A commemoration ceremony is organized by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), Monday October 7, at the Dôme de Paris-Palais des sports, in tribute to the victims of the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel and in support of the hostages . For its president, Yonathan Arfi, October 7 is “also a revealer of French fractures”. For a year, France has been experiencing, in its eyes, a period of “clarification of everyone’s positions on the subject of anti-Semitism”.
What memory do you have of October 7?
What I keep is the sudden feeling of dizzying insecurity and immense vulnerability. For Jews around the world, the State of Israel has held a symbolic function of reassurance since its creation. That day, beyond the trauma faced with the real-time images of an abominable massacre, this is also what collapsed. October 7 brought back the ghosts of historical persecutions. If, since then, this feeling of vulnerability has gradually faded, the trauma leaves its traces: like a form of historical regression, as if we had been projected into times that we thought were past when the Jewish people were more fragile, more threatened, more persecuted.
Would you characterize the Hamas terrorist attack as a “pogrom”?
October 7 will remain as a unique event that cannot be reduced to an existing category. In some ways, it is a pogrom, in others, it is an act of mass terrorism like September 11 or November 13. If the images of these civilian populations delivered to the barbarity of the Hamas hordes have returned the Jewish collective unconscious to images of pogroms, October 7 remains, for the moment, unclassifiable. In two days we will commemorate this massacre, even though in Jewish tradition, after a year, we symbolically move from the time of mourning to that of remembrance. But how can we move on to the time of remembrance, when the war is still ongoing, when there are still hostages?
What did October 7 change for French Jews?
From the first images of October 7, many only saw Palestinian attackers attacking Israelis. However, as they slaughter their victims, what the Hamas terrorists shout is not “Death to the Israelis”, but “Death to the Jews”! What the French Jews clearly perceived, at that moment, was the engine that was at work, that of genocidal intent and hatred of the Jews. Well beyond a geopolitical conflict, October 7 was first and foremost the epicenter of a powerful anti-Semitic earthquake, the aftershocks of which were felt throughout the world.
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