Letter to the editor of the New York Times
21/08/2016
To the editor:
Perhaps you have become numb to terrorist attacks that target Jewish people. We read Andrew Higgins’ report in the Times, from the scene of the Nice mass-murder. The article states: “This was not a military base, or a guarded government building. It was simply a crowd celebrating in the street. Like the fans at the Bataclan, gunned down in Paris during a concert; or the newspaper staff of Charlie Hebdo; or the people blown up outside the airport in Turkey.”
Your sentence omits the murders that took place last year at a Kosher supermarket in Paris, and the murders at a Toulouse Jewish school in 2012. Perhaps, like military bases or guarded government buildings, you half-expect Jewish organisations to be a target?
We are sensitive, in part because the tone of your article recalls the infamous words of the late French Prime Minister Raymond Barre, who said after the 1980 bombing of a synagogue in Paris, “This odious bombing wanted to strike Jews who were going to the synagogue and it hit innocent French people who crossed Copernicus Street.” As Shakespeare wrote in the Merchant of Venice, “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” The New York Times should be wary of complicit anti-Semitism.
Yours faithfully,
Alain Philippson, Chairman, CEJI
Ronny Naftaniel, Vice Chairman, CEJI
Frederick Mocatta, Board Member, CEJI
on behalf of CEJI, a Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe, Brussels.
