Misunderstanding of Zemmour's threat from the USA
JNS article: Misundertanding of Zemmour's threat seen from the United States
The Americans' difficulty in understanding French Judaism
Didier BERTIN - 12/31/2021
JNS (Jewish News Syndicate in New York) appears to be a limited web publication in which journalist Orit Arfa shows on December 17, 2021, the difficulty that Americans have in grasping French Sephardic Judaism on the one hand and the Zemmour phenomenon on the other. So she just brought together various opinions and thus avoids getting to the root of the question. This journalist would have been better inspired to underline the opinion of the Chief Rabbi of France and that of the President of CRIF (Jewish Institutions of France) who warn together the Jews of France against Zemmour, the weight they deserve.
I bring my testimony as a French Jew from Algeria and Sephardic coming from a family which included war heroes and valiant soldiers who fought long for France during the two world wars.
JNS report some trivial remarks by qualifying Zemmour as brilliant while failing to say that his field of predilection is invective and that his pseudo-knowledge is only a fragile varnish intended to divert events in the direction of his opinion. JNS ignores his notorious misogyny and an avowed taste for violence. It is marked by nostalgia for a past that only existed in his imagination. His obsession with being more French than the French, led him to refer to writers and historians notoriously anti-Semitic.
This phenomenon known as "self-hatred" mostly affects weak personalities.
His family is from Algeria but he was born in France and this may in his case be the cause of his remoteness from his roots. Zemmour uses the Berber word to characterize his origin by placing it very far behind his Jewishness. In this he in no way represents the Jews of Algeria who proudly claim together their Jewish, Sephardic (Jews of Spanish origin) and French heritages. Zemmour's sudden attraction to the Catholic Church places him far removed from the suffering still felt by the Sephardim whose ancestors were the victims of the very violent inquisition of the Spanish Church. It is true that Zemmour's name does not appear in the official list of the 5,220 Sephardic names of most of Jews of Algeria. The Spanish Inquisition was the most violent phenomenon of global Christian anti-Semitism that the Council Vatican II tried to moderate from 1962 to 1965. Zemmour perhaps thinks in a trivial way to demonstrate to the Muslim Berbers of France that like him they can become more French than the French Christians. His Christmas greetings ignore the violence of the Inquisition and the Church's great estrangement from both the teachings of its founder through numerous Councils and from its alleged moral and civilizing vocation.
The French genius comes from the rationalists, the authors of the enlightenment century announcing the Revolution and from the Republic and is thus unrelated to the Christian faith to which Zemmour alludes and which is no longer the ambition of France. There are many Christian roots in France which are now most often limited to only traditions far from the faith; this is indeed difficult to understand for Americans.
Zemmour's discomfort would have led him to never set foot in Israel which would not be the case with his ex-wife who has always remained discreet with regard to the opinions of her ex-husband, or supposedly ex - husband since Zemmour (63 years old) would live now with his young 28 year old counselor. Nevertheless Zemmour would be the defender of family values; However Petain who is for Zemmour a protector of French values and in priority of Family values was in fact always single and frequent client of the brothels where his military superiors knew where to find him in case of emergency.
Self-hatred for Zemmour goes a long way if one follows his interventions. He shows a certain understanding for the anti-Dreyfusards and hostile towards Emile Zola as defender of Captain Dreyfus (cf. CNews of 9/29/20 and 10/15/20). Its logic could be "probably" that even he was innocent; Captain Dreyfus should have pleaded guilty so that the honor of the French Army was not tarnished. The price might have been a Saint Bartholomew of the Jews of France which is probably not meaningful as compared to the Honor of the French Army. He thus draws the opposite conclusions to those of Theodor Herzl for whom the Dreyfus affair had stressed the need to recreate the State of Israel, which indeed has little interest for Zemmour. As a matter of fact Zemmour said that if Israel has nuclear weapons, Iran should have them too (see CNews 8/12/20). This position is particularly serious for Israel and the Jewish people.
Zemmour also accused the Sandler family of having buried in Israel their dead victims of the 2012 Toulouse bombing: Rabbi Sandler and his two children. Zemmour draws the vile parallel between the victims and their al-Qaeda assassin Mohamed Mera whom his family has buried him in Algeria.
The central idea of Zemmour's program is the hatred of Islam which he would want to overthrow like the Archangel Saint Michael has slain the devil represented by a dragon. Zemmour claims that one of the greatest anti-Semites in French history, Petain, saved the Jews. But Petain began an anti-Semitic policy ahead of German demands.
Petain brought down on the Jews of France the plagues of Egypt: deprivation of French nationality for the Jews of Algeria including Zemmour's family and mine, seizure of Jewish properties, exclusion from public services (public administration, schools), bans on walking freely in the streets and to frequent the gardens, wearing the yellow star, restricted hours to go to the shops, then deportation to extermination camps.
Under Petain, Zemmour claims that only foreign Jews were concerned by the deportation which is already despicable, but the trains to the extermination camps had to leave full and they were supplemented by French Jews such as the family of Hélène Berr who believed themselves protected. Under Petain’s era the French police, gendarmerie and militia facilitated both deportations and seizures of Jewish properties.
Without the Anglo-American Operation Torch of November 8, 1942 in North Africa neither Zemmour nor I would have been born because as Jews who became foreigners and our parents would have been exterminated.
Regarding Zemmour's support for Petain we have to get to the bottom of it because Petain led objectively to be one of the best supporters of Nazism for the following reasons:
Petain was one of the most active supporters of the Axis (Germany, Italy, Japan) and could have been considered as a fourth member of the Axis by providing:
1-Substantial financing of up to 40% of the gross domestic product of France,
2-Heavy weapons including all airplanes manufactured in France under German occupation
3-The Atlantic wall mainly built by French companies and French funding.
4-The workforce comprising 1.5 million men (STOs and prisoners)
In addition Petain
5-immobilized the French fleet
6-guaranteed calm on the largest territory of the West (France) with the longest coastline thanks to the action of militia, police and gendarmerie and this facilitated the German offensive on the Eastern Front and the achievement of the Holocaust.
7-enabled 60,000 French to be sent to fight alongside the Germans on the Eastern Front.
France thus indirectly but significantly contributed to the German offensive on the Eastern Front where more than 27 million Russians (civilians and soldiers) and 6 million Jews (Shoah) were killed. Petain's responsibility cannot be limited to the 76,000 Jews deported from France.
We must also remember that the positive consequence of Operation Torch on the Jewish community in Algeria was accidental because the protection of the Jews was not a priority for the Anglo-Saxon allies who wanted to focus on Germany; in the field of threat on Jewish people which was not a priority for them, they decided to ignore that several operations may be carried out at the same time. Thus the Germans for whom the destruction of the Jews was "an avowed priority" were able to exterminate two thirds of European Jews.
In Algeria, the Americans appointed someone close to Petain as governor of the country; they did not give back the Jews back their French nationality until Free France organization of De Gaulle took back the power in Algeria from the former friends of Petain.
The Americans did not deliver immediately the Jewish soldiers Petain had interned in forced labor camps in Algeria including Rabbi Leon Ashkenazi known as Manitou.
Zemmour will be quickly forgotten and marked by the seal of intolerance and hatred, contrary to what JNS reports.