World
Charlie Hebdo editor says ‘we realised we were all Jewish’ after November 13 attack
January 5, 2016 17:36
By, Naomi Firsht
2 min read
ByNaomi Firsht, Naomi Firsht
No-one questions when Jews are killed, the editor of Charlie Hebdo has written in a special edition of the magazine to mark the anniversary of the terrorist massacres in Paris last January.
This week marks one year since the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket Hyper Cacher that left 17 dead.
“We are so used to Jews being killed because they are Jewish,” wrote Gerard Biard in an editorial this week. “This is an error, and not just on a human level. Because it’s the executioner who decides who is Jewish. November 13 was the proof of that. On that day, the executioner showed us that he had decided we were all Jewish.”
Some 130 people were also killed in multiple terror attacks in Paris on November 13. Both the January attacks and those in November were carried out by gunmen with ties to Daesh.
Roger Cukierman, president of Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (Crif), likened the situation in France to that of the Second World War. “First the Nazis attacked the Jews before attacking everyone else,” said Mr Cukierman.
“I think there has been a change in state of mind. Now the population can see that all of France is targeted. I hope that today all of France is alerted to the necessity to fight in this war that has been imposed on us.”
On January 9 2015, Islamist terrorist Amedy Coulibaly entered the supermarket in the Porte de Vincennes area of the capital, shot dead four Jews and took others in the store hostage.
On Saturday evening, community members and politicians will gather at the kosher supermarket to remember the victims. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls is due to address the crowd. Earlier in the week, French President Francois Hollande unveiled a memorial plaque at the site bearing the victims’ names.
The 10,000 troops and police officers deployed to ensure the safety of Jewish community centres across the country after the attack are still in place today.
Head of the Prime Minister’s inter-departmental group to fight racism and antisemitism (Dilcra) Gilles Clavreul said the number of antisemitic incidents has declined however. Immediately following the attack in 2015 there was an increase in antisemitic incidents, averaging around three each day, but Mr Clavreul said in the second half of 2015 it went down to an estimated two per day, although the official statistics for 2015 are not yet available.
Mr Clavreul said the mood among the community remained low. “Anxiety predominates, but at the same time there is a very strong desire to fight and not to capitulate to terrorism, to not give in to fear.”
The Jewish Agency For Israel reported an increase of 10 per cent in French Jews making aliyah, rising from 7,200 in 2014 to 7,900 in 2015. A spokesperson from JAFI said there was a peak in calls to the office asking for aliyah information in the wake of the attacks but it subsided in the following months.
Muslim shelf-stacker at Hyper Cacher Lassana Bathily who helped hide some of the customers from the gunman in a basement refrigerator room has published a book titled “I’m not a hero”. The Mali-born 25-year-old was granted French citizenship after his brave actions.
A Daesh propaganda video released this week threatening the UK labelled Prime Minister David Cameron the “mule of the Jews”.
