Preparations for a welcome party are under way in Tel Aviv for the arrival next week of a specially chartered El Al flight carrying 200 French Jews who have abandoned their homes, jobs and families in France to start afresh in Israel.
Awaiting them is the promise of help finding work, financial assistance with accommodation for the difficult transition period, language tuition and what they hope will be a release from a growing climate of tension in their home country.
These departures are an uncomfortable subject in France, a nation sensitive to accusations of anti-Semitism. This week these migrants have become pawns in a debate raging over France's relationship with its Jewish population, triggered by the call from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for French Jews to emigrate immediately to escape what he described as "the wildest anti-Semitism."
His appeal has unleashed fury across the political spectrum, heightening unease among many politicians and Jewish community leaders alike at the way Israeli government-funded groups have been using reports of the mounting anti-Semitic climate in France to fuel an energetic program to persuade French Jews to leave.
Although official figures show that attacks and threats of attacks are growing in frequency, there is no consensus among the Jewish community over whether the country has become a worse place for Jews to live. The reason why more Jews are leaving for Israel is hotly contested.
Almost all anti-Semitic attacks are the work of disaffected youths from the large, disadvantaged Muslim communities, rather than the result of any historical anti-Jewish sentiment. Many observers fear that while the government focuses on the rise in attacks, it is failing to address the more fundamental issue of Muslim integration.
And there is growing anxiety that the significance of the relatively small exodus of French Jews is being exaggerated by Israel, as part of worsening diplomatic ties between the two nations.
"France is not an anti-Semitic nation and Mr. Sharon is simply settling scores with France through this question of anti-Semitism," said Patrick Klugman, deputy president of SOS-Racisme and a former head of the Jewish students' union.
Nevertheless, there has been an undeniable rise in French Jews ready to move to Israel. For the past two years more than 2,000 people have made the journey, double the number who have left each year since the early 1970s. Provisional figures suggest that this year the numbers will rise a further 25 percent.
Sandrine Cohen, 29, will be on the flight next Wednesday with her husband and her four young daughters aged between seven and 18 months. Pregnant with her fifth child, the optician decided in January that it was time to leave.
"Our family has been attacked several times in the past five years. We've been called dirty Jews in the street and we've been sent hate mail, and the police have failed to help us," she said on Monday.
"I'm well aware of the violence in Israel, but I'm scared for my daughters' future in France. On balance, I think we'll be safer there," she said.
Menahem Gourary, the Jewish Agency's European director, has been working on a new drive to promote emigration to Israel. Named the Sarcelles project, after a rough Parisian suburb which is home to large Jewish and Arab communities, the campaign is targeted at residents of underprivileged parts of France where racial tensions are high.
Israel paid for dozens of rep-resentatives to travel to France, allowing the agency to set up permanent offshoots in some of these cities, so that information on emigration is readily available.
"France has failed to integrate its Muslim population, and these groups have focused much of their anti-French hatred against the Jews who live alongside them in some of France's poorest suburbs," Gourary said.
The agency's latest campaign is partly motivated by the need to stem an overall decline in migration to Israel, which has slowed now that the wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union is over; last year there were fewer than 25,000 new arrivals, a 15-year low.
Neither Sharon nor the Jewish Agency has accused the French government of state-sponsored anti-Semitism, only of failing to address the problems which have triggered this rash of attacks.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion