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Some 5,000 French Jews participated in an aliyah fair in Paris.
The fair, organized and run by the Jewish Agency, took place Sunday as French voters went to the polls and elected Francois Hollande as their new president, beating incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, considered the favored choice in the Jewish community.
“I cannot recall having seen such a massive number of people interested in aliyah since the days when lines of people stretched out of the Israeli embassy in Moscow,” said Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, who attended the fair. The annual fair usually attracts about 2,000 visitors, according to the Jewish Agency.
A new survey conducted in March, of the 500,000-member French Jewish community, the second largest in the Diaspora, found that French Jews have grown so disgusted with anti-Semitism that more than one quarter of them are considering emigrating.
The poll was conducted by The Israel Project, which previously measured American attitudes about Jews and Israel in order to produce pro-Israel ads.
According to the poll, 26 percent of those surveyed said they have considered emigrating due to worsening French anti-Semitism.
Of them, 13 percent are “seriously” considering leaving, according to Washington pollster Stan Greenberg, who led the surveys and focus groups.
The mood among French Jews is like a “severe depression,” said Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, a founder of The Israel Project.
According to Ynet, official results show that 92.8% of French nationals residing in Israel (9,186) voted for Sarkozy.
The fair in Paris came on the heels of an attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse in which a rabbi and his two young sons and the daughter of the head of the school were killed.
On a visit Monday to Toulouse, Sharansky said the Jewish Agency and the Israel Trauma Coalition will send counselors to the Ozar Hatorah school from Israel in the coming days, followed by a delegation of Israeli youth counselors. The professionals are charged with helping the students and their parents, as well as the teaching staff, return to their normal routine following the March attack.
“I came to Toulouse in order to strengthen the children and the community, but also to remind them that the Jewish Agency will strengthen their connection to Israel and assist those who are interested in making aliyah,” said Sharansky, though he added that aliyah should not be based solely on a tragedy like the one in Toulouse. JTA reports were used in this article.
First off,any nation that limits free speech is not tolerant. Canada has very strong laws against what they consider "hate speech". That's not tolerant. Canada and pretty much all of Europe,have very extreme laws regarding handguns,and gun possession in general. To me that's intolerant.
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The value of tolerance was more foundational to the history of the United States than probably any other nation on earth. Whether it lived up to it is a matter for debate.
First off,any nation that limits free speech is not tolerant. Canada has very strong laws against what they consider "hate speech". That's not tolerant. Canada and pretty much all of Europe,have very extreme laws regarding handguns,and gun possession in general. To me that's intolerant.
All countries limit what you are free to say. No country has truly "free speech" in the sense that you can get away with anything coming out of your mouth with no legal consequences.
If you don't believe me, consider what'll happen to you if you engage in personal threats, blackmailing, slander, libel etc to any individual person. Also, things are commonly censored or banned if they are deemed harmful to a society, its government, or during war time, in any country. It's just a matter of what kinds of things they (the countries or laws) limit.
A short documentary film with an anti-nuclear weapon theme, If You Love this Planet, made by the National Film Board of Canada, was actually banned/censored by the United States during the Reagan years as foreign propaganda by the US Department of Justice. It later on went on to win an Academy Award.
Also, by far, I barely know much about it in detail, but in terms of police force etc., the United States is more willing to use and tolerate lethal force than in Canada (don't know about Europe). You trade off some kinds of safety and tolerance for others.
Don't buy this notion often bandied around that there is a type of true freedom, unfettered by any laws or regulations. Everywhere has laws and regulations (even prehistoric tribes had them in order to "run a society", just not large scale enough to form a country). We only trade off some freedoms to tolerate for others so that others can tolerate us, and so it doesn't degenerate into a free-for-all of looting and fighting, but it's a matter of which freedoms to choose to tolerate that are the most important, and valuable for human flourishing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Trimac20
The value of tolerance was more foundational to the history of the United States than probably any other nation on earth. Whether it lived up to it is a matter for debate.
It's often a matter of tolerance to whom, to what to which situations. Much has been written about the irony of the Puritans escaping religious intolerance back home, but in their new home, the Puritans themselves then turned over and exacted intolerance to the people of other creeds (granted it was true that back in Europe things were worse).
Saying that tolerance is more foundational to one country than another is just a feel good buzzword. Granted, without being trite, the United States does deserve its exceptionalist label in many ways in doing things few other countries could match, during its rise in the last century and even before (public sanitation, education and literacy; I think that New England was among the first truly widely literate places on the globe at the time, rising to become the world economic power), and it's many of these things (eg. economic freedoms, an educated population) that leads to increased global awareness and tolerance.
some how I think you would say the same thing about the Jews in Germany in 1935.
Yeah, because it was totally possible in 1935 to leave Germany and immediately become an Israeli citizen and start a new life without any serious obstacles.
Oh, wait, it wasn't. Then again, why am I even saying that, it's not like there's any difference between talking to you and talking to a wall.
But it's nice of you to imply that I'm anti-Semitic. A good laugh was just what I needed today.
Yeah, because it was totally possible in 1935 to leave Germany and immediately become an Israeli citizen and start a new life without any serious obstacles.
Oh, wait, it wasn't. Then again, why am I even saying that, it's not like there's any difference between talking to you and talking to a wall.
But it's nice of you to imply that I'm anti-Semitic. A good laugh was just what I needed today.
I wasn't implying you were an anti semite I was implying you were an idiot.
and yes it was very possible for most Jews in Russia to come to America in pre WWI. the fact is that only 1/4th of Europe ever left. does that all of a sudden erase their antisemitism
does that all of a sudden erase their antisemitism
According to your article, the Jewish community in France has a size of 500,000 people. Each of them has the possibility to move to Israel and immediately become an Israeli citizen, and even be supported by the Israeli government in doing so and settling in. The fact that 500,000 have prefered to stay in France proves that France can't be the anti-Semitic Nazi state you claim it to be. Same applies to most Middle and Western European countries. That is all.
And before you come shouting that you never said it was an "anti-Semitic Nazi hellhole": No, you didn't. I exaggerated for dramatic effect. However, what you said was:
Quote:
Originally Posted by NY Jew
tell that to all the Jews there who think it's very anti semetic
and I interpreted "very anti semetic" as "unbearable". Which it evidently isn't.
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