Addressing French news agency AFP, Haim Musicant, General Director of CRIF, which is to elect its new president in May, said: “We ask no better than to be able to live carefree”. “But after the Halimi case and the events in Lebanon, we see Israel threatened in its very existence by the threats from Iran: this is an agenda we could well do without.”
“The two traditional concerns of French Jews – anti-Semitism and the peace and security of Israel – have remained very much in the limelight in 2006,” said Haim Musicant.
“In the Middle East, nothing is sure. If nothing is done, Iran will be obtaining nuclear weapons,” he stated. “France’s Jews have become aware that there is a death threat against Jews which is anything but theoretical,” he continued, expressing his dismay at the lack of reactions in France over the statements made by the Iranian president and the organization in Teheran of a negationist exhibition.
Though statistically anti-Semitism receded in 2005, synagogues remain under police protection. Above all, the community has been shaken to the core by the case of Ilan Halimi, the young 23 year-old Jew who was kidnapped and tortured to death in Bagneux (western Paris) last February. The chief suspect admitted to having targeted him “because he was Jewish and Jews are rich”.
“This is the first time since the Holocaust, and excluding terrorist acts, that a Jew has been killed because he was a Jew,” insisted Haim Musicant.
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