Is anti-Semitism becoming France’s new normal?

xemplifying the new normal, Le Monde recounted the experience of a Jewish family in the Parisian suburb of Noisy-le-Grand. Earlier this year, they began to receive anonymous letters, each containing a single bullet wrapped in a note warning the family that they were marked for death. With the inevitability of Newtonian physics, the threats subsided when the police installed a camera outside the residence, yet resurfaced when the cameras were subsequently removed. In graffiti they spray-painted across the house’s walls, the vandals sang praises to the Islamic State and swore death to the Jews. Feeling besieged and exposed, the family of six ultimately moved to another neighborhood.

According to a report released this year by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions (CRIF), one-third of all racist acts in France in 2016 were aimed at the country’s Jewish community, which represents just 1 percent of the French population. Compared to 2014, when nearly one half of racist acts were the work of anti-Semites, this seems to mark a welcome decline. But appearances might well be deceiving: the authors of the CRIF report warn that such incidents are increasingly underreported. Many victims, they contend, “no longer bother to report what now seem to be minor instances of anti-Semitism.” 

Tragically, the spectacular instances of anti-Semitic terrorism have “raised the bar so high that lesser activities are no longer denounced.” This banalization has bled into language. According to Maurice Dahan, the official in charge of security for Strasbourg’s Jewish community, there has been an “untying of tongues to the point where what was once clearly anti-Semitic has become part of everyday conversation.” As for the virtual world of social media, where anti-Semitic discourse burgeons, it remains largely terra incognita for state and civil organizations attempting to combat it.