Law enforcement – Moon of Alabama

December 16, 2004

Law enforcement

Remember the desecration of the Herrlisheim Jewish cemetery back in April?

It was, despite the national outcry of indignation and official protests, yet another sign of France’s (and Europe’s) growing antisemitism and treasonous behavior…

Well, a suspect has been arrested today, after a long investigation involving graphology and 15 investigators.

As it were, the suspect is a neo-nazi and a member of the Front National.

Of course, this does not fit in the frame of the growing restlessness of Muslim populations in France and their supposedly increasingly aggressive and increasingly tolerated behavior towards Jews, and, unsurprisingly, I have not found a single story about it in the press.

So, had you heard about it? Do you care?

Posted by on December 16, 2004 at 22:18 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Think I saw something a some months back about the investigation looking more on neo-nazis. But that was probably the Guardian, eternal lovers of cheese-eating surrender monkeys…

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Dec 16 2004 22:25 utc | 1

Jérôme: At least, it makes a better show than the 2 previous big cases of “blatant French antisemitism”, the first one being an imagined antisemitic attack on some person who wasn’t even Jewish to begin with and invented the whole stuff in his (or was it her?) sick mind, the second being a Jew setting fire to the local Jewish organisation office.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Dec 17 2004 1:11 utc | 2

The impression stateside is that the suspect you describe fits the anti-semitic stereotype: [nonmuslim] white supremacist bigot. We have the same home-grown types here.

Posted by: gylangirl | Dec 17 2004 3:17 utc | 3

I haven’t heard a peep.
Anything to do with France is verbotten in my neck of the woods.

Posted by: fourlegsgood | Dec 17 2004 3:21 utc | 4

Hadn’t heard a Peep. Thanks, I care very much.
Supposedly, Frank Rich’s col. this Sun. (NYT) is on growing emergence of anti-semitism in xAm. radical right running this country. Wasn’t it DeA- who recently wondered if this would emerge. Seems that it might. (They damn well better not put a Likkudnut in SecDef when Rumbo goes, like say Wolfie, or all hell will really break lose. Despite all the talk, I expect not. He’s too much of an academic & ideologue in a position that requires much more operational exp. I doubt the Brass would tolerate it.)
But back to France, the story confuses me. If it’s a neo-Nazi does that means it’s an isolated case of zippo significance; or should one conclude that he’s empowered to act out by all the MaleMuslim anti-semitism? The downplaying of the latter is simply incorrect, not to mention frightening, when just the other day the French govt. ordered Hezbollah tv station off the satellite broadcasts in France ‘cuz they were saying Israel should be destroyed & all Jews killed. I, obviously, have no way of knowing how much those sentiments are confined to Arabs living in ME, or if they’re shared by those living in France.
There seems to be a tendency among those who oppose xUS & Israeli policies to think that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend”. If that’s not the implication of yr. post, perhaps I misconstrued yr. remarks.

Posted by: jj | Dec 17 2004 5:09 utc | 5

Neo-Nazis don’t fit the current storyline, so it gets no play in the mainstream media. If they had found a Muslim to blame, we’d have heard a lot about it. A similar thing happened in the US last year when a Texas couple from an Aryan group was arrested after they mailed bio agents to the wrong address and got caught. Police found other bio agents, bomb making equipment and stockpiles of weapons at the couple’s home, but Ashcroft’s Justice Dept. didn’t make a big deal out of it. There is no PR value in arresting white racist terrorists.
I’d also like to know if the guy arrested in France was a lone ranger or whether he might represent a new wave of emerging anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe that we aren’t hearing about? Criticism of Israel’s policies has been growing and Israel-firsters have long equated criticism of Israel with being anti-Jewish. People like this guy will help them blur the lines between legitimate criticism of Israel and being outright anti-Jewish.
We have these people in the US too, of course, but they have been busy hating in other directions recently. If Iraq becomes an obvious failure – even to Fox viewers – and the extent of AIPAC’s tentacles ever becomes common knowledge, this may change.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Dec 17 2004 16:40 utc | 6

Some incidents are singled out by the mainstream press.
In France and CH desecration of cemeteries (just one example) is very common, and has been so for a long time. In CH, it is Protestant and Catholic cemeteries that sustain the most damage, for the simple reason that most cemeteries are *that.*
Goths, drunks, hyped up teens, ghost lovers, middle class sensation seekers — creep to the cemetery and make whoopee and do a lot of damage. The spray-painting of slogans, many of them senseless, never reported:
“Dieu vous regarde”, “Je Baise Martine”, etc.
is considered cool.
This has more to do with the breakdown of ‘traditional respect’ for particular ‘sacred’ territories than any targeting of a particular group. Here (Geneva) some of the main cemeteries form part of the urban space – and yet, they are quiet, isolated, and taboo – also, until recently, open and unguarded. Major attraction.
Sergio de Mello’s grave has been respected. But the flowers are all gone …
My mother’s grave is OK – we decided on a rather massive rock.
I often go to a small village in France. Last time I was there, visitors were taking photos of each other embracing on the tombs in suggestive positions and making ugly faces at the crosses. (Trad. Cath. cemetery.) They also stole flowers and clipped plants.
Finding signs of anti-semitism is tough. Anything is grist for the mill.

Posted by: Blackie | Dec 18 2004 21:38 utc | 7

Blackie, that is interesting.
In Sweden cemetaries are taboo, people lower their voices and so on. Some goths and ghost lovers hang out at cemetaries at Halloween, but they are usually tidy and don´t leave much marks.
There has been some desecration of protestant cemetaries by drunken teenagers, and some desecreation of jewish cemetaries by neo-nazis, but in both cases they are usually caught.
I don´t know much about France, but since neo-nazis hate muslims (they do in Sweden at least) I would guess that both neonazis a groups of young militant male muslims would be more confused than encouraged by seeing that they have something in common.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Dec 19 2004 2:12 utc | 8

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