It’s an open secret that France is experiencing an increasing amount of anti-Semitism, at least as reported in this New York Times article from yesterday (click on the screenshot to read it).

Let me first state emphatically that any bigotry or violence against people based on their ethnicity, gender, or religion is reprehensible. It’s just as odious to attack or spit on someone because they’re a Muslim as it is because they’re Jewish. And France has its anti-Islam bigots as well.

Still, the statistics show that the chance of being the victim of a hate crime in France if you’re Jewish is substantially larger than if you’re Muslim. It’s just that far less attention is paid to French anti-Semitism, just as it is to British anti-Semitism. Here are the facts from the article (direct quotes are in quotes):

• “Nearly 40 percent of violent acts classified as racially or religiously motivated were committed against Jews in 2017, though Jews make up less than 1 percent of France’s population. Anti-Semitic acts increased by 20 percent from 2016, a rise the Interior Ministry called ‘preoccupying’.”

• “By comparison, between 2016 and 2017, reported attacks against French Muslims, who outnumber Jews 12 to 1, rose from 67 to 72.” Given that 40% of the violent acts were committed against 1% of the population, even if we assume that all the other 60% of such “hate crimes” are committed against Muslims, the chance that a Jew is a victim of a hate crime in France is roughly five times higher than it is for a Muslim. (As I said, there’s no justification for either kind of act.)

• The hate crimes are largely committed by Muslims, though the French government tries to cover this up to preserve national harmony.

“In 2011, the French government stopped categorizing those deemed responsible for anti-Semitic acts, making it more difficult to trace the origins. But before then, Muslims had been the largest group identified as perpetrators, according to research by a leading academic. Often the spikes in violence coincided with flare-ups in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, according to researchers.

In 16 surveys conducted over the last 12 years in Europe, ‘anti-Semitism is significantly higher among Muslims than among non-Muslims,’ Mr. Jikeli wrote.

‘There is a kind of norm of anti-Semitism, of viewing Jews negatively,’ he said in an interview.

. . . For the French government, the issue is deeply complicated, touching on the country’s rawest political nerves, as well as ethnic and religious fault lines. France has Europe’s biggest population of both Jews and Muslims, and Muslims face both discrimination in employment and in their treatment by the police.

French leaders fear pitting one side against the other, or even acknowledging that a Muslim-versus-Jew dynamic exists. To do so would violate a central tenet of France — that people are not categorized by race or religion, only as fellow French citizens, equal before the law.”

• Jews are moving en masse out of some areas of Paris, particularly those occupied largely by Muslims, to avoid being victimized:

“Many French Jews have voted with their feet. More than 50,000 have moved to Israel since 2000, compared with about 25,000 French Jews who left between 1982 and 2000.

Tens of thousands of others have left the peripheries of Paris and Lyon, where Muslim populations are rising, and have retrenched in neighborhoods with larger Jewish populations.”

. . . As anti-Semitic episodes accumulated, many Jews began to move out of neighborhoods in the greater Paris region that have large Muslim populations.

Mr. Fourquet, the pollster, cited many examples, using estimates from Jewish groups. In Aulnay-sous-Bois, the number of Jewish families dropped to 100 in 2015 from 600 in 2000; in Le Blanc-Mesnil, to 100 families from 300; in Clichy-sous-Bois, there are now 80 Jewish families, down from 400; and in La Courneuve, there are 80 families, down from 300.

Ouriel Elbilia, a rabbi in the 17th Arrondissement, said Jews were relocating to the district “because they felt threatened in their neighborhoods.” He added that his brother is a rabbi in Clichy-sous-Bois, northeast of the capital, but that “there are practically no services anymore because the community has emptied out.”

On a recent afternoon on the terrace outside Garry Levy’s kosher restaurant on the Rue Jouffroy d’Abbans in the 17th Arrondissement, the tables were filled with men wearing skullcaps, an unlikely sight in the Paris suburbs.

“People want to move to where it is safe,” Mr. Levy said. “They want to be in neighborhoods where they can go to the park without being bothered by young Muslims.”

Jewish groups say that wearing a skullcap in public can be dangerous in some heavily immigrant areas, citing that as one reason behind the moves. In many areas, they say, synagogues are closing for lack of members.

The upshot: Jews are increasingly victimized by Muslims (and others), and neither the government nor anybody else much cares. I doubt that the Jews are responsible for as many hate crimes against Muslims as vice versa (for instance, I’d bet that anti-Muslim hatred isn’t preached in synagogues nearly as often as anti-Semitism is in mosques), but in Europe you get a pass much easier as a Muslim than as a Jew. After all, we all know that Jews control everything, so what does it matter if they experience a bit more hate than anyone else?

Of course, there are those who say—I’m not making this up—that the victimized Jews of Europe should move to Israel, but those same people largely claim that Israel has no right to exist.

What is a people to do?

h/t: cesar