A brewing intifada Attacks on Jews lead to upsurge in immigrat

PARIS -- Jewish parents tell their sons not to wear yarmulkes. A rabbi is stabbed. Elderly women are frisked before entering synagogues -- just in case.

As the stresses of being Jewish in France multiply, some feel it safer to hide their religion. Others have decided the only solution is to pack up and leave -- more than twice as many as a year earlier, according to statistics released last week by the Jewish Agency.

The agency, which arranges immigration to Israel, said 2,326 of France's 600,000 Jews left. They were 6.7 percent of the total reaching Israel in 2002, the highest rate since 1972.

In synagogues and at Jewish gatherings, people say they are frightened by a rise in anti-Semitic incidents. Though the government has loudly condemned the attacks, many wonder if France's leaders are committed to fighting anti-Semitism.

"In Israel, at least we know the government is on our side," said Stephanie Ohana, a 34-year-old Parisian Jew. "It's paradoxical, isn't it? But we have the feeling we'd be safer in Israel."

French and international Jewish organizations say the number and gravity of attacks in France has dropped since peaking last year.

But relations are tense between France's large Jewish and Muslim communities, and many fear a war in Iraq will trigger renewed violence.

"The intifada is brewing in France," Samuels said, using the Palestinians' word for their anti-Israel uprising. "The question of an American engagement in Iraq hangs over us like a sword of Damocles."

The Israeli government links the immigration surge primarily to the rise in attacks, said Arik Puder, spokesman for Israel's immigration ministry.

France has been stunned by last Friday's knifing of Rabbi Gabriel Farhi.

Farhi, 34, was slightly injured and released from the hospital the same day. Then, on Monday, his car was torched in his apartment parking lot.

"I want to believe that this was an isolated act," Farhi said, "and not the prelude to other attacks and a new wave of anti-Semitism."

Nicolas Sarkozy, France's tough new law-and-order interior minister, also attended. Sarkozy, who has launched an anti-crime campaign, guaranteed new measures to prevent future attacks, Farhi said.

"It's clear that the government is listening better now," Farhi said. "I'm waiting for concrete measures."

Meanwhile, some Jews are hiding their identity in public.

"My son goes to a Jewish school," said Francis Lentschner, vice president of the liberal Jewish movement, the French equivalent of the Reform movement in the United States. "He can wear his yarmulke in school. But I prefer him not to wear one outside."

Ohana wears a Hebrew letter on a gold chain around her neck. Lately, she said, she keeps it tucked inside her collar.

"It hurts. It really does," she said. "We're starting to hide that we're Jewish."

Last spring, President Jacques Chirac insisted there was no anti-Semitism in France, even as Jewish groups said the number of anti-Jewish attacks was at its highest since World War II.

Of late, he has taken a tougher tone.

"There is no room in our country for anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia or for manifestations of religious intolerance," Chirac wrote in a letter to the rabbi cited by Le Monde newspaper.

Sarkozy has ordered police to classify crimes against Jewish sites as "anti-Semitic," rather than as generic vandalism, The Wiesenthal Center's Samuels said. That would allow French authorities to keep better track of incidents.

Authorities increased security at Jewish sites last year, following a wave of attacks at synagogues, schools and cemeteries. In the most serious case, a synagogue in southern Marseille was burned down.

Most of the attacks since the start of the Palestinian uprising in 2000 are presumed to have been carried out by Muslims of North African origin who sympathize with the Palestinian cause, the government and Jewish groups have said.

France's Jewish community is western Europe's largest, while its Muslim population makes Islam the biggest religion in France after Roman Catholicism.

Last month, tensions worsened when the governing body of an elite university, the Pierre and Marie Curie campus of the University of Paris, asked the European Union to suspend ties with Israel. They argued that supporting educational exchange programs was implicitly supporting Israeli policy.

The move provoked strong criticism. Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe called it a "shocking act and a tragic error." At a protest Monday, writers, philosophers and politicians joined Jewish leaders and hundreds of others to condemn the decision.

Speakers recalled France's Vichy regime in World War II which collaborated with the Germans in deporting 75,000 Jews to concentration camps.

The university has since backed down from the campaign.

Meanwhile, some Jews are hiding their identity in public.

"My son goes to a Jewish school," said Francis Lentschner, vice president of the liberal Jewish movement, the French equivalent of the Reform movement in the United States. "He can wear his yarmulke in school. But I prefer him not to wear one outside."

Ohana wears a Hebrew letter on a gold chain around her neck. Lately, she said, she keeps it tucked inside her collar.

"It hurts. It really does," she said. "We're starting to hide that we're Jewish."