I’m really pissed at this “if you’re Jewish in France, get out” post.
I grew up Jewish in France. when I was 5, 6, 7 years old, I was left out in primary school because I wasn’t a Catholic (also because I was a weirdo and my parents were leftists and my father was from Tunisia, but being Jewish was definitely a part of why I didn’t have friends).
when I was 12 years old, a 5 year old girl told me “I hope you’re not Jewish, cause my parents told me not to speak to Jews”.
I witnessed horrified the rise of “comedian” Dieudonné who gained huge popularity by making whole shows and videos consisting solely of antisemitic hatred, inviting Holocaust denier “historians” on stage, and singing songs in which he made light of the Holocaust…
In 2012, I spent whole nights in disbelief watching live news coverage of the hate crimes of Mohamed Merah who murdered Jewish children in cold blood in a Jewish school in Toulouse, where I lived for 8 years as a child.
I was at work, and called my little sister in tears in January 2015, when Amedy Coulibaly sequestrated and killed 4 people, including a young Jewish Tunisian man named Yoav Hattab, in a kosher grocery store so close to my family’s home in Vincennes. My little sister told me she was safe and had locked all doors and windows, but knowing that this was happening so close to her that she could even hear the explosions and gunshots was unbearable.
I am as scared and shocked as anyone else when I hear about an 8 year old boy being attacked in the streets of Sarcelles for wearing a kippah (yarmulke). Sarcelles is where my father’s family lived for years after immigrating from Tunisia.
I am as angry as anyone else when an elected representative suggests on twitter that maybe he shouldn’t have been wearing a kippah… And when Macron & Valls instrumentalize this horrific event to pretend they care about antisemitism wen really they’re just islamophobes trying to pit minorities against each other.
BUT I really CAN’T with people who tell Jews to leave France.
And I’m really pissed that @jewishdyke blocked me after I pointed out, along others, that her call for French Jews to leave France was dangerously close to neo-nazis calling for exactly the same thing.
Neo-nazis who actually reblogged her post and said “I agree all Jews should leave Europe”.
But still she doesn’t see the issue, doesn’t adress my cricitism or other people’s comments, and BLOCKS French Jews for explaining to her she shouldn’t tell people to leave their country…
Please, people, do share the information that this kid was assaulted, do share information about antisemitism rising in France, but please don’t participate in the fear-mongering, inflamatory comments that suggests all Jews should leave the country. We are French. We belong here, we are happy to be here. We don’t want to leave. Not everybody has enough money or resources to leave. And I don’t know where @jewishdyke is suggesting we go to, but I don’t think any place in this world is free of antisemitic hatred. Where do we go?
I see so many people I really appreciate on tumblr, reblogging her post with her caption and it hurts. It hurts.
Sorry I don’t usually get personal on this blog I tend to just post pictures and resources on histories, cultures and languages of non-white Jews and Jews from the colonized world, but today the feelings needed to be expressed.