Letters to the Editor
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‘Free Speech a Faux Pas in France’
As the despicable incident which occurred in Marseille is still under investigation, Anthony Grant’s piece calls for a clear answer: anti-Semitism is an existential threat, France’s policy is zero tolerance, and its legislation to combat anti-Semitic acts is among the toughest in the world [Oped, “Free Speech a Faux Pas in France,”May 4, 2007].
To claim that such an incident reflects French society as a whole is unjust and wrong. According to a Pew poll last June, France is a tolerant country where people respect ethnic and religious diversity. It has the highest number of people with a favorable opinion of Jews — 86%, compared with 77% in America — and also the highest number of Muslims with a favorable opinion of Jews, 71%.
To claim that crimes committed during the Nazi Occupation reflect French society as a whole is unjust and wrong. President Chirac, who, back in 1995 acknowledged the responsibility of the State in the Vichy crimes, recently paid tribute to the “Righteous of France,” individuals who risked their lives to save Jews from mass deportation during the Nazi Occupation.
In the words of Simone Veil, former president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah and herself a survivor of Auschwitz, “There was the France of Vichy, responsible for the deportation of 77,000 Jews, but there were also all those men and women thanks to whom three-quarters of the Jews of our country escaped the Nazis, the highest proportion in Nazi-occupied Europe.”
To claim that the Dreyfus affair testifies only to an anti-Semitic society is wrong. Certainly the anti-Semitism spawned by the affair was intense. But on the other side stood those fighting for Dreyfus’s honor and for every person’s fundamental right to justice. From Emile Zola, the committed writer, to Leon Blum, a French Jew who was later to become prime minister, the battle for Dreyfus became a battle for huge numbers of French people. And that is the reason Dreyfus prevailed. The affair could have dealt a fatal blow to the Republic: instead, France not only overcame the crisis, but emerged stronger from it.
FRANCOIS DELATTRE
Consul General of France
New York, N.Y.
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