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France



French Jewish community ponders its future after Paris attacks









4,700 police and gendarmes deployed, and security measures reinforced at Jewish schools and synagogues. Is that enough?














A woman holds a placard reading 'Super proud to be Jewish' during a demonstration at Porte de Vincennes on Friday. Photograph: Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images




Anne Penketh in Paris


Tuesday 13 January 2015 01.00 EST







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In the kosher Au Club Market grocery on Monday, the teaching assistant from the Jewish school in the Paris district of Montrouge fishes out her smartphone and hits play. The sounds of gunfire and children crying resonate in the quiet of the store, where teaching assistant Priscilla B is doing her lunchtime shopping. “I held my phone out of the window to record it,” she says.
Immediately after Thursday’s attack, in which French jihadi Amédy Coulibaly gunned down 27-year-old police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe only about 100 yards from the school, the 200 children were barricaded inside by staff for the rest of the day.
France’s Jewish community, estimated at about 600,000 people, has been living on its nerves for years and the number emigrating to Israel last year doubled to 7,000.
After Coulibaly’s shooting and deadly hostage-taking which left four Jewish shoppers at a kosher supermarket dead, French Jews are again reviewing their options with alarm. The funerals of the four French victims – Yoav Hattab, 21, Yohan Cohen, 20, Philippe Braham, 45 and Francois-Michel Saada, 64 – are taking place in Israel on Tuesday. 

 Related: Charlie Hebdo attackers: born, raised and radicalised in Paris 

On Monday, France’s interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, paid a visit to the Montrouge school – on the premises of a synagogue – to reassure the staff and parents. He announced the reinforcement of security measures outside Jewish schools and synagogues where police have already been deployed following other antisemitic attacks.
In addition to the deployment of 4,700 police and paramilitary gendarmes, he said the army would also be on hand within two days. He appointed a prefect, Patrice Latron, to oversee security in future at France’s 717 Jewish schools and places of worship.
“I was reassured when he spoke,” said Priscilla. “But what happens afterwards? What happens when everything dies down again?”
Outside the grocery store, a customer said: “We’re very targeted.” He mentioned antisemitic attacks dating back to 1990 when 35 Jewish graves were desecrated in the southern town of Carpentras and a 2006 incident when telephone salesman Ilan Halimi was tortured to death in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles. He also referred to the 2012 shooting spree in Toulouse and Montauban by jihadi Mohammed Merah, who targeted a Jewish school.
“I’m tempted to go,” he said, referring to Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s invitation on Saturday to French Jews to “come home to Israel” to escape antisemitism in Europe.
The school’s co-headmistress responsible for pedagogical affairs, Michèle Favre, said that while she applauded the government’s response to the terrorist attacks, “a lot of our parents are greatly worried”. She said that “after what’s happened, some are talking openly about leaving”.
Many Montrouge residents say they are convinced the school was Coulibaly’s original target but that he was thwarted by a car crash which the policewoman was attending. The other co-headmistress, Catherine Hacoun, the school’s administrative director, acknowledged the “very strong presumptions” that his real target was the school. “That policewoman saved lives,” said Priscilla who like other residents of the southern Paris district would not give her last name. French anti-terror investigators did not comment on Monday about the Montrouge investigation.
Evelyne, the grocery’s sales assistant, said she was reassured by the presence of riot police guarding outside another synagogue close to her shop. Montrouge has a Jewish population of several thousand, according to locals. “But for the last six or seven years, I’ve told our young customers not to go out wearing a kippa,” she said.
Netanyahu paid a brief visit to the Hyper Cacher supermarket at the Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris on Monday accompanied by a heavy security detail. He was applauded by Israeli flag-waving members of the local Jewish community chanting “Bibi, Bibi” and singing Israeli songs.
Outside the shuttered grocery where he met one of the siege survivors, Netanyahu posed for photos in front a memorial poster that read: “Halimi, Carpentras, Toulouse, the same fight.”
Lydie Wolfmann, waiting with her husband, Ari, for a glimpse of the Israeli prime minister, said: “Now we’re finding out what security is like for Israelis in their daily lives. We’ve got to do it. But life goes on.”
• This article was amended on 13 January 2015. It originally stated that the number of Jewish people emigrating from France to Israel “last year doubled to 14,000”. The actual figure is 7,000. This has been corrected.



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