Le Nouveau Normal - Not Exactly

Le Nouveau Normal

The Toulouse shootings are macabre and tragic, but in the end a banal and fading version of extremism.

Above, the title and sub-title to an article by Justin Vaisse, in the March 22nd edition of Foreign Policy.

And the point?

But let's not jump to conclusions: The shootings reveal exactly nothing new about global terrorism nor French society -- they simply confirm that even the strongest anti-terrorism apparatuses have lapses. Although often targeted, France had seen no major attack materialize on its soil since 1996 (it has suffered, however, various terrorist attacks abroad). And there should be no crowing about a new wave of xenophobia or race crime: Anti-Semitism in France has steadily declined in recent decades, and anti-Semitic acts, which had brutally increased in the first half of the 2000s, have subsided.

O.K., take a breath, it's really just a "fading version of extremism". It's right there in the sub-title, yes?

But then comes along Spiegel Online, with Gil Yaron's More and More French Jews Emigrating to Israel:

Many must have been reminded of the treatment of Jews under the Third Reich. Shortly after the attack on a Jewish school in the southern French city of Toulouse on Monday, school principals in the city walked into classrooms and asked the Jewish pupils to come forward. "We ask you to leave the class and join the other Jewish children, who are in a locked and safe location."

It was intended as a precaution in response to a request from the Jewish community. But it also highlights the degree to which many Jews in France feel that they are a threatened and increasingly excluded minority. Every year, these feelings prompt thousands to take a dramatic decision, namely, to pack their belongings and move to a crisis zone: Israel. They feel safer there.

Five years ago, Linda moved from Paris to Canada and then to the Israeli port city of Ashdod. Only a week ago, she, her husband and their two sons faced a hail of rockets from the Gaza Strip. Nevertheless, Linda, who doesn't want to be identified by her last name, is delighted to be living in France no longer. "It's much safer here than in France," she says.

"Anti-Semitism has become unbearable there," she says. "Children are harassed on their way to school just because they're Jews." She adds that she was also the victim of such harassment in the middle of the Champs-Élysées in Paris. "I was wearing a necklace with a Star of David attached to it," she recalls. "Someone barged into me. I said to him: 'You ought to excuse yourself!' All he said was that he didn't apologize to Jews." ( Read full article)

The distance between the narratives is as great as the distance between East and West, but the real truth is being determined by those who vote with their feet.

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