As for the topics of the French Jews, please refer particularly to my previous postings (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20120320)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20140521)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20140718)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20140910)(http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/20150108).(Lily)
Algemeiner(http://www.algemeiner.com)
(1)Terror Outrages Deepen Fear Among French Jews, ‘Fanatical Islamism Always Targets the Jewish Community,’ Says Jewish Leader , 9 January 2015
by Anica Pommeray
Paris, January 9 – French Jews watched today’s two terrorist outrages in Paris, one of which targeted a kosher supermarket, with a deepening sense of fear.
French TV channel France 2 showed images of dozens of hostages fleeing the scene, including one holding an infant, shortly after the police operation to end the siege at the supermarket was launched.
Speaking on RTL, a French radio station, Roger Cukierman, President of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF,) said he was not surprised to hear that the Jewish community was being targeted. “Fanatical Islamism always targets the Jewish community,” he said. “This attack took place two days before a nationwide rally will be held to demonstrate our national unity and defend democracy. We are targets like all French citizens are now targets.”
Following this week’s brutal massacre at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, CRIF held an emergency meeting on Thursday with a number of Jewish representatives in order to discuss the measures French authorities must take to counter the country’s mounting anti-Semitism.
The siege at the kosher supermarket in the eastern Paris neighborhood of Porte de Vincennes revived painful memories for Paris’ Jewish community – in 1982, the bombing of the Goldenberg restaurant on the famous Rue des Rosiers of the city’s Marais neighbourhood left six dead and 22 wounded. As a precaution, earlier today police ordered shops to close along the Rue des Rosiers, which is located 2.5 miles from Porte de Vincennes.
In a sign of the vulnerability of other Jewish targets in France, the SPCJ (Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive) reported on Thursday that a projectile hit the window of a synagogue located in the capital’s 19th arrondissement, and that police security was reinforced in the area.
Joël Mergui, another prominent communal leader who heads the Consistoire Central Israélite de France, declared on Friday that he was “horrified by what was happening in the country.” Interviewed by the daily newspaper 20Minutes, Mergui said: “We are living a French September 11…radical Islamism is attacking free speech and the Jewish community.”
Asked whether French Jews should be particularly cautious at this time, Mergui responded: “The Jewish community has been cautious for some years now. But we ask people to be even more careful now and I asked the Prime Minister to reinforce security measures.”
Shimon Samuels, the Paris-based European Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, declared after today’s events: “The Jewish community feels itself on the edge of a seething volcano. A culture of excuse exonerates the perpetrators as ‘disaffected, alienated, frustrated, unemployed.’ No other group of frustrated unemployed has resorted to such behavior. Until politicians and media define the problem as Jihadism, remote-controlled from mosques in France and not only the Middle East, the cancer will not be isolated and destroyed.”
Earlier on Friday, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat called his Paris counterpart Anne Hidalgo to express his condolences following the Charlie Hebdo shooting. “Jerusalem residents understand and share your grief…Everyone should understand that the brutal attack that took place in Paris is not an isolated act but part of a global terrorist campaign”, Barkat told Hidalgo, according to French Jewish website JSSNews. Hidalgo said she was “touched” by the phone call.
(2)Responding to Paris Terror Outrages, US Jews Highlight Centrality of Anti-Semitism to Islamist Ideology , 9 January 2015
by Ben Cohen
American Jewish organizations responded to today’s fresh terrorist outrages by highlighting the profound danger posed by Islamist extremism and the need for western governments to adopt a coherent strategy in the face of an ongoing threat.
“The world can no longer pretend that Islamist fundamentalists consist of a few isolated cells,” declared Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Founder and Dean and Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “They have millions of adherents around the world of Muslim communities. These horrors will not end until our political leaders come up with a global plan to identify, root out and destroy the cancer of Islamist extremism and until responsible leaders – religious and secular – go on the offensive against their co-religionists who murder and maim innocents in the name of Allah.”
The Anti-Defamation League pointed out the centrality of anti-Semitism to Islamist ideology. “The attacks on Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher store are linked by the perpetrators’ ideology, not just their acquaintance,” said ADL National Director Abraham Foxman. “Islamic extremism is a common enemy of Jews and democratic states. That message needs to be heard and internalized by governments and mainstream society.”
Foxman added: “Anti-Semitism is at the core of Islamic extremist ideology, interwoven with its hatred of basic democratic freedoms, and continues to motivate adherents around the world. The packaging of anti-Semitic narratives has radicalized followers and influenced numerous international and domestic extremists with tragic results.”
The American Jewish Committee called for stepped up efforts to combat Islamist terrorism in France. “What happened over the past 48 hours was a shock to the entire French nation,” said Simone Rodan-Benazquen, director of AJC Paris. “It was our 9/11.”
Rodan-Benzaquen continued: “Hatred of Jews never ends with Jews. Radical Islamists have struck violently, from the murders at a Jewish school in Toulouse two years ago, to repeated incidents of violence against Jews and synagogues in Paris, to the vicious rape of a Jewish woman in her own home, and today’s assault on a kosher supermarket in the middle of Paris.”
Conference of Presidents leaders Robert Sugarman and Malcolm Hoenlein urged western governments to make “a total commitment to bring to bear all the resources, both public and private, to end the scourge that has taken so many lives and hurt many more. The urgency to confront the Islamist extremist infrastructure is underscored by the presence of the many hundreds of young French fighters in Syria who are being trained to kill and carry out barbaric acts.”
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