Récemment, j’ai reçu mon enième exemplaire d’une alarme d’anti-sémitisme en France. Pourquoi s’alarmer sans savoir les faits ? Pourquoi blâmer la France ? Comment croire un mail sans auteur? Il y a assez de racisme dans le monde pour ne pas en rajouter.
Pour montrer le phénomène, je poste:
1) le “énième” (et le plus récent) exemplaire de l’alarme envoyé à une masse de personnes comme le message l’exhorte,
2) la réaction d’une Française informée,
3) la réaction de la personne qui l’a envoyé à mon amie qui me l’a ensuite envoyé à moi,
4) deux articles sur le phénomène:
- “Jewish Currents,” Jan. 2008. http://www.jewishcurrents.org/2008-jan-antisemitism.htm
- “http://www.jewishcurrents.org/2008-jan-antisemitism.htm” par Ami Isseroff
***
(In English)
After receiving this same “recent” message a few times over the past few years, I finally saw a disturbing pattern: alarm, conspiratorial tone, accumulation or invention of undocumented incidents, appeal to Jews not to “let it happen again,” exhortation common to hoaxes to forward the message to everyone we know, and a call to boycott the country of France.
1) A condensation of the original message that I received.
2) A condensation of a briefer reaction to #1 from an informed French friend.
3) The reaction to #2 from the person who sent it to the person who sent it to me.
3) An article on the cycle from “Jewish Currents” in 1/8.
1) Subject: BAD NEWS FROM FRANCE – REALLY BAD
Once again, the real news in France is conveniently not being reported as it should. To give you an idea of what’s going on in that country where there are now between 5 and 6 million Muslims and about 600,000 Jews, here is an E-mail that came from a Jew living in France .
Please read! “Will the world say nothing – again – as it did in Hitler’s time?” He writes: “I AM A JEW — therefore I am forwarding this to everyone on all my e-mail lists. Nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France. In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles ; so was a Jewish school in Creteil – all recently. [Other mentions of acts in Toulouse, Paris, Bondy, Aubervilliers.]
“So I call on you, whether you are a fellow Jew, a friend, or merely a person with the capacity and desire to distinguish decency from depravity, to do these three simple things: First, care enough to stay informed. Don’t ever let yourself become deluded into thinking that this is not your fight. I remind you of what Pastor Neimoller said in World War II: ‘First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.’
Second, boycott France and French products. Only the Arab countries are more toxically anti-Semitic and, unlike them, France exports more than just oil and hatred. […]
Third, send this along to your family, your friends, and your co-workers. […]
Please Pass This On, Let’s not let history repeat itself, thank-you for your time and consideration.”
2) Informed French friend’s reaction to above message:
Pour moi ce mail est encore plus raciste que ce qu’il prétend dénoncer et c’est un “hoax”. Le style est classique du hoax : accumulation d’exemples pour convaincre, alarmisme, répétition d’autres mails avec quelques variantes seulement, etc….
Il y a en français un site qui est très bien pour savoir s’il s’agit d’un hoax, vous devez avoir la même chose en anglais. Je te donne le site français.
Je vais aussi en parler à un de mes amis qui est juif d’une part et qui, d’autre part, travaille pour le gouvernement.
Don’t worry, c’est de la désinformation. Dans quel but ????
T’embrasse…
3) Response of my original source to whom my friend sent #2:
It is possible that the last email is a hoax, but I don’t think it is too hard to believe. Here is an example of racism in France that I am sure is true: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqkz9DVz5yw.
I wonder if Viviane can find an example of Israelis raiding private businesses and vandalizing Islamic goods.
I hope that the Jews in France will be smart enough to move out in time.
Regards…
4) Reliable sources:
- Anti-Semitism in France – Reality and Hoax. http://www.zionism-israel.com/log/archives/00000267.html. He claims that the original anonymous message is a hoax and points out that the “recent” events (supposedly updated “27 hours ago”) were written up in this article in 2002 by Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe.
- Myriam Miedzian in two places: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/myriam-miedzian/antifrench-stereotypes-st_b_36460.html and (“Jewish Currents,” 1/8) http://www.jewishcurrents.org/2008-jan-antisemitism.htm. She states that France does experience some anti-semitic acts but that the mass alarm e-mails “exaggerate grossly the scope” and wonders why American Jews blame France.
