“They are crazy, these Gauls”โฆ The famous phrase from Asterix is more than appropriate for the reading that follows.
The figures for 2015 communicated this Wednesday by the interministerial delegate for the fight against racism and anti-Semitism (Dilcra), Gilles Clavreul, indeed show 806 anti-Semitic acts (a stable number compared to 2014) and 429 acts against Muslims (a very sharp increase).
And the republican fraternity that is often talked about, where has it gone? How have we come to such a denial of our moral values?
According to the president of the National Observatory against Islamophobia, Abdallah Zekri, this report is an “unprecedented peak” since the creation of this CFCM (French Council of the Muslim Faith) body in 2011.
“Islamophobia must be fought and denounced not only by Muslims but also by the national community as a whole because it is no longer acceptable to hear and accept that politicians” can “say that Islam is incompatible with the values of the Republic,” reacted Abdallah Zekri in a statement.
In turn, the CRIF (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions) expresses its concern about both the inability of French society to contain the surge of hatred and the breakdown of social cohesion.
According to Roger Cukierman, president of the CRIF: “While we might have hoped that 2015 would mark an awakening and a rebound, it is terrifying to see, on the contrary, both the entrenchment of anti-Semitism in society at an extremely high level, with increasingly violent acts, and the worrying rise of acts against Muslims, indicating a normalization of hatred.”
Since 2005, anti-Semitic violence and threats had only surpassed the threshold of 800 acts twice, in 2009 and 2014, each time in response to a worsening of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But it doesn’t end there: Christian places of worship and cemeteries, which are the most numerous in France and number in the tens of thousands, “are not spared with 810 offenses, up by 20%.”
