In 1936, my grandfather waved his fist in Paris, while singing the Internationale. In the same year, a man from a family of Jewish Alsatian merchants was to become President of the Council and lead the government of the Popular Front. Suffering from the hatred of extreme right-wing leagues and a filthy anti-Semitism, he would nevertheless deeply mark our country. Deported during the war, he was a model for many Jews.
After the horror of the Occupation, of the Petainist collaboration and betrayal, many surviving and bruised Jews went on to become militants in the French Communist Party. Despite the anti-Semitism raging in the Soviet Union and the Stalinist terror, many Jews in working-class neighborhoods believed in the myth of a bright communist future and bright tomorrows. After the war, another Jew, named Pierre Mendès France, strongly opposed the Indochina War. This exemplary republican became President of the Council, after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, on June 17, 1954. For seven months, PMF was to mark the Fourth Republic with its imprint, notably by engaging on colonial issues in the Maghreb and decolonization.
In the 1960s, many Jewish students were active in the extreme left, Maoist, but especially Trotskyist. They took part in the events of May 1968.
However, the year 1967 marked a turning point in France in the perception of the Palestinian question. On the extreme left, little by little, the Palestinians were perceived as the victims of the creation of Israel, a country that was designated as a colonizer. In the 1970s, the PCF, which was still marked by the vote of the USSR in November 1947 in favor of the creation of Israel, repositioned itself in favor of the Palestinian and anti-Israeli cause, leaving many Jews distraught.
In 1977, I was still a teenager, but I was humming this political song, performed by Michel Fugain and the Big Bazaar: “Hang on to your heart, a piece of red rag, A flower the color of blood.” If you really want it to change and move. Get up because it’s time. And, like many young people our age, we dreamed of sweeping away this rigid Giscardian “old world” and waited for the left to finally come to power. In the 1980s, most French Jews were on the left. But the revelation of the deep links between François Mitterrand and René Bousquet, the former secretary general of the police under Vichy, aroused incomprehension and anger. The journalist Anne Sinclair recounts it with emotion, in an interview: “Mitterrand’s ties with Bousquet were for me a thunderclap and a ceiling that fell on my head”, she says.
In the 2000s, many politicians on the left (but not only on the left) had difficulty understanding that anti-Semitism had just developed among young people who live in so-called sensitive neighborhoods and who, sometimes discriminated against, are in search of of identity. At the same time, the left seemed to ignore how and why the Islamists, the deleterious influence of the Islamists in the poor suburbs, and the sermons on the Internet presenting a vision of Islam, threatened by Americans, Europeans and Jews.
Other factors intervened. As if henceforth, it was necessary to weigh on a balance the ones (an electorate of Arab origin) and the others (an electorate of Jewish origin). In April 2001, Pascal Boniface, director of the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (Iris) and then national delegate of the PS for strategic questions, made an internal note intended for François Hollande and Henri Nallet, in charge of international affairs at the PS, on the “electoral effectiveness” of the party’s positions, deemed too favorable to Israel while the electorate of Arab origin weighs more and more heavily. These remarks aroused a lively controversy, including among members and activists of the PS. And Pascal Boniface resigned from the party in 2003.
From word to evil, an extreme left, surfing on the embers and seeming to flatter its electorate, gave the impression to the Jews of being distant with regard to anti-Semitism, an anti-Semitism which nevertheless strikes my co-religionists so painfully. Strangely, of anti-Semitism, this left only sees that which is rampant within the extreme right. As if it were impossible that there could be another anti-Semitism, the one that develops in the suburbs, among the Islamists, and that strikes the Jews at every point of the territory. As if anti-Semitism could not exist on the left.
Certain activists and elected officials condemn anti-Semitism, of course, but often it has become a kind of minor racism, in the face of negrophobia or “Islamophobia”, which becomes, on the left and especially at LFI, a real battle horse against the discrimination and the extreme right. In this complicated scheme, the Jews no longer represent much, basically. And since, anyway, they are often associated/equated with Israel perceived as the epitome of absolute evil, why should the extreme left raise eyebrows and show understanding towards the Jews of France? In recent days, the invitation of the rapper Médine to the European Ecology-The Greens congress has sparked a lively controversy.
Hoping for some vague apology from Medina, but without genuine contrition being required and accompanied by real reparation, the national secretary of EELV, Marine Tondelier, maintained the rapper’s invitation despite disagreements. among the Greens. The environmental mayors of Bordeaux, Pierre Hurmic, and Strasbourg, Jeanne Barseghian, announced on August 21 that they would not participate in the Summer Days, Yannick Jadot decided not to go there. However, during the congress, Medina was warmly applauded by EELV activists and supporters. For its part, the daily newspaper L’Humanité interviewed Médine and made its front page, a front page that questions. As for La France insoumise, which has distinguished itself in recent years by some particularly ambiguous outings on Jews, institutions and Israel, by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, it argues that the accusations of anti-Semitism against LFI are orchestrated to discredit the left. In this logic, it presents Médine as being the victim of a cabal led by the far right and the macronists and the rapper is presented as a man above all suspicion who would embody a certain youth, that of the suburbs.
Is the divorce therefore definitively consummated?
If, at the moment, it seems extremely difficult to reconcile points of view and to heal the wounds, so much the Jewish community is on edge, should we rule out that a dialogue can take place in the future?
Put another way, wouldn’t this dialogue be necessary? On the left, some voices are more measured than others. In the PS, in particular, among the Greens, the PCF and even the LFI, there are or could be interlocutors who would agree to engage in a reflection on anti-Semitism or to dialogue with Jewish institutions or intellectuals.
It would be about working on the merits. Is there anti-Semitism in this country and within the left? How does it manifest? What words are used by anti-Semites, too, to demonize Jews? What evils does this bring to our society? Does anti-Semitism threaten the values ??of the Republic and the values ??that are defended by the left? How to deconstruct stereotypes? How can you talk calmly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without fear of being necessarily accused of anti-Semitism on the one hand, or falling into hysteria and Israelophobia on the other?
Before the divorce is definitively recorded between the Jews of France and the left, it is necessary to rebuild the bases of a common dialogue.
* Historian and essayist.