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Our Next Parisian Suburb: Gennevilliers
So, let’s continue our multiple-part series about the infamous Paris suburbs with many incredible twists and turns. I understand there’s a lot of interest about these neighborhoods. Gennevilliers an interesting one, because reportedly there’s now a cemetery there with an unmarked grave. It contains a terrorist who grew up there: one with whom I’d say my relationship is a bit too personal, since — a few weeks — ago I stumbled over his handiwork. I’m curious about this terrorist, given that the act of terrorism he committed made major headline news recently. So I’m curious about this suburb:
[Gennevilliers is] a Paris suburb is the final resting place of one of the two brothers who launched the deadly attack on the offices of the magazine, Charlie Hebdo.
Cherif Kouachi was buried in an unmarked grave in the cemetery of Gennevilliers, his home town [emphasis added].
The burial took place amid tight security. No relatives were present. Earlier in the week his brother, Said was laid to rest in the town of Rheims. Initially the mayor had wanted to refuse the burial but French law dictates residents have a right to a burial in their home town. The Mosque in Gennevilliers refused to conduct Cherif Kouachi’s final rites within its walls for fear of angering members of the community.
From what’s been reported, you’d think this terrorist was the product of a dangerous war zone, wouldn’t you? One into which even the cops dare not enter and Sharia is the law of the land?
But this is truly preposterous. Of course you can walk through Gennevilliers. It’s much nicer than Clichy-sous-Bois, and I certainly didn’t need to waste an afternoon proving that to myself, either. I knew it, and basically, had to do it only because I knew if I didn’t, someone would tell me that it’s impossible. Now I can say “Well, clearly not. Here I am.”
And yet: Something did happen that resulted in the Kouachi brothers thinking it would be a good idea to go on a massive killing spree in my heart-of-central Paris neighborhood. So you’d think people would be curious about whether this place is really a no-go zone.
It’s not. Forget that idea.
What’s in fact there? A drab suburb that’s very well-served by public transportation. I saw a single banner that said “Gennevilliers is united against barbarity and for freedom of expression,” and that’s the only hint I saw that something odd had happened recently. There’s a lovely cultural center dedicated to a French Caribbean writer I’d never really given much thought to. I had a nice chat with the woman there about all the activities coming up at the cultural center: an artisanal chocolate tasting, manicure classes, and lots of other things nice, middle-class people might like. She may be a Muslim, for all I know, but she looked like your typical, old-fashioned stereotype of a young French woman: pretty, nicely-dressed, and eager to talk about a French writer you’ve never heard of and artisanal chocolate. She sure wasn’t living in fear of the local war lords. Looks like there’s an excellent library there. I’d guess the medical care is first-rate, judging from the number of well-stocked pharmacies I saw.
I bet some of the guys hanging out at that cultural center were Muslims. It’s entirely possible that if I sat down to talk to them, I’d find out that they hold views I find objectionable. But I’d bet very good money that they and I could exchange our views without killing each other. If anyone doubts this, I’m happy to perform that experiment, but it’s a waste of my time and yours. That’s what would happen.
Sure, I saw distinct signs of “suspicious Muslim activity” — as in, “a few halal butcher shops” — but, trust me, that really isn’t suspicious unless you’re a vegetarian (I am, but that’s another story). It’s clean and orderly. There’s a street named after Lenin, but I can walk down a street named after Lenin without dying, even if I’m offended by that. There are also streets there named after Beethoven and Mozart, of which I approve. It doesn’t remotely look like a terrifying no-go zone. If I can wander around there saying, “Hi, where do I find a bathroom,” and be directed to one by polite and helpful people, it’s really not a no-go zone. While I didn’t personally examine the men’s room — there is some journalism I’m unwilling to do — I’m given to understand that it’s entirely satisfactory.
It’s no problem — I can say with confidence — for an American woman to walk around that neighborhood on a normal Saturday, in normal garb, and say, “Hey, what’s this neighborhood like?” It’s a place so lawful that the mayor couldn’t even say, “We don’t want him buried here,” because there’s a law, on the books, that says residents have the right to be buried in their home town. It’s a place where the mosque sure isn’t conducting his funeral rites, although they’re holding effigies for him in other parts of the world (Including in neighborhoods I’ve gone to, and no, that wasn’t a spectacular act of brave journalism, either: just the normal thing you’d do if you live there and want to know what’s going on).
What’s especially baffling to me is that the US does actually have spectacularly brave journalists who really do know what a dangerous war zone looks like, and know damned well when you need a flak jacket. So what’s up with this?
That suburb is normal, prosperous, and developed, except for the mystery no one talks about: the banal ugliness. The total destruction of the genius that made Paris a beautiful city. That strikes me as interesting and worth more than a few questions, but I reckon the street named after Lenin holds a hint–though not more.
What does it say that I had to waste a day, only to learn that “This debate isn’t even ‘in the right direction?'” Why are talking heads on television having feuds about the stuff anyone could tell you? Gennevilliers is perfectly safe for journalists. They should be going there, and they shouldn’t be confusing “black people” or “Muslim people” with “Muslim people who kill journalists and Jews in Paris”; if such people were in a majority in the neighborhoods I’ve visited, I’d be long since dead. Simple as that. I’ve got private health insurance. The people who issue it to me are in the business of making actuarial tables and calculating the odds for expats. Their questions about my lifestyle and the risks to my health are grounded firmly in reality, and they’re not charging me a warzone premium.
After finishing the excursion to Gennevilliers, the guy who gave me a lift dropped me off near the flea market (otherwise he’d have been stuck in traffic). The flea market is another place people are always telling me is “completely unsafe,” but it’s obviously not. You don’t think “Hey, just drop me off here and I’ll walk back or take the metro, so you don’t get stuck in traffic,” if the place is “completely unsafe.” It’s somewhere I go all the time, because you can buy things cheaply there.
After establishing for the millionth time that it’s safe, I wandered north by accident (serves me right for mocking the French for their inability to master Cartesian coordinates). That’s the direction people who don’t really live here keep telling me that I’ll die instantly if I walk into it. I ended up walking about a half a mile there; beyond feeling a bit dumb for laughing at people who can’t figure out which way is north — and then not checking “which way is north” — it was, as usual, a lovely Saturday evening in Paris. Yes, “European people” walk there. They were, in fact, roller-blading there. The last thing I felt was worried for my safety. Nor would it have been in any way reasonable to be. The point at which I reacted — rationally — with real concern for my safety was on the Périphérique, not beyond it. That had me screaming. Rationally.
This is a safe, first-world city with great public transport (except for Clichy), water you can drink right from the tap, and well-stocked pharmacies right in what’s being described as the Heart of Darkness; and a fairly low crime rate for a big city, all considered.
And it has some dead serious problems, which are worth reporting. In a serious way. Some things happen here that are truly abnormal, and thus deserve serious journalism. Abnormal? That scene at Charlie Hebdo. I knew the second I saw it that we had “abnormal” on our hands. But that sure didn’t happen in these terrifying ‘burbs. That was actually my neighborhood.
So what actually happened in Gennevilliers — obviously a pleasant-enough ‘burb — that resulted in an “international news-level abnormal” terrorist attack a few blocks from my safe and very tourist-friendly neighborhood? I’m frankly none the wiser for an excursion there. But I don’t think anyone is ever going to be the wiser about my much-less-normal excursion down that street in my own neighborhood, which is emphatically not a no-go zone nor even a “sensitive zone.” Not at this rate. Because no one gave me the “Please, no more media, no more questions” treatment in Gennevilliers. So I’d guess there’s been no American media there, really.
I walked into a very abnormal scene in front of Charlie Hebdo: a statistically unlikely event. But I saw few signs that the US media is really asking, “So why did that happen?” in a way that might lead to real answers. Although I’m sure that yes, French security officials are. Yes, obviously there’s a “connection to Islam,” but no, not all Muslims in France do that. No, they do not all secretly approve of it. No, it’s not because Islamic law has been imposed in Gennevilliers, or anywhere in France.
Figuring out exactly what happened is supposed to be the job of all these people who are talking about it without even looking at it. The question, “How exactly do things like this happen” might have policy implications even in far-away places like America, after all. Wouldn’t you expect every last man, woman and child in Gennevilliers to take one look at an American journalist and be afraid to talk to me, rather than lonely and eager for a chat about fondue? Shouldn’t it have taken me lot of time and patience to win the locals’ confidence and get them to tell us what’s really going on here, because they’re all-too-used to an American media who exhibit a great deal of curiosity in them?
Anyone who tells you Cherif Kouachi came from a neighborhood you can’t walk into — a place where the women are veiled, Sharia has been imposed, and the police dare not enter — is out of his mind. “Out of your mind” is no place to start when you’re thinking about things as worthy of a serious conversation as terrorism, attacks on Jews, rising anti-Semitism in Europe, freedom of expression, and Islam (or the National Front, for that matter).
Now, I have lots of theories about what produced him. I suspect the places you’d start looking — for real — are in a mosque in the 19th Arrondissement that’s long been (sensibly) razed to the ground. I’d ask about French prisons and what happens in them. I’d also like to know about the algorithms French security officials use to decide whether someone like him should be kept under surveillance, given limited police resources. But this is speculation based on local media reports, not facts. (The place Amedy Coulibaly his been discreetly deposited is reputed to be serious scum-of-the-earthville, and I’m inclined to believe that, by the way. I’ve heard from enough people that this is where you find the real racaille that I’d probably only go there in broad daylight.)
My other hunch would be that if those algorithms were involved, they’re revising them. French security officials may not have infinite resources, but they are not stupid. France is a First World place where “new data makes educated people change the algorithms.”
But that’s a hunch, not at all a fact. I’d like to know the facts. But at this point, I’ve so lost confidence in what’s being reported in the news that it looks like I’ll have to verify every fact personally with my own eyes, by which point it won’t be in the news anymore, but at least I’ll understand the story. I’m losing every bit of confidence in the media to get even the basics right, even when it concerns one of the most well-known cities in the world. I shouldn’t have to waste time proving the obvious; I should be spending it looking for what isn’t utterly obvious.
But even if I have to do every bit of the reporting myself, I know I should do it. Figuring out how that really happened is pretty important, especially if you prefer it not happen again.
But our next suburb, because I could use a break, will be Neuilly-sur-Seine, an absolutely gorgeous suburb that no real person can afford to live in:
I reckon it’s very safe to walk there, too:
Indispensable reportage Claire. Why should the media let the facts get in the way of their chosen narrative that terrorism is the result of poverty and lack of opportunity, with perhaps a dose of the legacy of colonialism thrown in for good measure?
I can remember this narrative progressed for quite a ways with respect to the 911 hijackers until it was revealed they were educated and mostly upper middle class.
I’m not interested in competing narratives. There’s only one that really matters: what actually happened. I’m willing to believe terrorists can have multiple motives. I’m willing to study whatever data there really is, closely, and let it guide policy making in a rational way. I’ve got a few firm data points here, but no narrative.
Maybe a “no-go zone” in France isn’t a place that’s too dangerous to visit but rather a place that’s too boring for a Frenchman to visit?
In my travels across Her Majesty’s Great Northern Dominion, I’ve noticed that many of the places I’ve been warned against as being “the bad part of town” aren’t actually dangerous, per se, but rather that there’s simply no good reason to bother visiting, because there’s nothing of interest there.
Like, in London (England) nobody would suggest that a tourist walk the streets of Thamesmead alone. Not so much because it’s dangerous (though people who live in Belgravia might think so), but rather because why would any tourist bother?
I’d like that to be true for reasons of personal vanity, of course, but I’m really disturbed my the thought that it could be. Help me figure this out: Why wouldn’t that place be crawling with journalists?
What’s going on with the news cycle, the way people are thinking about these things? We do–seriously–have tons of journalists who know what to do in war zones, so if this is what they are, why aren’t our journalists there? France’s problems are far from the biggest in the world, but a story like this does have implications for how Americans understand our own counter-terrorism policies, so you’d think the answer to the question, “What, exactly, happened here” should interest us. I want to know exactly what happened for obvious reasons–if this turns out to be a trend, obviously I won’t find Paris such a safe city. I’d like to know exactly what convinced them that these guys could be let out of prison in the confidence they posed no danger to society. I want a story here that makes sense, followed by changed policies in responses to these lessons.
Well, heck. I’ll give you a narrative.
Young men want their lives to matter. They are inherently attracted to the strong horse (nobody wants to back a loser), and for men, destruction is a lot easier (and primally fun) than construction.
You don’t need 99% of men to think this way in order to produce murder and chaos. You just need a few.
The problem with this article is that you are trying to establish causality, preferably from Nurture.
Why?
Why not respect the villains enough to believe that they freely chose to be Bad Guys?
Apropos of nothing: Is that an original Claire Belinski epigram, or a quotation from someone else? I’d prefer to cite it properly when I add it to my “favourite quotations” file.
BTW, all this stuff about how nice you think the neighborhood is, is really nuts. I’d like you to see the neighborhood the way I do when I wear a yarmulke.
Here is an experiment, if you really think that these neighborhoods are all just fine: next time you visit, wear a big yellow Jewish Star. Tell us how it felt.
In return, would you be willing to walk alone through Compton or Detroit (below 8th Mile) wearing a bright, white, Lacoste tennis outfit?
How about through a predominantly aboriginal neighbourhood in Winnipeg or Saskatoon while wearing a kilt?
I’m not saying the analogies make it right. I’m just saying that there are dangers in any country’s poorer ethnic enclaves for those who don’t comport themselves intelligently.
Ah, but I do not write long and beautiful articles about how unremarkable Detroit is, about how all the people are perfectly nice and normal and civilized.
People do.
Saints and sinners and human nature. Those hard-working war-zone reporters? They’re roughing it in places like Afghanistan and Iraq or Nigeria or other odd spots around the world. The comforts of Paris and the suburbs thereof are not going to hold an adrenaline rush for them. Why would they bother with going to a place like that?
Then there are the reporters sent to Paris to report on this particular incident. They don’t need to actually visit these places. They’re on a tight deadline and a nice expense account. Should they spend a lot of time out in the burbs where there’s nothing to see? Or should they talk to a few Parisians who have also never left the heart of the city, but who report on rumors of rumors of rumors? “Okay, it’s a wrap! Back to the hotel bar.”
Does AP, Washington Post, or other papers or services have a Paris Bureau? If so, what sort of reporters are there, and why? Are they local people? Or are they Americans who jumped at a chance for being stationed in Paris? How is their expense account? Is it worth it to them to desensationalize the news? No, it’s in their best interest to make Paris sound like a war zone, so that they get combat pay as they sit in the corner café watching pretty girls go by.
How many times have American reporters been caught making people and stories up because they are just too lazy to get out and do the leg work? I don’t think this is hard to explain if one just pays attention to human nature.
How are the French reporters doing with it, by the way? Are they any better than the Americans?
My wife would probably write articles about how great Detroit was, is, and can aspire to be in the future.
Thank you Claire, you are my favorite pundit on Ricochet and I appreciate a rare dose of optimism these days. You say you are not interested in competing narratives but I’d love to hear you have a dialog with Mark Steyn on these issues. Mark is a fair minded person and if you could convince him of the error of his perspective I’m sure he would admit it.
I continue to have no view on the matter. However, having now read Charles Cooke’s report, I would be curious for Claire to wander the same places he did: Sarcelles, Aulnay-soux-Bois, and Sevran.
In reading Cooke’s article, I am struck by 4 things.
1.) I wonder how much his guides were putting him on. Whole families executed by rival gangs dressed up like police? The guide himself knowing 2 people murdered by gangs. Such things are possible -but I want corroboration. At minimum, what is the murder ate in Sarcelles, and how does it compare to, say, the Bronx.
2.) Things look worse than they probably are because we are observing in unusual times -immediately after a terrorist attack. However, because of the heavy police and military presence, things could also be better than they usually are. Mobs of 200 screaming youths are not going to form when the French military is already on site.
3.) Regarding sharia and the enforcement of French law, it seems the ladies protest too much. They are furious that Fox News is implying they’ve lost control. They haven’t lost control. It’s just that they aren’t enforcing the law because they don’t want the hassle, and they have to tolerate these things, and the last time they tried their police officers were surrounded by a howling mob and had to run away, and then the mob burned a copy of the French Civil Code (if it is small enough that it can be burned in something less than a massive bonfire, I suddenly envy the French their simple laws…). But they’re totally in control! What do you expect the French government to say? “Nope, sorry, totally lost control there. Short of someone being shot, we’re not getting involved. Firebombing’s not going to roust us from our barracks.” I also remember the riots in London some years ago, where there was video of rock throwing protestors and London police running away from them. Somehow “if there are stone throwers, we won’t back down from them” sounds less impressive and more like covering impotence.
4.) There is a direct comparison between Claire and Cooke* in that both have been to Gennevillieres. Again, the locals protest too much -but in this case I’m willing to give them a little slack. They’ve probably been getting the questions a lot lately. But I don’t know what to make about lines like “well, we saw him sometimes, but no one ever saw his wife…” Nor am I sure what to make of the bit about how the non-French French are not being properly assimilated in the schools.
Anyway, not that arguments and evidence need to be specifically aimed at me, but that’s where I currently am in the persuasion.
*I find myself in a bit of a conundrum: normally I’d refer to “Cooke” and “Berlinski,” but in this atmosphere I feel close enough to the author that “Berlinksi” feels stand-off-ish, and yet I don’t actually know her better than I know Charles Cooke -who will be Cooke on grounds that I don’t know him at all.
I don’t mean to be implying any difference in stature. Nor, however, am I entirely sure on the proper titles and etiquette, though.
Sabrdance
*I find myself in a bit of a conundrum: normally I’d refer to “Cooke” and “Berlinski,” but in this atmosphere I feel close enough to the author that “Berlinksi” feels stand-off-ish, and yet I don’t actually know her better than I know Charles Cooke -who will be Cooke on grounds that I don’t know him at all.
I don’t mean to be implying any difference in stature. Nor, however, am I entirely sure on the proper titles and etiquette, though.
I asked a question of Jay Nordlinger for the latest Need to Know, and addressed him as Mr. Nordlinger, on similar grounds of not actually knowing him.
On air, he poked very mild fun at me for being “formal.” (And answered both my questions.)
I think that’s a fair comment.
How safe/welcoming are different neighborhoods for people who are visibly different (colour, garb, language, politics) from the local majority?
How about for women?
Does it vary by time of day or week?
Are some minorities generally treated worse than others?
And while minorities being welcome is certainly a mark of cultural health, is it fair to make it a test for whether an area is a no-go zone or not? I think perhaps actual physical safety is a better mark of that – for any individual.
FWIW, in Neuilly, talk to Philippe Karsenty.
Original, but … “favorite quotations?” I’m getting into a world of worry if that seems like a surprising thing to say.
Did I use the word “surprising”?
;-)
I have no answer, but which is worse, terrorism incubated in a place that doesn’t seem menacing, or terrorism incubated in a place that seems menacing?
What I’m being told is that a “European”-looking (aka white) woman can’t walk through such neighborhoods with her head uncovered, or in safety, that they’re poverty-ridden, and that Islamic law (or something like it is in force).
I am telling you that this is not true. And that a woman like me wouldn’t even be a “minority” in such a place. And that in fact, I’m about as “Jewish-looking” as you can be, short of actually walking around wrapped in a Star of David. And yes, I am as Jewish as you are: Don’t tell me I’m not. I don’t conceal my Jewishness. I don’t walk into these places and say, “Hi, my name is Claire Berlinski, and I’m a Jew,” but I sure do say, “Hi, my name is Claire Berlinski (which does the job, here in the real world), and if I think anyone’s still wondering, I mention it quickly–“I’m Jewish, and I’d like to know how whether this is a place Jews are safe,” to see how people react.
I am not telling you that there is no anti-Semitism in France. There is, emphatically, anti-Semitism in France. Violent and murderous anti-Semitism. I wasn’t as physically close to the murders at the hyper cacher as I was to those at Charlie Hebdo, but that was luck. I have friends who were. I know people whose kids go to school near Charonne; I know people who shop at that market regularly. I shop at markets like it in my neighborhood. This is pretty personal to me–not only as a Jew, but as a journalist, a person who lives here, a woman, and as a human.
“Something is happening here that we need to really understand” is a much better place for people to start thinking about what’s going on here than “This is a Third World country where a journalist can’t even walk into a neighborhood like that.” A better place if you want to fix something–and yes, this must be fixed. Because to fix a problem, you have to understand exactly what the problem is, first. Even if you don’t give a damn about France, but think it might have lessons that could help prevent things like this from ever happening in the US, you have to understand what happened here.
When people start talking about “dangerous no-go zones,” they’re telling me, in effect, “We’re not serious about understanding or fixing this problem. We’re serious about selling stories.”
Think of it this way: If we understand this as a problem involving “neighborhoods where Islamic law has imposed,” the solution is, “well, un-impose it.” That has been done. It was done long ago.
If we understand it (as I’m guessing) as something like, “a much more complex thing involving ambient anti-Semitism that’s spread on the Internet, specific mosques, French prisons, specific criminal cells, Yemen, Syria, laws that don’t allow the police to keep enough people under surveillance, flawed police algorithms,” we might get somewhere more useful–especially if we assume a government that is, in fact, very serious about figuring this out. And we should. One that collects and analyzes a ton of data that could be helpful to people trying to figure it out. The solution might be a number of things, but depending how they analyze it, they might be able to stop the next attack on a kosher market.
My opinion? Job of journalists here is to help the people who want to figure out how to keep these things from happening. To get them true, useful and credible information they can work with. Not to make them say, “Don’t even bother reading anything an American journalist says, they’re living in some weird fantasy-land.”
They’re in a hurry: they don’t have time for anyone who is proving, by saying silly things, that they have’t really given a lot of thought to this problem, and thus don’t deep-down believe it’s a serious problem. When American journalists say things that make it clear they’re not really taking this problem seriously–if they did, they’d never say things like “you can’t even go to these neighborhoods”–they make the job of people who do take it very, very seriously a little bit harder. They create prejudices about the sloppiness of American journalists–fair ones–and make it much less likely that anyone will believe me when I say, “we’ve got a very serious problem with anti-Semitism here on our hands.”
I care about that, so I don’t want to have to waste time establishing that yes, I get the difference between “Sharia has been imposed in and white women don’t dare walk in what is in fact a pleasant suburb,” and “rising anti-Semitism that has far too often resulted in Jews being harassed and even murdered.”
They’re both bad. But they suggest a different approach to combatting it, so getting it straight is important.
There’s something of interest there. If that was indeed his home town, it’s interesting by definition. It’s part of a (larger) story about how someone (reportedly) born here decided to become a terrorist. One day spent in that neighborhood isn’t enough for me to say, “How exactly this place fits into the story,” but is enough for me to say, “This guy had access to free health care, lots of nice social services, and mosques that don’t encourage this kind of thing at all.” So whatever happened isn’t going to be solved by “more free health care and social services and nicer mosques in that district.”
I don’t know the rest of the story. I can guess–based on media reports the credibility of which I find increasingly less trustworthy–but for the rest of the story, I’ll have to do a lot more legwork. By that point, it will be out of the news and few will care, but I do care, and hope that whatever I find out will interest other people who do still care and prove useful to them.
I do. What I want to know is why they let these guys out of prison, and why, when they did, they didn’t keep them under surveillance–or provide what I’d consider “adequate protection” to what I’d think of as “an obvious high-value target.” (That’s Charlie Hebdo, which was not, in my view, “reasonably protected.” Everything that looks even “remotely Jewish” is now “visibly protected.” That changed policy overnight, so clearly France does change policy in response to data.)
I don’t think this happened because the French government doesn’t care whether people are murdered in France. I think there was a screw-up–probably one involving limited police resources and flawed assumptions about who the priority targets for surveillance and protection were. I want to know how those decisions were made, exactly, because I reckon there are more terrorists here in France. A lot more. And I reckon police resources are still limited. So having a clearer picture of who they were and why this happened would be a good step forward for figuring out, “How to make sure they kill fewer people like me”–and probably for any country that’s trying to figure out, “Where should the focus of our counter-terrorism efforts be.” That’s every country, by the way. And doing it the right way also has implications for a lot of people who shouldn’t be under surveillance, or having their taxes raised so that they can keep people who are highly unlikely to commit terrorism under surveillance. It also has implications for policies on immigration–is “no immigration from anywhere” going to solve this if in fact the people who do this are already here? Born here, in fact? No, it will not. So someone who tells you it will doesn’t really care about stopping this stuff. Someone who tells you, “We’ve traced this event to a specific cell. We think we’ve now got every member of that cell. We’re getting a lot of information out of them right now. Once we have, we’ll understand this better and figure out why we missed this” is someone who might be serious about stopping these things. He or she might even be serious enough that he or she wouldn’t be talking to journalists on the record, but those people exist.
This is true, and I agree: It doesn’t make it right, and we want policies that make it less true. There is a big difference, though, between “not Utopia” and “hell.” There are also neighborhoods here–and this I promise–where you would feel very nervous walking around looking “visibly Muslim.” I don’t think that’s right, either. I walk around some of these neighborhoods, too, and when I see a woman wearing a headscarf and picking up her kids from school, I have an instinct to go up to chat with her and not make a big deal of it, but just to let her know, “Hey, you look like a normal person to me, and I’m not looking at you like a terrorist.” Because I can see from her face that it’s true: She’s worried that this is what people think. She was their victim, too. My instinct is to protect her. Just as when I see Jews in Paris who “look like Jews,” I want to let them know–without making a big deal of it–“Don’t you worry. I know you’re here, and I’m not leaving either. You will not be left on your own as long as I’m alive.” (Or “Hey, it’s shabbat, so what you’re doing at this Monoprix on Shabbat doesn’t quite make sense, but I reckon that’s a good thing for an undercover cop or whatever you are to do. Carry on.”) And right now, my neighborhood is full of Stars of David and signs saying “For freedom of expression and Jews,” so my immediate neighborhood is one where I’m more concerned for that mom who wants to pick up her kids from school–and is afraid that people will look at her and think, “Go back to Algeria with your terrorist four-year-old.” They won’t say it, but I don’t think she should have to see that in peoples’ eyes, either, given that I’m sure she’s about as excited about the Kouachi brothers as I am. Gennevilliers is a neighborhood where I’m more concerned about whether kids wearing a kippah will be harassed. None of this is right. The Kouachi brothers did it. No one who didn’t should be punished for it: but many will be, especially if this encourages the kinds of people here–who really exist–and who think, “Enough with both the Muslims and the Jews.” (To be precise, they’re more like people who think, “Enough with anyone who isn’t “really French.”) They are not the majority, at all, but anyone who thinks that strain of thought in France doesn’t exist is also very out of touch with reality. If Jews think they’re the solution to the problem, they’re not really paying attention to what these people say to each other when they think no one’s paying attention.
Claire,
I was watching this Canadian guy…Well, I’ll post the video you decide.
Gee, I thought Canadians were boring. Ezra kind of sneaks up on you. Stuck it to Hidalgo really well. He even had a clip of Marine Le Pen.
Boy, I really enjoyed that.
Regards,
Jim
Help me out, James, ’cause I assume we’re on the same side. I’ve been watching Ezra for years, love him when he talks about Canada (though I haven’t spent enough time in Canada to be able to say confidently,” Ezra’s the go-to guy,” I just sort of naturally like him.) Don’t know how much he knows about France. Watching all of this looks like it could take about 45 minutes. I could be using that time to go through French statistical databases and looking for any methodological flaw in the way they compile these statistics.
Would you have the patience to give me the executive summary on what Ezra’s saying, and tell me what facts you think should be checked?
Yes, I think–but I have to keep reading to have a really good sense of which ones are the best. Unsurprisingly, they’re better than the American ones (they just aren’t able to get away with saying things that no one would believe because they can see what’s in front of their eyes), but my very general sense is that they’re not as good as some American reporters would be when covering their own home towns. I’m learning more about which ones sound like they’re really on top of things and which ones don’t.