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Published on 5 July 2016
#Crif - Roger Cukierman ends his term as President of Crif
3 terms of very intense and courageous activity
Roger Cukierman finished his term as President of Crif on June 29th after 3 terms of very intense and courageous activity.
He was honored by standing ovations at the last Crif General Assembly and at Governing board.
Roger Cukierman will be remembered for his outstanding realizations.
Hereafter we re-publish his speech at the last Crif Diner, on March 7, 2016 :
Mr. Prime minister, in the country which first granted full citizenship to Jews in 1791, when will we live again our Jewishness without fear?
Mr. Prime minister of the French Republic
Mr. President of the National Assembly,
Mr. President of the Senate
Distinguished Ministers,
Lady and Gentlemen former Prime Ministers,
Dear Elected officials,
Dear Ambassadors,
Dear Distinguished Representatives of religions,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Please allow me to begin with an anecdote that will offset the gravity of tonight’s exchange: One day, a visitor went to the zoo and was amazed to see a truly biblical scene: a wolf and a lamb together in a cage! Surprised, the visitor asked the zoo keeper: “How miraculous! How did you do this?”; “Oh that's simple, every morning, the lamb is changed”!
In real life, human beings are both wolves and lambs and the world cannot be divided between nice and nasty. We all defend the values in which we believe. But defending an idea must not give us permission to impose it by force on others!
Last year, in this same place, we remembered with profound sorrow the memory of the victims of January 2015, cartoonists, policemen and Jews, murdered for who they were. A targeted violence, a ruthless violence, an inconceivable violence.
The reaction of the French people on January 11 was impressive by its emotion and grandeur.
But our country had probably not fully understood or admitted that it was at war, a war imposed on France, and a war that relies on terror to obtain this horrible concept of submission.
Jews are often the first victims of barbarity, but they are never alone. Frantz Fanon expressed it with these words: “When you hear someone insulting the Jews, pay attention; he is talking about you.”.
And then came November 13. This time, every French man and woman was targeted without exception.
And we must again weep, weep for the 130 dead and so many injured, mostly young people, victims of the same religious fanatics invoking Allah!
November 13 was a mass crime against the youth, against culture, against freedom, a mass crime against France.
This time, I hope, I want to believe that our country has understood. Through your voice, Mr. President, France named the enemy: Islamic terrorism.
Everyone knows that we now live under the threat of new attacks. Everyone understands what is at stake: our way of life, our culture, our worldview.
The Nazism and other genocides of the twentieth century are now followed by the 21st century’s jihadist horror and beheadings.
France is not the only country affected by this barbarity. It is the same terrorists, who in the name of Allah struck the Bataclan and the cafes in Paris and Tel Aviv, the same terrorists who in the name of Allah, strike on all continents:
From Ankara to Bombay, from Copenhagen to Jakarta,
From Mombasa to Tunis, from San Bernardino to Timbuktu and Ouagadougou!
They kill, destroy, and devastate countries, sowing ruin and sorrow. They rape, stone, behead. They attack with a knife, a Kalashnikov or ram-raiding cars.
And their first victims, in terms of numbers, are Muslims. Not a day without an attack, not a day without new victims!
These enemies will not accept any other view of Islam than their own, let alone any other religion.
These enemies hate our modernity, our music, our way of life. They can’t bear equality between men and women, the freedom to be an atheist or not, to change religion or, more simply, the freedom to drink, laugh and flirt at a cafe.
These enemies sanctify death. They despise life. For them, the bright future comes through the killing of those they consider as wicked, and infidels.
Their propaganda, and their mastery of Internet technologies are fearsome.
It only takes them a few weeks , via internet, to indoctrinate young Muslims, even young Christians or Jews, boys or girls, in search of spirituality as much as excitement, who find in the jihad an answer to their discontent.
Here, French Jews have long been alone in the vanguard.
Mr. Prime minister, you know our situation and your speeches are warm, friendly. We are grateful for your words and your actions also. Beyond your person, public authorities were remarkably mobilized, in this difficult period.
Previous governments were of the same mind:
France has one of the most protective legislations against anti-Semitism, against Holocaust-denial and against the boycott.
Policemen, gendarmes, soldiers protect our synagogues and schools. I want tonight to express to them our deepest gratitude.
However, our situation is not enviable.
For fifteen years, we have been the victims of 500 to 1,000 anti-Semitic acts each year, half of all xenophobic acts perpetuated in France, while we represent less than 1% of the population.
And some of these acts were murders: Ilan Halimi, ten years ago, and at that time there was not one single call to the police, even anonymously, from any of the thirty gang members,
Other victims, the son and the grandchildren of Mr. Sandler and Monsonego in Toulouse, remember, at point-blank range,
And Yohav, Yohan, Philippe and Francois-Michel at the Hypercacher supermarket!
Remembering, fighting indifference and trivialization: this is also our struggle!
I am not afraid to repeat words already spoken: today we, French Jews, are in danger when we wear the kippa in the subway or in some neighborhoods.
Today, we cannot send our children to many schools of the Republic. Our children are insulted or beaten there.
Today, only a third of Jewish children are enrolled in state schools.
For too long, the French school system has not taken the measure of its lost territories. For too long we have not named things.
Mr. Prime minister, when will we see revolutionary proposals for state schools to once more become the schools that embody the Republic?
We live an entrenched life. We feel the deep anxiety of becoming second-class citizens. Such ostracism isolates and traumatizes. But is it the fault of the French Jews if cultural and religious sectarianism is growing?
I am not the only one to feel this deep anxiety. Each year, several thousand French Jews leave their roots, their parents, their friends, their work, their culture and their history.
How sad for them! How sad for France!
Mr. Prime minister, in the country which first granted full citizenship to Jews in 1791, when will we live again our Jewishness without fear?
These attacks and anti-Semitic acts tell us something about the state of France: our society is suffering. The status of Jews is an indicator of the state of social pathologies.
Our society is suffering, a society that allowed French citizens born in France, educated in the schools of the Republic, to become the perpetrators of bombings and so many anti-Semitic acts. What a failure for the governments that have been running our country for decades and have allowed the hatred of others to grow and prosper!
The evils that plague our society are known. There are, of course, economic problems. But that's not all. Our society doubts itself. It rejects its elites, it criticizes Europe. Our society is in quest of identity, of religious and moral markers.
And on the Internet it is even worse, with hate messages rising exponentially.
Mr. Prime minister, new rules must be imposed on Facebook, Twitter and Google to stop this development. The state of emergency must also apply to the Internet!
Pharos, the State institution established to fight cybercrime, should have several hundred employees instead of only a few dozen as it does now.
Another symptom of this French disease is the impressive, intolerable progression of the National Front whose demagogic proposals are dangerous for France.
The National Front plays on the fears and anxieties of our time to swell its ranks, just as its ancestors played in the 1930s and 1940s on the fears and anxieties of defeat.
Behind a cleaning of the facade, it is to this party that belong people who are nostalgic for Pétain, Vichy and their ideology.
We, French Jews have kept a painful memory of that period.
We must be exemplary and faultless in the rejection of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s heiresses.
Our society is suffering. It is urgent to restore hope for our youth.
If the evils are known, the remedies are less obvious. Our neighboring countries have all shown an ability to change, to break the privileges and vested interests.
Is it really necessary, as the philosopher Raymond Aron thought, to wait for a revolution for our country to change?
It also happens that measures are announced, but a year later, they are still not effective. I am thinking of the provisions for transferring racist or anti-Semitic offenses to ordinary law from their current, still prevailing status under the laws governing the press. Similarly, the national publication of all convictions for racism and anti-Semitism is still not achieved.
The forces reluctant to change are many, including when it comes to security issues. They invoke , the human rights and principles. Their considerations are respectable, as was the pacifism of the 1930s, which prevented democracies from protecting themselves against Nazism when it was perhaps still time to act.
The future we want to offer our youth requires us to find solutions free from so regrettable, so absurd, so backward-looking partisan divisions.
Here I want to take an example, that of Islam of France. It is time to find a French solution so that foreign countries, some of which are suspected of supporting Islamist fanaticism, no longer finance, mosques and imams in France.
It is time to support the CFCM in the necessary effort to get all the imams of France without exception to adhere to the values of the Republic.
Mr. Prime minister, France is the country where the largest Jewish population in Europe lives, but also the largest population of Arab or Muslim.
Let us work for this diversity to be fruitful and exemplary!
Terror attacks are striking many countries. Among them, there is Israel, a country that is friendly to France.
Demographic changes and the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel make a negotiated solution of two states, living side by side, in peace and security, necessary.
I know, we know, there is no more ardent desire than that of the people of Israel to live in peace with their neighbors. I have no doubt that the Palestinian people are of the same mind.
No one can avoid criticism, and the Israeli democracy is often harsh towards its government. But in France, particularly at the extreme left, but not only, Israel is often subject to an unfair and distorting interpretive grid. We even see former French ambassadors calling shamelessly, yes shamelessly, for a coalition against Israel!
According to this grid, Israel is loved when it is a victim and hated when it defends itself. The assailant who commits a knife attack in France is a terrorist. If the attack takes place in Israel, the term terrorist disappears.
Israel is the Jew of the nations and the only target in the world of a de-legitimization process.
This anti-Zionism is based on a Pollyannaish perception of the Palestinian cause and the demonization of Israel.
There is just one step from the detestation of Israel to hostility toward French Jews.
This step was taken during several events where there were calls to the murder of Jews and they ended by attacking synagogues.
The anti-Zionists are mistaken in the choice of their enemy!
Who is destroying Syria? Who destroyed Libya, Iraq? Who oppresses women, and homosexuals?
Why do States that are overflowing with oil wealth maintain feudal regimes at the expense of freedom?
Why don’t they welcome migrants?
And is it really necessary for France to receive their leaders and cover them with honors, first among which the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran?
This interpretive grid is, unfortunately, being adopted by the EU Commission against Israel. The Commission has asked Member States to specially label products from the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
This request is discriminatory. Regions in the world where territorial disputes exist are many, beginning with Tibet, Western Sahara or the part of Cyprus occupied by Turkey. But they are not subject to similar requests.
The labeling is "petty". If the European Union and France want to get more involved in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, why are they tackling only one of the parties?
Would it not be more effective – and Europe has it takes – to promote Palestinian democracy and an education that rejects the hatred of others.
And if the idea is to foster direct dialogue, is it not absurd to see France threatening, were the dialogue to fail, to give reason to one of the parties by recognizing the state of Palestine.
Can’t our diplomats understand that in so doing they are removing the incentive for both parties to really negotiate?
At the risk of appearing incongruous, rash or utopian, is it not more important to consider the realities on the ground? One of them is clear: Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel. Why not recognize this fact?
I want to talk now about a movement that claims to defend the Palestinian cause – the BDS: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions.
BDS has human resources provided by the extreme left and funds with a strong smell of oil and gas.
Let's face it. BDS is an illegal activity: the boycott is prohibited by Articles 205-1 and 2 of the Criminal Code.
BDS is unfair: It strikes indiscriminately all of Israel, its universities, start-ups, oranges, and even the Batsheva ballet.
BDS is counter-productive: it contributes to the misery of those Palestinians who live from their cooperation with Israel.
Finally, by calling Israel “an apartheid state”, BDS seeks to delegitimize Israel, to ghettoize Israel, and to make it disappear.
We’ve had enough of these events and other pantomimes that disturb public order.
Mr. Prime minister, the BDS should be banned. You have every reason to pronounce that prohibition.
Mr. Prime minister, I will leave the presidency of CRIF in a few months. This is not an opportunity for me to do an inventory of my mistakes; others, hopefully not too many, will do it better than me, but rather an opportunity to share a reflection upon my destiny, that of my family and that of our future as a nation.
I carry the memory of the small boy, Roger Fabre, that was me as a six-year old child hidden by nuns in Nice, during World War II.
I carry with me the memory of my father, an alumnus of a Yeshiva in Poland, who was angry with God after the Holocaust, who made it a point of honor to eat on Yom Kippur, but who replaced the religious practice by the love of Yiddish culture, and an immense pride in the rebirth of the State of Israel.
I carry the memory of my grandparents, who I never knew, who disappeared in the sad ashes of the sky over Treblinka. And with them disappeared over fifty family members, also gassed and burned.
In my youth I did not know what an older person was. I know today. In my childhood, I was threatened and had to protect myself from the police who were rounding up Jews. Today I am again threatened, but it is the police who protect me, and they have my gratitude.
I also carry the legacy of a long tradition, that of a small nation that has been through so much, so much persecution, but has never stopped playing an important role in the evolution of thought, science and culture. I cannot resist the reckless and perhaps questionable temptation of quoting Jesus, Marx, and Einstein.
We are one of the very few human groups who have managed to preserve their uniqueness down through the centuries. Today, with less than 15 million Jews in the world, we don’t count for much!
But, as I suggested to the Chinese ambassador, Jews and Chinese, together, we represent almost a quarter of humanity!
And I see every day, with great pride, how the France I love is in symbiotic harmony with its Jewish citizens, how palpable is our common destiny, and our relationship to what is universal, to humanity!
Yes we are delighted that France now numbers a Finkielkraut among its so-called “Immortals”, the elite members of the French Academy.
We hear this message that France without Jews is not France. We recognize ourselves in this Republic, one and indivisible, that allows all its citizens to flourish in freedom, equality and fraternity.
Fraternity is not a mere disembodied principle, it is also a will.
In the world war that is imposed upon us today, in this war where freedom and human dignity are at stake, I want to tell you that I have confidence in our victory.
I have confidence because we have no choice but to overcome Islamist fanaticism, and because France has always found the resources to overcome the worst hardships.
France will once again become a shining light in the world, one of the poles of universal thought.
I believe in our victory and I have hope for the future of our children, because France is generous and beautiful by its history, culture and diversity.
Yes, let us be confident in the future of our country.
Long live the Republic, long live France!