French Jews Flee Local Jew-Hate, Seek Refuge in...the U.K.?!?

It would appear to be a case of "out of the frying pan, into the fire," but, as Bruce Bawer points out, there is reasoning of a sort behind the flight:

 a new report by a Jewish community group, Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive (SPCJ), says that anti-Semitism in that country has gotten so much worse in the wake of last year’s Toulouse school massacre that the number of Jews who are “crossing the Channel to find safe haven in the U.K.” is skyrocketing. One sign of the trend: “St John’s Wood Synagogue in London has set up a separate French minyan, attended regularly by 120 people on Shabbat,” with new faces showing up every week. A February 21 piece in the Jewish Chronicle about the SPCJ report noted that while anti-Semitic “incidents” in Britain and France are roughly comparable in number, those in France “are far more likely to involve violence.” It also quoted Britain’s Chief Rabbi as warning that “the position of Jews in Europe today is very difficult….Jews in Europe have begun to ask, is there a place for us here?” Perhaps the most telling detail in the Jewish Chronicle article was this: while the SPCJ report “originally stated that in over three-quarters of the antisemitic incidents the perpetrators were reported as being of North African origin,” this fact was later deleted from the text.

Quelle surprise, as they say in France (when they are not at all surprised).