How to tell an anti-Semite from a Frenchman

It isn’t easy. You have to work pretty hard at it.

Former French Prime Minister Raymon Barre has sparked an uproar within the Jewish community after accusing “the Jewish lobby” of making “a scapegoat” of Maurice Papon, a French senior official who signed deportation orders for hundreds of Jews in the Bordeaux region during WWII.

In an interview last week with France Culture, a state-run radio station, Barre also said that “opposing the deportation of Jews had not been a matter of “major national interest.”

So is that anti-Semitism? Saying that the deportation of Jews happened, but giving a Gallic shrug and declaring it not in the interest of France? Or is this, perhaps, anti-Semitic:

“Mr Papon became a scapegoat. I am not passing moral judgment on the attitude that one should have had with regard to the deportation of the Jews or not. But I consider that this country is fundamentally hypocritical in seeking out a few scapegoats.”

[…] Barre added: “I want to say that on this issue I consider that the Jewish lobby – and not only with regard to me – is capable of mounting disgraceful operations and I want to say this publicly.”

And if that isn’t anti-Semitic, how about this quote? Can you tell the difference between a former French Prime Minister’s sayings, and anti-Semitic statements?

Raymon Barre, who was Prime Minister under former President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, already shocked the Jewish community at the time when reacting to a Palestinian terrorist bomb attack against a Paris synagogue in October 1980, he declared on the television: “This appalling attack was intended to hit Jews on their way to the synagogue, it has hit innocent French people who happened to be in the Rue Copernic”.

He implicitely stated that Jews are not French.

Okay, well, that was 27 years ago. He’s changed. He’s grown. He’s understood what his words meant, and perhaps he wants to amend them. Let’s see what he has to say today:

During the interview with France Culture, Barre said he doesn’t not regret his words.

“Don’t forget that in the same statement I said that the Jewish community cannot be separated from the French community. When you quote, you must quote in full. And the campaign undertaken by the Jewish lobby with the strongest links on the left came from the fact that we were in an electoral climate and this didn’t impress me and they can continue to repeat it.”

“Those who wanted to get their own back on Jews could have blown up the synagogue and Jews. But not at all, they launched a blind bomb attack and there were three French people, not Jews, that’s a fact, not Jews. And that doesn’t mean that Jews are not French,” Barre said.

And that last paragraph, ladies and gents, is all you need to tell the difference between a Frenchman and an anti-Semite.

In this particular case, there is none.