Kosher Restaurant in Paris Suffers a Third Acid Attack

Do Jews have a future in France? This is what the Jews of France are discussing, with ever greater anxiety after the wave of antisemitic incidents that have surged since the war in Gaza began. A majority of them — 52% — say they are contemplating leaving France, and making aliyah to Israel.

There are 550,000 Jews in France, more than in any country save Israel and the United States. They are economically secure, with many in the medical and legal professions, in academia, in journalism, and in business. But they do not feel secure. Jewish boys and men no longer wear their kippahs in public, Jewish women don’t wear their necklaces with Star of David pendants. They know how often Jews have been attacked in public for being Jews — attacked not by the traditional antisemites of the right, but by the new carriers of antisemitism, the Muslims of France, who have brought with them in their mental baggage a deep animosity, even a murderous hatred, of Jews.

Jews are well aware of all the Muslim violence visited on Jews. There was the kidnapping, torture, and murder of Ilan Halimi by a Muslim gang, whose members were sure a stiff ransom would be paid because they were convinced that “all Jews are rich.” Halimi was not rich; he made his modest living by working in a cell phone store. There was the beating and defenestration, of 65-year-old Sarah Halimi by a Muslim neighbor, Kobili Traoré. There was the torture, and then setting on fire, of 84-year-old Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll, murdered by a Muslim whom she had known, and befriended, since his childhood. There were the four Jewish shoppers at the Hyper Cacher — a kosher supermarket at the Porte de Vincennes — murdered by Muslim Amedy Coulibaly. There were the murders, just outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, of 30-year-old Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his two small sons Aryeh, aged six, and Gavriel, aged three, and eight-year-old Myriam Monsonego, daughter of the school’s principal, by a Muslim fanatic, Mohammed Merah.

The antisemitic cabal of Muslims and leftists in France who are hellbent on causing every kind of damage to Jews, by attacking synagogues, Jewish schools, and Jewish-owned businesses, have not overlooked kosher restaurants. For the third time, they have struck the kosher restaurant Kokoriko (the name is the French version of “cock-a-doodle-doo”), spraying acid in the middle of the night over tables and table settings. All of the plates and silverware have now been made irredeemably unfit for human use. In addition to the cost of replacing them, many of the dining tables will have to be replaced because of their acid-scarred appearance. Who knows how long the restaurant will have to remain closed while it is being thoroughly cleaned? And how many of its customers may be uneasy about how thorough such a cleaning can be, and take their custom — reluctantly of course but understandably — elsewhere?

The war against the Jews continues à tous azimuts in France. Spray-painting of antisemitic messages on synagogue walls, vandalism of Jewish schools, Jews attacked on the street “by people of North African background,” group attacks on isolated Hasidic men and boys, the smashing of cars owned by Jews, boycotts of Jewish businesses and — not to be overlooked — attacks on kosher restaurants such as Kokoriko. It was on August 9, 1982 that the first attack on a kosher restaurant in Paris took place. A group of terrorists belonging to Abu Nidal’s Black September threw a grenade into the famous Chez Jo Goldenberg’s, a prominent delicatessen on rue des Rosiers in the Marais district, and then sprayed the dining room with gunfire. The assault resulted in six deaths and 22 injuries, making it one of the deadliest antisemitic attacks in France since World War II. None of the attackers was charged.

Now imagine that you are a visitor to Paris. Would you go to the Kokoriko kosher restaurant once it has been cleaned up, as a sign of solidarity with the Jews of Paris against their tormentors? Or would you hesitate, and in the end decide not to go, given the non-trivial possibility that the restaurant might be attacked again? How much business do you think Kokoriko has lost because of understandable anxiety over that terror attack, never to be regained?

Each antisemitic attack, like that which just took place against Kokoriko, increases the anxiety of French Jews. And more of them now ask themselves, as the Muslim population inexorably rises, what will the country be like for them in five years? In ten? Do the Jews of France have a future in France?