Paris Intifada Repercussions?

Even as the riots in Paris continue with no real end in sight, the media is not clear on who it is that is rioting. According to John Lichfield of The Independent:

Is this France’s intifada? Do the riots have wider significance for the West?

Talk of an intifada is absurdly misleading. Firstly, the rioters are far from being all Muslim (although more than half are from Islamic backgrounds). Second, they have no sense of political or religious identity and no political demands. Their allegiance is to their quartier and their gang. Their main demand, so far as can be established, is to be left alone by police and the Interior Minister, Nicolas Sark-ozy, to continue with their life of low-level violence and drugs trading. The wider significance is therefore not politico-religious but a warning of what happens if problems of deprivation and violence are allowed to fester.

On the other hand, Captain’s Quarters writes about indications that the riots in Paris are very much an intifada:

The riots in France have little connection to the Islamist terrorist offensive against the West, if the American media coverage gives any indication. However, alert CQ reader Mr. Michael points out that both American and French media sources warned of coordinated Islamist action against France in the weeks before the riot. Agence France Presse even had a quote from the maligned Nicolas Sarkozy noting the imminent nature of the threat in its 9/27 dispatch:

An Algerian Islamist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), has issued a call for action against France which it describes as “enemy number one”, intelligence officials said Tuesday.

“The only way to teach France to behave is jihad and the Islamic martyr,” the group’s leader Abu Mossab Abdelwadoud, also own as Abdelmalek Dourkdal, was quoted as saying in an Internet message earlier this month.

“France is our enemy number one, the enemy of our religion, the enemy of our community,” he was quoted as saying. … Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday that the risk of terrorist attack in France is “at a very high level… There are cells operating on our territory.”

Either way, no matter who is behind the riots, where does this leave the Jewish community in Paris? The riots started in Clichy-sous-Bois, and as Gateway Pundit reminds us:

One of the last times Cliche was in the news, in October 2001, molotov cocktails were thrown at the Jewish Synagogue, a non-descript building during Kol Nidre services. In August 2002, the synagogue was attacked again.

And given this background and the kind of anti-semitism that Jews have been suffering in France, how does the Jewish community in France feel about the ongoing riots?

After a half-decade surge in anti-Semitic attacks and a long history of troubled treatment of Jews, [Paule H.] Levy (of France's Radio Communite Juive) added that the recent violence is "the first time in French history that it's not a Jewish problem." She continued, "In the mind of the French people, it's not a Jewish problem. The Jewish community is not in this story, and that's a very good thing."

"Thank God it is a phenomenon that has roots in the lack of integration of the the population," said European Jewish Congress secretary-general Serge Cwajgenbaum, himself French. "It's societal, it's economical, it's educational. It has nothing to do with any other subject or matter. It's a social phenomenon and the government must take the necessary measures to bring peace back and take the necessary steps to integrate the population. I really hope this will not affect any particular group of citizens in France, and hopefully not the Jews."

Though last Friday a projectile was flung at a synagogue outside Paris, causing some minor damage but no injuries, Jewish officials stressed that the Jewish community has not been targeted and is only nominally more concerned than others.

Security at Jewish institutions, for instance, has not been beefed up more than at non-Jewish places, according to David Roche, general manager of the Jewish Agency in France and Europe. But he said he was surprised that Jews aren't expressing more concern about the implications of the lawlessness that has prevailed in France for almost two weeks.

Apparently the opinion of Jews who are in the middle of the violence, and have experienced that violence first hand, really do see this as an issue of unassimilated--and angry--immigrants. Let's just hope that the Jewish community there is not being overly optimistic and a bit naïve.

Meanwhile, what does all this mean for Israel? According to Caroline Glick:

One could ask why Israel should care what happens in France. Given France's traditional and rather obscene hostility towards Israel, a certain level of good old-fashioned schadenfreude would seem justified. But the fact of the matter is that Israel has two reasons to care about the future of France. First, five years into this global jihad we see that while Muslim terrorists or militants in Ramallah, Paris, Jakarta, New York, New Dehli, Tikrit, Amsterdam, London, Teheran, Umm el-Fahm and Beslan may not speak to each other directly, they are certainly aware of one another's actions and successes. And were France to fall, all of us would feel the aftershocks.

Secondly, if France begins to assert its authority and responsibility for unassimilated Arabs and Muslims in France, perhaps Israel will be inspired to do the same for our Arab minority in Israel and Judea and Samaria, and thus move our country from a position of policy paralysis and defeatism to one of movement and strength.

So if the violence is just the anger of immigrants, the Jews of France will be relatively safe and it is mostly a French issue.

However, if this really is the makings of a French Intifada, then the stakes are high, both for French Jews and Israel.

Back to John Lichfield:

When and how will the riots end?

In tears or in rain. It is a miracle no one has died since the first two boys. A tragedy might bring the kids to their senses. Or it might not. Police, meanwhile, have been praying for a downpour, which has usually ended outbreaks in the past. The forecast for this week is fine and dry all over France.

Well, as long as it's the time of year to pray for rain anyway...

Crossposted at Israpundit

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