Update: The other problem with Sarkozy's response (how do you say "knee-jerk" in French?) is, quite simply, the demographics. As bad as France was for Jews before the era of unfettered immigration from French-speaking Muslim lands, it is now infinitely worse, and unlikely to improve any time soon--or ever. And, as Bruce Bawer writes, it was all foreseen years ago in something called the Obin report:
But perhaps the most sobering revelations contained in the Obin report concerned the attitudes of Muslim students toward Jews, and the effect of this on their Jewish classmates. In history classes, Muslim students objected to anything having to do with Judaism. Holocaust denial was common. And of course the entire history of the Middle East, especially the Israeli-Palestine question, was a minefield. Aside from a “routine” use in schools of the wordsJew and fuij (kike) as insults, Obin and his colleagues reported an increase in threats and assaults directed “by students of North African origin” against classmates known or suspected to be Jewish. “In the testimonies we collected, events in the Middle East as well as a chapter of the Quran are frequently cited by students to justify their words and aggression.” Muslim kids spoke positively about the persecution and extermination of Jews; praise of Nazism and Hitler was “not unusual”; anti-Semitic graffiti, including swastikas, abounded.
As a result, in some cities, Jewish students were separated from their classmates and transported to and from school together for their own safety. In many cases, at the request of Jewish parents, only the school principal was informed of their children’s Jewish identity, which was concealed from teachers and other students – although, as Obin and his team noted, “the surnames of students do not always allow” for such concealment. (Seen Au revoir les enfants lately?) In drawing their conclusion about the effect of all this on Jewish students, Obin and company did not mince words. I will first quote from the original French: “Il est en effet, sous nos yeux, une stupéfiante et cruelle réalité : en France les enfants juifs – et ils sont les seuls dans ce cas – ne peuvent plus de nos jours être scolarisés dans n’importe quel établissement.” In other words: “It is, in effect, in our view, a stupefying and cruel reality: in France, Jewish children – and this statement applies only to them – can today no longer be educated at any institution.”
That was in 2004. I have no illusion that the situation for Jewish children in France has improved in the slightest since that report was written – on the contrary, I am sure that things have only gotten worse...Bar the odd imam from entry? Yeah, that should work.
About as well as spitting into the wind does.
