his blog entry is personal.  I checked my email yesterday only to receive a message from Franck, a dear friend of mine in Paris.  The news was that his brother had been attacked and brutally beaten by a gang of at least 30 teenagers.  In one sense, it does not matter whether the act was antisemitic or not.  For the physical damage done is not more or less serious depending upon the ethnicity of the person.  Yet, I have difficulty not suspecting that my friend’s brother was a target of vicious antisemitism.  They did not rob him nor is there any indication that the attack was an act of revenge.  Nor, again, is the brother a member of some opposing gang. 

Just as a bombing can be said to have all the markings or signature of Al-Qaeda, this attack has all the markings or the signature of antisemitism. 

Wrong is wrong.  But wrong takes on a special pain when decent people are its object—people who are simply trying to get by in life.  I have known Franck for at least a decade.  His life is the very embodiment of goodwill and open-mindedness.  He is the kind of person with whom one gets frustrated precisely because he seems not to get angry enough at times. 

I have read and re-read his email messages; and I have read and re-read the blog that he created to reflect upon this pain in his life: Violence Extreme au Clos de Noyers. 

Even as Franck reflects out aloud in great pain, he exhibits a goodness that is rare.  He has not blamed this one and that one.  He has not called this one and that one names.  No, he has asked the most painful of questions: How could my neighbors—those with my brother and I have played ball and have had daily discussions—have commit this atrocity?  Indeed, in his second set of comments, Franck goes so far as to suggest that the problem is simply that 2 or 3 hoodlums are exercising just a little too much influence.

Alas, I do not agree with Franck regarding this last point.  It is a very striking thing about the world that it is extremely difficult for the few to get the many to do any thing unless the many are already disposed so to behave.  If there is any lesson to be learnt from Nazi Germany, it is that one.  Hitler could not have created Nazi Germany were the citizens of that country not already disposed to embrace his antisemitic rhetoric. 

I could perhaps accept Franck’s explanation if the gang had only robbed Yoan, the name of Franck’s brother.  As an aside this already tells you just how sorry the state of the world has become.  Evil has become such a prominent part of one society after another that we now negotiate with it.  Oh, they only robbed her: Well, you see that weren’t so bad after all.  For they could have done this or that.  Instead, they just took her money.

Back to Yoan: if the gang had only robbed Yoan, I might be willing to attribute this to stupidity.  But an attack that is vicious and persistent is another matter entirely.  That sort of viciousness presupposes an existing hostile sentiment on the part of the participants.  The gang did not just rob Yoan.  They broke body parts, including damaging his skull.  This is what 30 or so young males did to a 21-year old guy who was by himself.  That is not the sort violence that just happens.  That kind of violence is not about looking to have some fun, which unexpectedly turns into something nasty.  That is violence that is anchored in a very well-defined set of sentiments and has a very clear target. 

It is admirable of Franck that he has not invoked one invective after another in discussing the assault upon his brother.  Yet, I am inclined to think that Franck is being a little too measured.  For as I have said, the attack has all the markings of an act of antisemitism: “Oh, its just a Jew.  It does not matter what sort of harm we do, as the person deserves it”.  I have difficulty seeing the difference between Yoan’s case and the case of Illan Halimi, a young Jew who was brutally murdered. 

My worry is that the average young Jew in France is so desperate for acceptance that she or he has become vulnerable in that desperation.  It seems that the desire to be accepted was exploited in Halimi’s case.  And it would not surprise me in the least if we should have exactly the same situation in the case of Yoan. 

I shall conclude this entry with a most ominous observation.  France has been a part of my life for only 15 years.  Yet, I personally know of this Jew here and this Jew there who was an object of what, for all the world, looked like an antisemitic attack.  The significant point is that the three or so people in France whom I know who have been the object of what was probably an antisemitic attack is already three times more than the number of people in the United States whom I know personally who have also been the object of an antisemitic attack. 

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Mon Cher Franck, en écrivant ce petit essai je fais qu’un simple geste de soutien.  C’est la moindre chose que je puisse faire pour toi.  Pendant ton moment de douleur, je veux que tu saches que je pense à toi et ton frère.