France's
Moment of Truth
by Michel Gurfinkiel
PJ Media
January 16, 2015
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The
French people appear united in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo
murders.
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The jihadist killing spree in Paris last week has been described as
"France's 9/11" by Le Monde, the French
liberal daily newspaper. Indeed, just like the American 9/11 fourteen
years ago, it was a moment of truth: for France as a nation, for the
French political class and — last, but certainly not least — for French
Jews. The question, however, is not so much whether one sees the truth or
not, but rather what one is supposed to do once truth has been seen.
America's instincts after its own 9/11 were sound: it understood that
it was in a state of war and that it had to react accordingly, but it
wavered about what war to wage and what strategy to follow. As a result,
the War On Terror, in spite of considerable American and Western
investment, pugnacity, and heroism, has been largely inconclusive and
even, in many respects, a failure. Likewise, whatever the emotional or
philosophical impact of the present French 9/11, either in France or
abroad, it is not clear whether it will translate — or can translate —
into adequate policies.
The Attacks
It all started on January 7, with the massacre at the offices of Charlie
Hebdo, a satirical magazine located in Central Paris near Bastille
Circle. Two men in their early thirties, the brothers Said and Cherif
Kouachi — French citizens of the Muslim persuasion and of Algerian
descent — murdered eight journalists and cartoonists who happened to be
there, as well as two menial workers and two policemen. Some other people
were wounded. According to witnesses, the terrorists claimed they were
"avenging Prophet Muhammad." In 2006, out of defiance
against Islamist intimidation, Charlie Hebdo reprinted the
caricatures about Muhammad previously published by the Danish magazine Jyllands-Posten.
In 2011 and 2012, the French magazine published further sets of
anti-Islamist caricatures with Muhammad as a main character.
The Kouachi brothers were able to flee Paris in spite of an enormous
manhunt that involved thousands of policemen and gendarmes all over
Northeast France. Eventually, they were trapped and shot on January 9 by
special antiterrorist units at a printing office in Dammartin-en-Goële,
some 30 kilometers east of Paris.
There is evidence that the Kouachi
brothers and Coulibaly were close associates in a single al-Qaeda
network.
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In the meantime, on January 8, another terrorist, Amedy Coulibaly, 33,
a French Muslim of Senegalese descent, shot a policewoman at Montrouge in
Southern Paris and fled. He was apparently looking for a Jewish school
located nearby. On January 9, Coulibaly attacked Hyper Casher, a kosher
supermarket in Eastern Paris. He killed four customers and wounded
several others. About fifteen customers, including a mother with a baby,
were able to hide underground in the shop's refrigerated rooms. Coulibaly
was shot by the antiterrorist units later in the evening.
There is evidence that the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly, all three
of them with criminal records, were close associates in a single al-Qaeda
network extending to the whole of Paris and even to Belgium, and that
they had coordinated their operations. One may surmise that they saw
themselves as "holy warriors" and their victims –
both the cartoonists and the Jews – as undifferentiated enemies of Islam.
One may also surmise that, deadlocked as they were in their gore fantasy
world, they did not grasp the full dimension of their murders.
Ground Zero
Charlie
Hebdo
had modest origins.
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Charlie Hebdo is not just a satirical magazine. It has been for
more than fifty years a pillar of French popular culture. It started in
the 1960s as Hara-Kiri, a lampoon-and-cartoons monthly loosely
modeled after the American magazine Mad. It soon proudly evolved
into a "stupid and nasty magazine" (according to its own
motto): a blend of utopian anarchism, militant atheism, provocative bad
taste, and gaudy pornography. As such, it fit into an age-old French
tradition stretching from François Rabelais to Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
Half the country hated it intensely; the other half was in love with it.
It was a safety valve under Charles de Gaulle's semi-authoritarian
regime. It became the vanguard of the 1968 May Revolution in France, the
student riots that turned into a general strike and led to a near
disintegration of all authority.
Hara-Kiri was published as a monthly until 1985. A weekly
version was however launched in 1969, as Hara-Kiri Hebdo, and
then, after it was banned for having ridiculed de Gaulle's funeral in
1970, as Charlie Hebdo. With ups and downs, this is the magazine
that has survived until this very day.
The
1970 inaugural issue of Charlie Hebdo
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It helped that almost everybody in the original team — writers and
cartoonists — started parallel careers as very well paid contributors to
the mainstream media: François Cavanna, who served as editor in chief
throughout the 1970s, became a best-selling memorialist; Jean Cabut,
known as Cabu, was both a TV star and a trenchant cartoonist for Le
Canard Enchainé, France's political gossip weekly; Jean-Marc
Roussillon, a.k.a. Reiser, who passed away at the early age of 42, worked
for the posh liberal magazine Le Nouvel Observateur and for many
comic magazines as well; as did Georges Wolinski. Over the years, they
became so famous as to be celebrated in government-sponsored exhibitions
or to be discussed in the academia.
While Charlie Hebdo retained much of its original iconoclastic
vigor, it underwent a remarkable political evolution. Humorist Philippe
Val, who served as editor from 1992 to 2009, recognized jihadism as a
totalitarian movement, especially after the 9/11 outrages in the United
States, and grew fiercely hostile to the pro-Islamic far left. Moreover,
he expressed sympathy for Israel as a democracy under jihadist assault.
In 2008, he fired "anti-Zionist" cartoonist Maurice
Sinet, a.k.a. Siné, one of the magazine's original stars, as an
"anti-Semite."
Cartoonist
Georges Wolinski, 81, was among those killed in the Paris attack.
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The much younger cartoonist Stéphane Charbonnier, a.k.a. Charb, who
succeeded Val as editor, steadfastly maintained the anti-jihadist line
even if he was Siné's personal friend. Interestingly enough, Charb
recently entered into a relationship with Jeannette Bougrab, an academic,
senior civil servant, and former conservative member of the French
government, who as a citizen of Muslim North African origin has been of
the most outspoken critics of radical Islam in France.
The 81-year-old Wolinski and the 77-year-old Cabu, along with the
48-year-old Charb, were among the victims of the Kouachi brothers on
January 7. To the entire French nation, it was not so much an attack on
press freedom as the assassination of grandfatherly or brotherly figures.
Whether people had actually liked or supported the Charlie Hebdo
journalists or not, they had aged or grown up with them: there was something
deeply personal about the loss. Vigils and marches were started.
Everybody wore "Je suis Charlie" ("I am
Charlie") badges. According to pharmacists, consumption of
anxiety medication rose by 20 % nationwide.
The 'Charlie
Effect'
The "Charlie effect" coalesced with revulsion about the
ensuing Hyper Casher anti-Semitic massacre. And it brought about, for
several days, rare moments of near national unanimity: millions of people
marched in Paris and other cities, waving three-colored flags and
chanting the Marseillaise, France's national anthem (which is
essentially a call to resist barbaric invaders).
French
police storm the Hyper Cacher kosher grocery store in Porte de
Vincennes, eastern Paris, on January 9.
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On January 9, Prime Minister Manuel Valls delivered a passionate speech
at the National Assembly, promising both to protect French citizens,
including Jews ("without whom France is not France"), and to
find, neutralize, and punish jihadist terrorists. He was rewarded with a
standing ovation from the entire Assembly and, again, the Marseillaise
– something that had not happened for decades. An Odoxa/Le Parisien
poll released on January 13 found that 87% of the French said they were
"feeling proud" about being French.
Yet, near unanimity is not unanimity. What soon became apparent was
that only the Old French (the culturally European and Judeo-Christian
French) took part in the vigils and marches and that they were delighted
to be together, whereas most New French (the culturally non-European and
non-Judeo-Christian immigrant communities) stood aside.
Most imams issued perfunctory condemnation of terrorism, but were
clearly unenthusiastic about Charlie Hebdo's right to make fun of
every religion, including Islam (one noted exception being Hassen
Chalghoumi, the Tunisian-born imam of Drancy). Even more ominously,
one-minute silence ceremonies at school were met with hostility and scorn
by Muslim children and teenagers from third grade to high school. Two
hundred such instances were reported; thousands of cases were unreported,
according to teachers' sources.
Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala, the ex-humorist and anti-Semitic agitator,
posted on his website: "I am Charlie Coulibaly," thus
deliberately confusing the victims with their murderers. Many people or
groups associated with Charlie Hebdo were threatened on the
Internet. In the Lyons area, a Jewish jeweler's shop was vandalized.
In other words, the ethnic and religious polarization that has
befallen France over the past years is growing into an ever more explicit
conflict. And this is not small business. Nine percent of France's
population is Muslim (over six million citizens out of 67 million). Up to
20% of all French citizens or residents under twenty-four are thought to
be Muslims, and in some places the numbers seem to be much greater than
that. While many Muslims reject jihadism and clearly identify with France
as a democratic nation, religious observance is rising quickly in the
overall Muslim community, from 36% in 2001 to 42% in 2014. There is
evidence that the more observant Muslims are, the more supportive they
are of politically radicalized Islam.
For the time being, President François Hollande and Premier Valls are
reaping some benefits from the national unity mood. According to a Harris
Interactive/LCP poll, 77% of the French do not trust Hollande's politics
in global terms, but 83% of them approve of his handling of the terrorist
crisis. The president's personal popularity, which was abysmally low, is
up to 20%, and the prime minister's, which was falling too, is back to
42%. The real test is yet to come, however.
For the time being, the administration has deployed some 10,000
military personnel in public spaces and other locations like synagogues
or mosques. It has also engaged in extensive investigation, multiple arrests,
and prosecution of terrorism-related offenses. M'Bala M'Bala may be tried
soon for his infamous "Charlie Coulibaly" post. Dozens of
teenagers may face disciplinary action for their contempt of national
mourning. But in the longer run, it is the entire security apparatus of
France that must be strengthened and extended, which will cost a lot of
money.
87% of French Muslims voted for
Hollande and the socialists in 2012. Fighting jihadism earnestly may
alienate many of them.
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As of 2014, France was devoting 31.9% of its national wealth to social
programs, against an OECD average of 21.6%, whereas aggregated national
defense and domestic security credits amounted to less than 10%. Will the
socialist Hollande administration be bold enough to reverse priorities
and thus act against its own constituency? A similar conundrum may arise
regarding Muslim voters: 87% of them voted for Hollande and the
socialists in 2012, and were probably instrumental in their victory over
Nicolas Sarkozy and the conservatives. Fighting jihadism earnestly may
alienate many of them.
Are the conservatives, the centrists and the far Right National Front
more likely to benefit from national unity, or at least from the Old
French awakening? Can they achieve more than the Left? They, too, must
undergo drastic changes in this respect. Many conservatives and centrists
are still largely mired in pro-Arab or pro-Muslim delusions inherited
from de Gaulle, or too shy to wage war, even on terror. As for the
National Front, its views may have been vindicated in many ways by the
present crisis, but it sees national unity or even conservative unity
only as a way to improve its own standing.
French Jews have been only reinforced in their fears and, Valls' warm
words notwithstanding, feel that they have no future in their country
anymore. Many wonder whether millions would have marched for the Hyper
Casher massacre victims only.
Most were shocked that Hollande was reluctant to invite Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the protest marches on Sunday, and finally
invited Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas.
Rue des Rosiers, the historic "Jewish Street" in the Central
Parisian Marais district, usually a lively place, was empty throughout
the week. So were most Jewish shops and restaurants. Seven thousand
French Jews formally completed the emigration process to Israel in 2014.
Thousands have informally moved to Israel. More French Jews are migrating
to North America or Australia, or even just to other European countries
like Britain, Switzerland, and Germany. One synagogue chairman confided
to me: "When you have no place to go in your own country, you leave
for another country."
Michel Gurfinkiel is the Founder and
President of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute, a conservative
think-thank in France, and a Shillman/Ginsburg Fellow at Middle East
Forum.
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