country experiences storms and high winds and very high temperatures. It does not “experience attacks" as if they come out of the ether. Attacks don’t happen. They are thought of and planned and carried out. By people. Who choose to do them. They are not some sort of accident nor something over which no one has any control. France knows - even if its President dares not say this even now - that in many cases those attacks are motivated by political or religious ideology and, often, a combination of both.
Religion or race can be the reason a group of victims is chosen. It can also be the reason why a group - or members of it - chooses to become the perpetrator of such attacks.
France knows this all too well. It has experienced many attacks by people motivated by Islamist ideology, by hatred of France, by hatred of Jews or some of the minority or other communities living there. They are not the only such attacks to have happened, as Trappes shows, but they are a significant number of them.
Not saying this suggests denial and/or cowardice. It signals to those most likely to be victims of such attacks - not just terror attacks but other violent ones which do not meet the threshold of terrorism - that their suffering and pain do not matter as much. This is something that feminists will recognise. At a time of heightened sensitivity and an increase in violence, particularly in antisemitic, anti-Jewish violence and language, politicians have a special obligation to think carefully about the words they use. Sensitivity matters, but honesty even more so.
Macron’s second statement repeats his claim that this attack marks “a turning point" for France. Why this attack? Why not all the previous ones, many of which killed far more people?
Let me suggest another turning point.
At the Parisian kosher supermarket in January 2015, one of its employees, Lassana Bathily, hid four customers in a storage room, managed to escape and gave information to the police which helped them plan their rescue attempt. He is a Muslim born in Mali who had lived in France for 9 years and started his citizenship application in 2014. This was fast-tracked in 2015 following what was described as his heroism. He said he was not a hero, and when asked why he did what he did he said this:
“Mon coeur a parlé. Et j’ai réagi." (My heart spoke. So I acted.)
He went on:
I would do the same again, because I was following my heart."
It is as good an example of what good character is as you’re likely to find.
In the recent violence, it has been reported that French students are singing a rap song (“MRH" by French rapper BORO700, released in July this year) which glorifies Islamist jihadists, including Mohammed Merah, the man who murdered 8-year-old Myriam in Toulouse in 2012.
Three years later, the French state honoured a 24-year-old Muslim, working for a Jewish firm, who saved lives. Jewish lives. Eleven years after that, French students, who would have been younger than Myriam when she was murdered, glorify in song Muslim men who murder children. Jewish children.
Some turning points are turns for the worse.