PARIS: Some evoke a “break”, others a “tear”. Within the French Jewish community, the largest in Europe, anxieties and questions about the crisis in Israel are expressed more and more openly – and publicly -.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu certainly announced on Monday a “pause” in the process of adopting the justice reform which has thrown hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets for three months. But the crisis is far from over.
Where is Israel going?
Within the French Jewish diaspora, often classified on the right although very heterogeneous, and traditionally cautious for fear of being accused of “double allegiance” or of unleashing anti-Semitism, voices are rising to criticize the policy of the Netanyahu government. , the farthest right in the country’s history.
Renowned for its unconditional support for Israel, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif) called on Monday to “suspend” judicial reform and to “restore calm and dialogue with all of society as quickly as possible”.
The press release, however measured, immediately led to a flood of reactions on twitter, the Crif being asked to mind his own business, or on the contrary being hailed for his position.
“Israel needs more than ever to hear the voices of the Jewish diaspora,” insists Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur, for whom what is currently being played out fundamentally affects the Jewish and democratic character of the Jewish state.
“The argument ‘it does not concern you, you do not live in Israel’ is inadmissible”, protests this figure of the liberal movement. She speaks of “breaking” and denounces the “ideological kidnapping” of Judaism by the “messianic nationalists” now in office in the Netanyahu government.
Seesaw
“The Anglo-Saxon diaspora had already taken the lead, but the French Jewish community, which has long refused to criticize the Israeli government, allows itself to do so today. Something has moved, many feel the duty to speak “, says Ms. Horvilleur.
In a column published a few days ago in Le Monde, businessman Maurice Lévy, chairman of the supervisory board of the Publicis group, urged Benyamin Netanyahu “not to fracture the Jewish community throughout the world” and to ” preserve Israeli democracy”.
Before him, a collective of intellectuals and artists whose philosopher Raphael Zagury-Orly warned against “the sneaky advent of an illiberal autocratic regime” in Israel.
The diaspora maintains complicated relations with the Jewish state, often passionate.
“We all have a link with Israel, and all the Jews of France are a bit on the lookout, so everything is moving all the time there”, smiles Vanessa, teacher in a Jewish school in Nice (south-east), who, “very religious”, admits however not to follow the crisis caused by the judicial reform.
“Israel is a country that I admire, which makes my head spin,” says Yael Sibony, a 50-year-old teacher in Aix-en-Provence (South). “But what is happening is frightening. It is a country where you are supposed to feel protected, but democracy is threatened, lines are being crossed,” she laments.
In these “lines” that she enumerates, there is not only contested judicial reform. The repeated racist outbursts against the Palestinians by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and the events in Huwara at the end of February – settlers had attacked a Palestinian village to avenge the death of two of them – marked for some Jews a ” toggle”.
On France Culture radio on Saturday, historian Elie Barnavi, former Israeli ambassador to France, believed that, even if the Palestinian question is not a priority for the demonstrators in Israel, “behind the judicial reform, there is everything a lot of questions that were dormant and are surfacing. Nothing will be the same.”
