We all know that throughout Europe today there are Muslim No-Go areas, where police and firemen enter at their peril. For they are frequently attacked by young Muslim males, who throw objects — bottles, bricks, rocks — at them, as a way of making clear that the state’s writ does not run in these areas. A sufficiently intimidating Muslim presence can be established with far less than a Muslim majority.
In these places, the police must escort firemen, who are otherwise afraid to enter. The police themselves only enter such areas in groups.
What happens to non-Muslims, especially to Jews, who continue to live in these areas?
Recently, a French Jewish woman spoke in public for the first time about her family’s harrowing experiences with antisemitism in the Paris neighborhood where they lived for nearly a decade, in an interview with one of France’s most popular talk shows.
49-year-old “Stella,” who is married with children, spoke with Europe 1 host Olivier Delacroix about two antisemitic episodes in 2017 that, she said, had driven the family out of their home. Now, Stella said, she and her husband continually debate whether their family should make aliyah to Israel.
For nine years, Stella and her family lived in a house in the suburb of Romainville, which lies about five miles to the east of central Paris. “We felt good, we never had the least concerns,” she said. “We loved the neighborhood, everything was always open on a Sunday, we knew all the store owners.”
Life for the family changed dramatically in March 2017, when they awoke one morning to find that their house had been ransacked while they slept. To her shock, Stella learned from the police forensics team dispatched to their home that the intruders had gained entry through their daughter’s bedroom window. Much as the family wanted to believe that they were the targets of a routine burglary — “one that could happen to any family,” as Stella put it — only a few items were actually stolen from the house. More suspicious was the spectacle of family photographs taken in Israel that had been ripped up and scattered on the floor.
Shaken by the invasion of their home, Stella and her family took a ten-day vacation in April. Shortly after their return in early May, Stella was preparing to drive her daughter to school when she saw to her horror that the word “Juifs” — ”Jews” — had been scrawled in large letters on the driver’s side of the family car.
‘Mommy, do you see what’s written there?’ my daughter asked me,” Stella recalled. “I told her, “Don’t worry, daddy will take it to the garage, let’s get in the car.’” As the two of them drove to school, Stella said, “I was honked a dozen times. I lowered my window and said, ‘Yes, I know what is written on my door.’”
But it wasn’t the antisemitic graffiti that the other drivers were calling attention to. “One of them called out, ‘Madam, your tires!’” Stella said. Pulling into a gas station, she realized that her rear wheels had been slashed. To underline the message, the word ‘”Israel” had been scrawled on the back of the car.
When she spoke with the police later on, Stella said that one officer had told her, “Listen, I’m speaking to you not as a cop, but as a father — you have to leave.” The family did just that, moving that same evening to Stella’s parents’ house. More than one year on, she said of their experience, “I cry less when I talk about what happened, but I can say that we fled from antisemitism in 2017.”
It was at that point that Stella and her husband began to discuss moving to Israel. Several years of antisemitism had taken their toll on the French Jewish community’s morale, they reflected. “It is not for nothing that we put our children in Jewish schools,” Stella remarked.
At present, the family remains in France. “I said that I had seniority in my job of 23 years, our children had their lives here, I did not want to leave,” Stella recounted. “That was one year ago. But with what we see on TV, and what we hear, we will end up leaving one day or another.
This is the daily antisemitism that expresses itself not in murders, but in a stillicide of acts steadily eroding the sense of security of Jews who live in such places. The poor ones can’t leave; Mireille Knoll and Sara Halimi, two elderly Jewish ladies killed by Muslim neighbors, had both lived in subsidized housing. It doesn’t take bullets or explosives to create an atmosphere of fear. It need only be a nighttime break-in designed less to steal valuables (only a handful of things were taken from Stella’s family) than to frighten the Jewish inhabitants. For when they woke up the next day, they would find that the major damage done by the night intruders was to photographs, taken in Israel, which the burglars had ripped up. Clearly, a sign intended to scare the Jewish victims. And it worked. “Shaken by the invasion of their home,” they took a ten-day vacation to calm down. On their return, they found, in large letters scrawled on the driver’s side of their car, the word “JUIFS.” The mother assured her daughter that she shouldn’t worry, her father would take it to the garage and take care of it, but the damage had been done: the girl was frightened. And as they drove to school, people honked at Stella; she was confused, but one person warned her that the back tires on her car had been slashed, and on the back of the car, another word had been scrawled: “ISRAEL.”
One of the policemen who came to investigate, who surely had dealt with similar cases, knew the true dimensions of the problem of Muslim antisemites, advised them to leave: “Listen, I’m speaking to you not as a cop, but as a father — you have to leave.” And they did leave, that very day, moving in with her parents in a neighborhood deemed still safe. They had been scared out of their house by unidentified Muslims, who had struck them twice, first with the break-in at night, and then with the vandalized car, and they did not wish to risk a third, possibly much more dangerous, encounter. They have children. They could not live with the fear.