Interview by David Reinharc
Limonade: November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Then it was the "happy 90s" with the dream of the "end of history" provided by Francis Fukuyama.
Since September 11, history has returned: America, Israel, the Western world - and with them, peace and democracy - are again at war against the invisible and omnipresent threat of terror and barbarism.
On one side, those who relativize the disaster and other intellectuals who analyze the decode, and worried that Israel and Jews, as in 1938, first in line, challenge public opinion. Jean-Yves Camus
part thereof.
political scientist, lecturer at the Graduate Institute of Jewish Studies Elie Wiesel, an associate researcher at IRIS, he is also a member of the Task Force on Antisemitism "of the European Jewish Congress for ten years and draws on the part France in the annual report Antisemitism Worldwide, produced by the Stephen Roth Institute at the University of Tel Aviv.
On the French extreme right, the axis of Hezbollah-Syria-Iran, multiculturalism and its dangers, the third world rogue, alliance red-brown-green, it offers a clear analysis, refusing intimidation of political correctness.
Interview with an intellectual, which is seen more intelligent and better equipped than at the beginning ...
Reinharc David: You are returning from a trip to Israel.
While in Europe, the spotlight was trained on Lebanese civilians, while Israel's image was limited to tanks, planes or soldiers, I hear your impressions of the conflict seen there.
Jean-Yves Camus: First, I'm pretty angry against the immoderate use made by the media but also by the vast majority of Jewish commentators and pro-Israeli, the word "Lebanon War" (or "Lebanon"), because it gives the false impression that Israel has brought the war outside. But what happened is primarily a war against Israel and designated by the Israeli media as "Milham Tsafon ba ", that is to say a war in northern Uganda. This term accurately describes the reality: one third of the country under bombardment by Hezbollah. It should start there if you want to set the record straight: there is an assault, Israel, and an attacker, the axis of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. My second impression of the term "civilians." It should be understood that for anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist radicals, there are Arab civilians, who are all non-military, but there are no Israeli civilians. All Israel (not) is seen (e) as a military activity or power. The Jewish state is described as a vast fortress, belligerent in nature. Third impression: contrary to what many commentators say European, and probably what they want, the war did not produce major divisions in Israel, quite the contrary. The national consensus has been strengthened. The reason is simple: first, the attack on Hezbollah and Iran's attitude is rightly perceived as threatening the very existence of Israel, secondly, all sectors of society have paid tribute to katiouchot and war. There are Jewish victims and other non-Jewish soldiers among the dead or wounded, there are young kibbutzim left and settlers, and even recent immigrants whose rabbinate does not recognize the Jewishness. Last impression, the most important: Shmuel Trigano and unlike others, I think there is a future-and-a bright future for the Jewish community in France and much of the diaspora. But now I think that for anyone not satisfied with a life of material comfort for anyone who wishes to send his children to Judaism, the Jewish history is written in Israel and nowhere else.
DR: Do you not think that the discourse on Israel is haunted by a compassionate Semitism that focuses on the "victim" in an obscene enjoyment that implicitly refers to Jews as perpetrators, thereby reactivating the same anti-Semitic myths in the Middle Ages?
JY. C. You're right, but the real problem is not in the reactivation of anti-Semitic myth, Christian at the origin of the Jewish child killer and torturer. The speech on Israel is inhabited by two anti-Jewish stereotypes major. The first is that the Jew should not be about his own history. In the pre-conciliar Christian theology, Judaism was seen as the shadow of the "true faith". In Islam, the Jew must be content with being a citizen protected and second class. After centuries of this kind of reasoning, the non-Jewish world is still struggling to admit that we wanted to be involved in our future and not be content with what one grants us. The second stereotype is that of the weak and cowardly Jew. Hezbollah, like much of the Islamist movement does not recognize any validity or the Jewish state, nor even the existence of the Jewish people. For them, these are myths with lies: hence the popularity of the Khazar myth for example, or the assertion that there never was Beth Hamikdash in Jerusalem. The Islamic world also believes that the Israelis were just asleep in their comfort and materialism and think that if it attacks Israel at heart, fear will eventually overwhelm the country and cause the flight of its inhabitants. Commonly found in Arabic prose, the idea that all Israelis will eventually leave, "like the European settlers in Algeria or Rhodesia "Did I read recently. Hezbollah is deeply imbued with the idea of the intrinsic weakness of the Jews. And in Europe too, this idea remains: who are these people who have always caved in and now have the audacity to try to defend himself or to retaliate? That said, I withdraw my stay in the territories administered by the Palestinian Authority, the clear impression that the majority of Palestinian knows it, the Israelis will never go away.
DR: The red-brown coalition is it you think the trend that will be sustainable? This alliance is also European (I think, for example, Slovakia)?
JY.C. : There is no red-brown coalition, but movements that at the time of the Soviet bloc already had managed to survive by giving a dye "Marxist" or "communist" in their anti-Semitic and xenophobic nationalism. This was especially true in Poland with the movement "Pax" in the Soviet Union within the CPSU which was a wing Slavophile, Ceausescu in Romania around or in the GDR, in which the Nazi treatment was anything but perfect ... We knew, for example in the early 80's that the skinhead movement existed in the GDR, it was tolerated by the regime, and that students and workers "of color" came from "brother countries" were not treated as comrades. In fact, we now realize that communism has somehow slipped over the peoples of Eastern Europe is like water off a duck's feathers. After his fall, the old anti-Semitic nationalism before 1939 emerged from the closet, as frozen during the entire era "Socialist." Today in Slovakia, the problem is not the extreme right nor extreme left elsewhere. Is the fact that nobody in the democratic parties do not question the legitimacy and history of the first Slovak state headed by Monsignor Tiso, who was his anti-Jewish legislation enacted without the Reich asked. Instead of red-brown coalition, we should say of some parties, I think particularly of Russian KPFR Zyuganov, they are both red and brown.
DR: The British are now review the modus vivendi between the state and radical Islamists.
Are you saying that a new generation of jihadists very organized, supported by the extreme right and extreme left, ready to do battle with a Western "infidel" that Israel is the heart?
JY.C. : The British are certainly reviewing it, but once the damage is done forever! And they do not question the principle of multiculturalism, which is the source of the problem. Digression: British Jews overwhelmingly cling to the concept of a multicultural society, like all French Jews often promote it because they think it is in line with their interests. This is probably true in a society without radical Islam. But here and now, in the current balance of power, multiculturalism goes against the interests of Jews. And for my part, I am anyway disadvantage principle (and I am, I said, an Orthodox Jew). But back to the question: yes, there is a new generation of jihadists, which is characterized by the fact that she was born on the soil European master the codes of the culture in which she grew up, and wants to destroy it. Those who make this choice are not a majority, as we understand it, victims of alienation or social relegation. They are the choice of an ideology, a worldview. For now, the support afforded by the two extremes is, logistically, quite marginal. The extreme right in favor of radical Islam is made up of political type clowns David Myatt and Daniel Milano, within psychiatry. In the far-left organizations are serious, structured, with experience of armed struggle, such as Anti-Imperialist Camp, or the various leftist Turkish and Kurdish organizations active in Europe. However, their sympathies are not in the nebula al Qaeda but the radical Palestinian movements and armed groups in Iraq, often hybrids of radical Islamism and Baathism. Part of the extreme right and extreme left-to contribute their share to trivialize the radical Islam and Islamism. On the extreme right is always anti-Semitism. On the extreme left is more complicated. There is a factor which is the third world rogue, common among anti-globalization : Islam appears as the religion of the poor struggle for a fairer world order. There is a misguided Marxist component: Islamism is then analyzed as a transitional shelter for masses of Muslims living in Western countries, subjected to racism and social alienation, that such analysis of British SWP and its French Trotskyist followers, and probably that of management of the MRAP. Finally there is the Zionism that Nazified Israel, Zionism and possibly Jews.
DR: In response to this alliance red-brown-green do you think we should deepen friendship Judeo-Christian, at which Benedict XVI outlines an innovative approach and is known for being a friend of the Jewish people?
JY.C. : I do not believe in the concept of alliance red-brown-green. I believe in convergence of opinions and interests, which are manifested in language and attitudes similar or close, primarily on issues in the Middle East and Islam, and in the field of international relations in general (anti-américanisme/anti-occidentalisme). An alliance implies direct contact, personal, between allies, and a concerted plan. It exists, but only at the margin. My opponents have accused me of denying the danger in saying that. Now specifically, I not only do not deny it, but I think over what they say. For if the absolute anti-Zionism and complacency with respect to Islamism were restricted to this rainbow of radicalism, it would be after all a minority phenomenon. Or just the opposite. Thus, anti-Jewish cultural traditions are still so vivid in contemporary Europe, and of course the Arab-Muslim world, they resonate far beyond the Islamists, Arab nationalists in for example, and in a significant proportion of Arab Christians. They persist even within the majority culture, right and left, Christian or Muslim, and among the fiercest atheists. I know, in France, this is not a "red-brown-green" which found Iran in stabilizing virtues, or filed a bill to ban blasphemy! Returning to the question. I find the phrase "Judeo-Christian friendship" ambiguous. To be honest, I do not believe in theological dialogue. I think with Christians, We can meet on common values, on the Decalogue, which is already good. That said, all Christian churches have not done the same way, I think the Orthodox, for example. And I am under no illusions about the philo-Israelism Protestant fundamentalists, who is part of a vision of the End Times and the final conversion of the Jews.
DR: Chains from the Arab-Muslim world carrying all the cliches of anti-Semitism millennium, hatred of Christians and the West, even justifying the slaughter hostages and Jihad armed with a vocabulary similar to that of European extreme right, they have a real impact on Muslim populations in Europe based?
JY.C. : I do not know what their real audience, because it is not scientifically measured by the equivalent of a barometer Médiamétrie. However, one might think that the parables that flourish in our cities are not only intended to capture the cartoon channels ... Those who believe that the problem had disappeared with the banning of al Manar were wrong : Iqra Channel Wahabi; chains IRIN and Iranian Sahar and Al Alam, the Egyptian al-Nas, continue to convey this rabid anti-Semitism, which is also expressed at on al Arabiya and al Jazeera, albeit more subtle . The problem is almost impossible to solve because, provided you have the proper equipment, it is possible to watch these channels via multiple satellites on which the French courts and the CSA have no powers rigorously. Yes, these chains, especially those of high level information of journalistic and technical expertise, such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, have a influence. In particular, they popularized the actions of the Iraqi "resistance". But they are probably exceeded in impact by the Internet, which is now the main vehicle of propaganda and organization of jihadism. Small note: the most virulent of these channels using a language that is more violent anti-Semitic propaganda that public of the extreme right in Europe, part of which moreover muted his anti-Semitism.
DR: Sheikh Qaradaoui gives its backing to the armed struggle against the non-Muslims.
Explaining that governments have agreed to accept as interlocutors respectable Muslim organizations arising under the supreme authority?
JY.C. : Qaradawi does not endorse the armed jihad, he calls, especially when it comes to suicide bombings in Israel, including against civilians. This is not strictly speaking non-Muslims who are its target, but "foreign occupation" of land belonging historically, he said, the Ummah. In France, the UOIF which refers mostly to Qaradawi, who is the Muslim Brotherhood. Recognition available UOIF is not so much to its weight among practicing Muslims, which is lower than what you believe, as a cynical calculation of political Islam who are socially and morally conservative hyper- the UOIF is a guarantee that the Muslim population remains "under control", especially in tough neighborhoods. Error more fatal than the UOIF controls nothing at all in neighborhoods where implanted by Salafis and cons Tabligh. The same policies probably think the key is to have Muslim organizations that provide civil peace here, even if they are also very "limited" on the issue of the Middle East. Again: Anti-Semitism is a marginal factor in French politics, so when weighing the pros and cons, the political class sees the benefits of good relations with the UOIF, and ignores the rest. The same problem arose in Britain with the Muslim Council of Britain: When Sir Iqbal Sacranie, who has done an anti-Semite, refused to attend the day commemorating the Holocaust, the state authorities were shocked. Today, Sacranie is gone, but the MCB maintains the same position and the same representation because it is regarded as a lesser evil. This vision enough police to the place of Muslims in society, the idea that the main thing is that they are "required" as in colonial times, is both morally wrong and a political mistake. First, because Islamist organizations do not represent Muslims. Then because in this way encourages communalism.
DR: What book or project ready now ?
JY.C. : I go out Sept. 28 in Milan a little essay " extremism in France: should we be afraid? ." It will be followed in March 2007 by a book on "Racism and Antisemitism Internet" published by the Council of Europe. And I preface of a book entitled Stephen Francis "Music europaïenne, political ethnography of a subculture of right." I do not hide because my interest in industrial music, "dark-folk" and the various sub-genres of metal, in which, by the Incidentally, the Israeli scene is fascinating.
interview published in Israel Magazine No. 72
