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Live From...
Paris: May Day, on a continent where much is different, but some old hatreds haven't changed, a presidential candidate is accused of bigotry, intolerance and some say anti-Semitism.
Aired May 01, 2002 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: May Day, on a continent where much is different, but some old hatreds haven't changed. In the cradle of liberty, equality and fraternity, a presidential candidate is accused of bigotry, intolerance and some say anti-Semitism.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He hates Jews and he hates Arabs and doesn't yet know who he hates most.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: It isn't just France. Tonight, the changing faces of Europe, and the backlash.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got people coming to our country now that don't respect our laws.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Is Europe's past going to be its future?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have seen Jews being physically attacked at a rate that has been unprecedented.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: LIVE FROM PARIS: FEAR, HATE AND ANTI-SEMITISM. Now, CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Good evening from Paris, the City of Light, the home of liberte, eqalite and fraternite. Tonight, people are asking, how did a racist Xenophobic, Arab-bashing, Jew-baiting candidate become a serious contender for the presidency of this most civilized of countries and will the extreme showing here for the far right, will it translate across Europe? Are we exaggerating? Do we think that the extreme far right will roll through Europe? No, but do we think that this is an important issue to discuss? Yes, indeed, it is, given the showing of these far right candidates across Europe not only here in France.
And the issue of anti-Semitism, even before the first round of presidential voting here on April 21, there were anti-Semitic attacks in France and in other parts of Europe. We will explore all of that, but first, today is May Day. Around Europe, the traditional day when people come out and support workers unions and other labor organizations. But in Paris today and all around France, it took on an extra significance as more than one million French people came out to the street to say no to fascism, to oppose Jean-Marie Le Pen and everything he stands for, to try to restore some of Frances' tarnished honor. CNN's Jim Bitterman has our first report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIM BITTERMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): France has celebrated May Day for nearly 150 years, but never so passionately. And it was a threat of Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose extreme right-wing party commandeered the worker's holiday as it rose in power that provoked some of the largest demonstrations in years.
First, there was a March and speech by Le Pen himself. He raised some familiar themes, railed at familiar enemies, anti-Europe, anti- immigrant and nothing if not patriotic.
The crowd, which seemed larger and more mainstream French than in previous years even cheered Le Pen's attack on leader of the Catholic Church because they denounced his bid to become president.
An hour and a half after he began speaking, the ultra nationalist concluded with not one, but three rounds of the national anthem.
(on-camera): In the end, Le Pen said little more than what he's been saying for years. But it's different now; a presidential candidate commands attention and merits media coverage. His show of strength was seen by millions.
(voice-over): But those who want Le Pen stopped outdid him. In a 100 cities across the country, more than a million people went on the march.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): France is a Democratic country and it must remain Democratic. We don't need Le Pen in France.
BITTERMAN: There were four demonstrations in Paris alone. This one a memorial on the banks of the River Seine, where after Le Pen marched seven years ago, right wing thugs through a Moroccan immigrant into the water where he drowned.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): France is us, but a France against racism, anti-Semitism, against the fascism of the 21st century.
BITTERMAN: The main beneficiary of the anti-Le Pen emotion left the streets to the demonstrators. Jacque Chirac, who faces Le Pen in the finals to the presidency on Sunday, appeared only briefly in public to present a flower queen. But Chirac can remain confident, fully aware that those who hate the extreme right have no choice but him when they arrive at the ballot box.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody will vote on Sunday for Chirac because it's the only way to be free.
BITTERMAN: Still, France is a country that goes into the streets easily and demonstrates well. It will be Sunday's vote that counts.
After a first-round election, results that left many ashamed of what commentators said was a collective lack of electoral responsibility.
Jim Bitterman, CNN, Paris.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: For more than a week now, since Le Pen made his surprise showing at the polls, the press, the pundits, the people in France and around Europe and indeed around the world have been writing searing editorials and commentary about how this could have happened here. Let me read for you "The Leader," the main editorial in the "Venerable Economist."
"It is disgusting," says "The Economist," "that voters in one of the world's richest and most civilized countries should now have to choose as their president either a washed up, if amiable opportunist or by way of as an alternative, a thug whose message is one of hate." We get his message, Jean Le Pen's message now from CNN's Chris Burns.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He's a former paratrooper and at age 73, still talks tough like one, a charismatic master of the populist sound byte. Jean-Marie Le Pen says he'll really fight rising crime, unemployment and the immigration he blames for both. Le Pen also blames job losses on what he calls Euro globalization; Europe's single market, its euro currency and the American-led push for free trade.
He blasts what he calls Francis technocratic elite, politicians like President Jacques Chirac.
"As a man of the people, I will always be on the side of those who suffer," he says, "because I know the cold. I know poverty. I want to rebuild the coherence of our great people."
In language like that, some see shades of Austria's far right leader Joerg Haider or Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, who ran for governor of Louisiana. Though Le Pen rejects accusations he's a racist and anti-Semite, he was found guilty of violating a French law, which bans denial of the Holocaust. He called Nazi gas chambers a historical detail.
Jean-Marie Le Pen's history began in the Brittany port of Tris d'esunar (ph), the son of a fisherman. After law school and the Foreign Legion, Le Pen joined a rightist anti-tax party and was elected to parliament. In 1956, he lost an eye in a brawl at a political rally.
He founded the national front in 1972 and steadily built support. How? With a populist mix of anti-immigrant, pro-employment, law and order promises. As Le Pen puts it, the National Front is socially left, economically right and French first.
CLAUDE ASKOLOVITCH, AUTHOR: The French fundamentalist flaunts above all, the France that never really exists. If France comes back, well, we'll have jobs and the post office next door and security and the teachers will be better off.
BURNS: Some of Le Pen's promises -- stop immigration, build 200,000 more prison cells, restore the death penalty, a French first policy favoring French citizens for jobs and social benefits. He wants France to abolish the income tax, scrap the euro and resurrect import duties to protect French jobs. Le Pen rejects U.S. preeminence and visited Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, in part to make a point that France should pursue its own political and economical interests.
Le Pen has toned some of his rhetoric in this campaign. If that isn't enough for him to clinch the presidency, the fact he got this far could boost the National Front in June's parliamentary elections. Beating the presidential race is hardly Le Pen's last hurrah.
Chris Burns, CNN, Paris.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Now, a part from his well documented anti-Semitism, Le Pen is also well know for his anti-Arab racism. He has, in fact, been centured many times for both anti-Semitic and anti-Arab comments.
There are 10 to 15 percent of France's 60 million population who are of Arab dissent, who are immigrants. And these people now are extremely worried because they believe that the votes for Le Pen on April 21 was in fact a vote against them.
Arab immigrants came to France in waves in the 60s and 70s for many reasons, but most especially because France, at that time, needed a lot of labor and now, they feel shunted to decide, shunted aside, not being catered for, not having equality of treatment and very concerned. They say now that perhaps Le Pen's showing in the first round of elections April 21 might spur them to get out of their lethargy and come to vote four days from now. CNN's Hala Guhani reports on some of the fears in France's immigrant community.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HALA GUHANI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Parisian neighborhood of Varvet (ph). Plenty of immigrants here, just some of the five million across France. Le Pen's surprise success in the first round of the presidential election has left some in this community shocked and angry. UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Le Pen is an assassin. I say he is the son of Hitler and just as Europe beat Hitler, we will beat Le Pen.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Well, most French people are racist. They think we are all thieves.
GUHANI: People in this neighborhood also say they are tired of being a campaign issue. Some even say they don't care if Le Pen made it to the second round, but despite all that, any mention of the man's name stirs up a passionate response.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): What does he want? If he gets his way, there wouldn't be anyone left in this neighborhood.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): It's a catastrophe. Nobody is more racist than Le Pen.
GUHANI: This woman from the French island of Martinique was walking back from an anti-Le Pen protest in Paris. She says she wanted her son to see that there are more people, in her words, protesting against fascism than voting for it. She says voters confuse crime with immigration.
"When you bring up crime," she said, "people are frightened and they blame the visible minorities."
But despite Le Pen's upset, the concerns here in Barbes are more down to earth with many here saying they just want politicians to leave them alone.
Hala Guhani, CNN, Paris.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: So Le Pen campaigned on a message of security or insecurity for that matter. It has become a code word for demagoguery and hatred. We'll explore that with your guest when we return.
ANNOUNCER: Also ahead, the rise of the right. It's a European- wide phenomenon, but why?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Protest votes take different forms in different countries. It's not so much the triumph of the right as the alienation of the people from the political classes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: And later, from fire bombings in France to vandalism in Britain and Germany sparks of anti-Semitism across the continent.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They cannot attack the Israeli embassy or the Israeli Companion in Paris to (UNINTELLIGIBLE). So if you attack the Jews and their symbols...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Is violence in the Middle East fueling the fire in Europe?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: France is home to the largest Muslim population in Europe. It's also home to the biggest Jewish population on the continent.
AMANPOUR: Joining us now here in Paris is Jean-Marc Illouz, senior correspondent for French Deux Television.
Thank you very much. Good evening. Thank you for joining us. This is a moment of great shame for your country. How do you think France is going to react on May 5, the next round of presidential elections?
JEAN-MARC ILLOUZ, SENIOR FRENCH JOURNALIST: Well, it's very difficult to know. French political life has been sort of exploded by the Le Pen phenomenon. And so, at the moment, within the major parties in and within the smaller parties, there are so many calculations, not directed at the presidential election, but directed to the legislative elections.
AMANPOUR: So the round after...
ILLOUZ: So that blows up the situation even more. It's difficult to make a prediction. Most polls are saying that Chirac will lead, but no one is telling what'll happen to all the voters that are not talking to the polls because the -- that decided in the end to vote for Le Pen, but they don't want to own up to the pollsters that they will.
AMANPOUR: And indeed, that caused the upset the first time. There was -- the polls had no idea.
ILLOUZ: You see this is one of the reasons. Actually, the Le Pen vote, 17 percent this time, was not very much out of line with what he'd done before. But on this occasion, the French political system, French political laws had authorized the -- such a fragmentation of candidates that the left moderates were sort of broke down in smithereens and they couldn't fight back.
AMANPOUR: So let's ask you this then. What happens? What -- you know, we've talked about the shame of France...
ILLOUZ: Right.
AMANPOUR: ... and all of this. But there must be real issues that Le Pen has raised not matter how odiously. What are the issues the next French president and next French government is going to have to tackle? ILLOUZ: I think the first political issue is confidence. The French have the feeling they were not being heard. Their complaints were not being heard by the two major parties. So they went to small, more extreme parties, or to some maverick parties. The job of the next president is to make sure that they know they are being heard. They're being heard on street violence, lack of safety in the streets, on immigration and heard on the uncertainties linked to globalizations.
The record of the French socialist prime minister, Fredosovy (ph), was not that bad in terms of unemployment and in terms of growth. But we have only 9 percent employment -- unemployment in France. But you have 25 percent of people who either do not have a job or do not have a stable job or owe the job to some government support and this makes for a lull in society in a country, who as you know very well, is -- feels culturally very threatened by globalization.
AMANPOUR: We're going to pick up and talk about that more after a break. And indeed, as Jean-Marc Illouz alluded to how this is also becoming an issue across Europe.
ANNOUNCER: Next, the reason behind Europe's turn to the right. Is it racism or economics?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The public in every country that we look at tell us they're fed up and they want to be paid attention to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: LIVE FROM PARIS: FEAR, HATE AND ANTI-SEMITISM will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: May Day demonstrations turn violent in Germany where clashes early Wednesday in Berlin led to scores of injuries and arrests.
AMANPOUR: Jean-Marie Le Pen's surprising showing April 21 has turned the attention not just on France but all over Europe. Look at the cover of "Newsweek International" this week. It has a picture of LE Pen and over -- writing over his top lip, which looks remarkably like a Hitler caricature. It says, "Europe turns to the right." What is going on in Europe? CNN's Robin Oakley reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBIN OAKLEY, EUROPEAN POLITICAL EDITOR (voice-over): Delirium. Supporters of Jean-Marie Le Pen greeting his arrival the second round of the French presidential election, but even as the enthusiasts chanted, commentators were cooler. It wasn't Le Pen's success, they said, more the dullness of the other candidates. Le Pen differs, arguing he speaks for ordinary people. JEAN-MARIE LE PEN, FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (through translator): They know immigration it in our country is linked to insecurity and unemployment. So people trust me because I can see the connection.
OAKLEY: Talking tough on crime and immigration has boosted the right across Europe. In Austria, Joerg Haider's freedom party won a place in government, prompting European Union leaders temporarily to downgrade Austria's participation in their affairs.
In Denmark, Vera Girsgag (ph) and her People's Party gained enough seats to have influence. Humberto Bossi (ph), rubble-rousing leader of Italy's Lega Norte (ph), won a place in Berlusconi's government.
And now, the right is advancing, too in internationally moderate Holland. Fire the flamboyant Pim Fortuyn who says Muslims represent a backward culture.
PIM FORTUYN, LEADER, LIJST FORTUYN PARTY: It is a backward culture. It are the facts. From our point of view, once you have discrimination of woman, is that backward or is that forward?
OAKLEY: Nobody it seems suffers from playing the anti- immigration card. There were race riots last year in Britain and though Tony Blair's new labor coasted through last year's general election, the extremist British National Party hopes now to win some local government contests, again, with a simple scapegoating message.
COLIN SMITH, BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY: You can see by statistics over the years, crime has gone up, immigration has come up. We've people coming into our country now that don't respect our laws.
OAKLEY (on-camera): Could a black person join the BNP?
SMITH: Not at this stage. We've got a lot of support from ethnic minorities on the doorsteps of people saying they're sick and tired of crime and they're going to vote for us. At this stage, we're a British party and because of immigration -- is fairly recent into this country, we're still a British party.
OAKLEY (voice-over): Some confusion there between British and white. But does it all add up to an irresistible sweep right? No says a leading British pollster.
ROBERT WORCESTER, MORI POLLS: It's a protest vote and Le Pen's clever approach was to couple this feeling of we are French for the French and to capture or have -- build on that captured ground with the anti-European and the anti-Europe vote three or four months after the introduction of the single European currency and the destruction of the French franc.
OAKLEY: It isn't, he says, a thirst across Europe for the right's agenda. It's a hearing problem among Europe's politicians.
WORCESTER: It is the feeling on the part of the disenfranchised, as they see themselves, that nobody is listening to them. Nobody is thinking about what does the man and woman in the street think about that? And they're so busy stitching up deals with fellow politicians right across Europe, whether it's in Brussels or whether it's in the capital of their country or in the regions and local communities. The public in every country that we look at tell us they're fed up and they want to be paid attention to.
OAKLEY (on-camera): Protest votes take different forms in different countries. It's not so much the triumph of the right as the alienation of the people from the political crosses. And pollsters warn that if the mainstream parties want to be sure of beating off the challenge from the extremes, then they're going to have to learn once more to talk the language of the streets themselves.
Robin Oakley, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: So we're joined again by my guest, Jean-Marc Illouz.
Is this a case of the far right rolling through Europe? Put this into perspective for us.
ILLOUZ: I don't think the far right is on a roll in Europe. The far right does have its different characters from The Hague to Hamburg because the European voters are shouting in anger because they're concerned about not being heard.
In terms of how do we -- how do we progress the globalization, is that good, is that bad for us, what is happening to our cities, what is happening to immigration and so far, the solutions have not been sufficiently effective for the mainstream parties to convince the electorate that they're doing something.
So the right is on a roll perhaps, after Italy, after Portugal, but not because they have solutions to globalization, to the European society, but because the left has failed, either because of coalition politics or in Italy or like in France because they did not understand that the economy was necessary to many issues, but it was the economy stupid in a way, you see, the security stupid and not the economy stupid.
But former Prime Minister Jospin himself allows for the fact that he had been naive. He thought it was enough to have growth and to distribute it well, to quiet down the violence in the suburbs and it didn't happen that way.
AMANPOUR: So briefly, what does the next president have to do here?
ILLOUZ: Well, the next president will have to give confidence to the people. It will be difficult for Jacques Chirac. He's going to have a major victory, but most of the voters belonging to the opposition, people that have fought him all his life. Jacques Chirac is a warm character. He's personable and can be a crowd pleaser, but his record hasn't been very convincing for the last few years in terms of renewal. He is pretty much like (inaudible) in Chicago, you see.
The French political elites have been totally unable to renew themselves. The United States had created Bill Clinton in two years, between '90 and '92. French voters have been seeing the same faces for the last 25 years. Obviously Jacques Chirac will have to make a special effort to change his view of France.
AMANPOUR: Jean-Marc Illouz, thank you very much. And so, the drama continues, not only in the politics here in this country and what happens on May 5th and after May 5th, but also when we return, we will talk about the anti-Semitism that raised its head even before April 21st.
ANNOUNCER: Still to come, the roots of hatred. CNN Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield on Europe and the Jews, then and now. Also, what some see as the new faces of anti-Semitism.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Traditional anti-Semitic themes that were strong in the Middle Ages and even well into the 20th Century have more or less been thrown out in Christian Europe, but they've been adopted instead in the Middle East by the Arab world.
ANNOUNCER: LIVE FROM PARIS, fear, hate and anti-Semitism continues in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Catherine Callaway at the CNN Center in Atlanta and LIVE FROM PARIS with Christiane Amanpour will return in just a few minutes, but first this News Alert.
A picture of contrasts at two hot spots in the Middle East. A breakthrough in Ramallah triggers celebration, as Israeli troops withdraw from Yasser Arafat's compound, ending a month-long siege. And in Bethlehem, fire and an explosion erupted near the Church of the Nativity where an Israeli-Palestinian standoff remains. That fire has since been extinguished.
In yet another development, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has decided to scrap the fact-finding team he planned to send to Jenin to investigate what happened at the Palestinian refugee camp during the Israeli military action there. That camp was the scene of some fierce fighting last month. Israel said that the U.N. team was biased and would cooperate.
A CNN interview with Yasser Arafat from Ramallah, his first since Israeli troops left on "NEWSNIGHT" tonight with Aaron Brown at 10:00 p.m. this evening.
A just in Los Angeles has denied bail for actor Robert Blake who's charged with murdering his wife Bonny Lee Bakley. Prosecutors filed papers alleging that Blake tried to "whack his wife" as early as 1999, when she was pregnant with their daughter. Blakes' lawyer Harland Braun and Bakley family attorney Cary Goldstein will be on "LARRY KING LIVE" tonight at 9:00 Eastern time. And that's a brief News Alert for you. I'm Catherine Callaway, and Christiane Amanpour will be back in a moment, and here's a look at what's ahead.
ANNOUNCER: Also ahead, Jewish life in France, new images rekindle old memories.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sometimes I think of this and it's very justifiable.
ANNOUNCER: Earlier, we told you that France has the largest Jewish population in Europe, but did you know that's also the third largest in the world. Only the U.S. and Israel have larger Jewish populations. LIVE FROM PARIS will be right back.
JAN HOPKINS: CNN's coverage will return in just a moment, but first a powerful turnaround on Wall Street, the Dow reversing a triple-digit loss and posting a 113 point gain. Technology stocks were weak. The NASDAQ ended the day down nearly 11 points. Watch "MONEYLINE" weeknights at 6:00 p.m. Eastern on CNN. Now back to CNN's coverage.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: Some 76,000 Jews were deported from France to Nazi death camps during World War II. Only 2,500 survived.
AMANPOUR: There has been a wave of anti-Semitic attacks that have struck France in the past several weeks, but many observers say that it has mostly been linked to the Middle East crisis currently underway between Israel and the Palestinians. CNN's Chris Burns reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The latest blaze at a Jewish site in France, the second in a year at this school. Police say they're all but certain it's arson again. In this multi-ethnic working class suburb of Paris, French Arabs and Jews live close to each other, a volatile mix in light of the violence in the Middle East.
Since Israel launched its offensive in the Palestinian territories in the wake of deadly suicide attacks, attacks on Jewish targets in France have skyrocketed, especially on soft targets.
MARC KNOBEL, SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER: They can not attack the Israel embassy or the Israel company in Paris, the rest of this company. So we attack the Jews and their symbols.
BURNS: More than 300 incidents have been reported since March 29th when Israel's offensive began, this as far right leader Jean- Marie Le Pen made it to the May 5th Presidential run-off.
(on camera): Is there any connection between the attacks and Jean-Marie Le Pen's success? Are they both sides of rising anti- Semitism in France? Jewish leaders here say it's more complicated than that.
(voice over): They see the attacks playing into the hands of Le Pen, who promises a crackdown on crime.
EMMANUEL WEINTRAUB, COUNCIL OF JEWISH INSTITUTIONS IN FRANCE: Those attacks and you know burning synagogues, et cetera, entered into the framework of law and order, disorder, what's going -- what is the government going to do, et cetera?
BURNS: Le Pen denies accusations he's an anti-Semite, though he was fined for calling Hitler's gas chambers a detail. Still Jewish leaders don't see him firing up anti-Semitism.
MICHAEL WILLIAMS, RABBI: Le Pen is in a difficult situation. He hates Jews and he hates Arabs, and he doesn't yet know who he hates most. I don't know if he hates Arabs more than Jews for the moment.
BURNS: Some Jewish leaders blame French media criticism of Israel's offensive for inspiring the attacks. They also blame deeper problems among France's five million strong Arab population.
WEINTRAUB: It's a problem of integration. They don't feel integrated, even when they go to school. Even if they graduate, they say that they are short of jobs, et cetera, and this is a way of expressing their disenchantment.
BURNS: Many of France's 700,000 Jews are hopeful the attacks will taper off, but if they don't?
KNOBEL: If we are turned on anti-Semitic acts by day, what I make personally. If I stay in this country, in the country of the human rights, I'm French, I love my country, or I go along, and sometimes I think of this and it's very terrifying for me.
BURNS: A terrifying thought most Jews here find hard to believe, but which remains in the backs of their minds. Chris Burns, CNN, Sarcelles, France.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Joining me now is Serge Cwajgenbaum who is head of the European Jewish Congress, which is the European offshoot of the World Jewish Congress. Thank you very much for joining us. Can you describe for us the link, if there is one, between the attacks that have been going on against Jewish targets and Le Pen?
SERGE CWAJGENBAUM, SECRETARY-GENERAL EUROPEAN JEWISH CONGRESS: We can not find any precise link between Mr. Le Pen's phenomena and anti-Semitic attacks. Even so, if in the 18th, Mr. Le Pen came out with a way of words, came out in public with what was considered as being anti-Semitic, but as far as France is concerned today, as far as anti-Semitic attacks are concerned, there is no link between Mr. Le Pen, not directly with Mr. Le Pen and this phenomenon.
AMANPOUR: So do you also explain it then in terms of the inflamed passions over the Middle East crisis, is that? CWAJGENBAUM: Indeed. Indeed. Indeed we are confronted since September, 2000, since the second intafada and later on after the 11th of September, a recent wave which occurred in the last three weeks and, as I mentioned, probably in the report we have been confronted with over 350 attacks against Jewish targets in France only.
AMANPOUR: So if that's the case then, do you believe that this is a passing phenomenon, or do you believe it's a worrying case of rising latent French anti-Semitism?
CWAJGENBAUM: Much will depend on the way Europe and France will handle the Middle East issue. If the policy will be more balanced, so probably we will get lower impact in France.
If the policy remains as it is today, which means unbalanced, unfortunately many more incidents will happen and occur, once you take into consideration that the European policy toward Israel is regarded basically as not balanced. Second, the enforcement of the law against those who perpetrate these attacks is not sufficient.
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you something because politics these days make very strong bedfellows, and after Le Pen who has made his odious remarks about the Holocaust, about Jews, after he made his strong showing, the head of one of the main Jewish organizations here actually came out and said that this was perhaps good for the Jews because, "it would make the Arabs shut up." How do you explain that?
CWAJGENBAUM: I would rather not comment on what was reported in the press. Actually it was -- the interview was given in Hebrew and probably misreported by the people who took the interview.
AMANPOUR: OK, they obviously stand by their report and I believe he sort of said, kind of apologized since then. But what do you expect now for the French-Jewish community in the days after May 5th?
CWAJGENBAUM: We expect the French government to take action. We expect the French government first to protect its citizens, being Jews or non-Jews, and to implement the law, to arrest the people who are committing and perpetrating the anti-Semitic acts.
AMANPOUR: Now very briefly, the Jewish people of France are very well integrated.
CWAJGENBAUM: Yes indeed.
AMANPOUR: The Arab immigrants of France are not. Do you think the burden is on the French government to at least try to alleviate the social conditions that may create some of this, or do you think that's not the issue?
CWAJGENBAUM: It's certainly part of the issue, part of the answer, but I would like to recall that we have always maintained excellent relationship with the Muslim leadership in France. What we expect as well is reciprocity. We can not expect the Jews to be silent and not to react. We are expecting the Arab and the Muslim leadership to take a strong stand against those radical elements which are still marginal, so to stop the wave of anti-Semitic attacks.
AMANPOUR: Mr. Cwajgenbaum, thank you very much indeed for joining us, and we'll have more on this issue when we return after a short break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: You heard from our last guest, and also we've spoken to many prominent Jewish people here in France, many people who grew up with anti-Semitism here. They say that it is not what they experienced as youth. This is not a rise of the latent or the historic European anti-Semitism.
Things have changed they say. It is mostly about the current international scene in the Middle East. But, they say, if Jean-Marie Le Pen wins and his message of hate, anti-Semitism and racism continues, then that could make a situation much worse.
For a look back at the history of some of the anti-Semitism that has rocked this country, CNN's Jeff Greenfield reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: At first glance, the ugly incidents seem all too familiar, unsettling reminders of a classic anti-Semitism that has infected France like a low-grade fever for more than a century.
At the end of the 19th Century, a Jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfuss (ph) was falsely accused of espionage. The Dreyfuss affair split France down the middle for years. The right ignored the blatant frame-up, the left fought it.
But few spoke out in 1940 when a French government, organized under the watchful eyes of the Nazis, the so called Vichy government, turned on the nation's Jews with a vengeance. While the image of a massive French resistance, inspired by General Charles DeGaulle is pleasant, it is at best a huge exaggeration.
The reality of French collaboration was chronicled in a massive documentary, "The Sorrow and the Pity." And in a path-breaking book by Columbia Professor Richard Paxton that detailed the power of anti- Jewish feeling.
ROBERT PAXTON, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: Many French people were looking for a scapegoat really. They hit upon all these foreigners who come into their '30s and it gave a tremendous push to anti- Semitism.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The grave diggers of France were in power.
PAXTON: The French Vichy fact did do the German stereotyping and deportations began seriously in April, 1942.
GREENFIELD (on camera): So are these incidents just another chapter in an old story? In fact, no, they are part of a very different story.
ADAM GOPNIK, THE NEW YORKER: Most anti-Semitism in France right now at this moment seems to be emanating much more from the immigrant Arab population, the immigrant Muslin population than it does as any kind of sort of second life or rebirth of classical French anti- Semitism.
GREENFIELD (voice over): For at least some French Muslims, attacking a synagogue may be a way of attacking the Jewish state of Israel. But in an ironic twist, the Palestinian cause has also been embraced in France by precisely that element that was most vocal in protesting past anti-Semitism. The French left. Noel Mamere was the Green Party candidate for President.
NOEL MAMERE, GREEN PARTY: I am not an anti-Semite. I am for a State of Israel protected and recognized by all the Arab countries, but I am also for a Palestinian state, recognized by Israel.
GREENFIELD: But for at least some on the French left, the Middle East clash of today brings to mind France's bloody effort in the 1950s and 1960s to keep Algeria French. That war, says New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik who lived for six years in France, taught the French a seemingly indelible lesson.
GOPNIK: Terrorism basically always wins. The terrorism tends to be so rooted in the humiliation or the felt humiliation of the indigenous population that you can't beat it.
GREENFIELD (on camera): There is in all of this one constant. A century after Dreyfuss, more than half a century after the Holocaust, French Jews are once again looking nervously over their shoulders. Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York.
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AMANPOUR: So what does all this mean for the future of France, and indeed for the future of Europe and its politics? Joining me now is Christopher Dickey, the Paris Bureau Chief for "Newsweek" magazine. Thank you very much.
Let me hit you first with a statistic that I just read. In 1968, 13 percent of American voters voted for then Governor George Wallace of Alabama. What did that mean? It didn't mean that all America suddenly went on this racist binge. What does that mean now for Le Pen and France?
CHRISTOPHER DICKEY, NEWSWEEK: Well, I think George Wallace is an interesting comparison because he was a demagogue and a populist who started out with an openly racist discourse and eventually moved more and more into what became almost the political mainstream of the United States. If he hadn't been shot and taken out of the picture that way, we don't know where he career would have gone in the United States.
In France, people feel disaffected, alienated from the governments they've had for the past decades, many decades, and they're looking for some kind of change, somebody to address their problems. Unfortunately, they found a demagogue like Le Pen is almost the only person who's doing that.
AMANPOUR: Now he is presumably irredeemable. I mean he's 73 years old. His comments have not changed. His views have not changed and they are extreme. But, many people say the issues he raises are ignored at our peril.
DICKEY: Well, absolutely. What you really see with a vote for Le Pen, I think, is not a great upsurge in racism here in France. You see essentially the working class in France saying, nobody is speaking for us. Nobody's listening to us.
What are Le Pen's issues? One is immigration, but the other is anti-Europe, anti-globalization, and those are two sides of the same thing for the French working class. It means threats to their jobs. It means an outside world moving in on their lives, their homes here in France, and he speaks to those issues while the rest of French politicians act as if there's no problem at all.
AMANPOUR: but I mean he speaks to those issues and obviously a certain number of French people believe that immigrants are the source of all their problems, but certainly immigrants here make up what, ten to 15 percent of this country's population? They were brought here for all sorts of reasons in the '60s and '70s and since. Doesn't this government here, or any French government, owe something to make sure that they become integrated parts of this society?
DICKEY: Well, not only does it owe something to them to make sure they become integrated parts of the society, but it needs them and its going to need more immigrants in the years to come.
Europe's birth rate is virtually flat, and as it needs -- as its economy grows, it needs labor from outside. This is a problem that Europe hasn't even begun to address. There are all kinds of bizarre asylum laws that try to get around immigration, and the people in the streets say, what is happening? This is ignoring the problem. It doesn't cure hatred. It engenders hatred, and I think that's exactly what we've seen with the rise of Le Pen.
AMANPOUR: I mean you just touched upon a massively important point. There is not going to be a halt to foreign labor coming into Europe. It's needed. It's necessary, and so these situations are either going to have to be dealt with or?
DICKEY: Or they're going to become explosive, and that's the great risk, and it's going to get even worse as Europe opens up toward the east. You're going to have more and more eastern Europeans coming in. People are going to feel that their jobs are threatened, and unless politicians begin to address these in intelligent, calm, deliberate ways, instead of just pretending there's no problem, there's going to be an explosive problem.
AMANPOUR: Let me ask you think. Most people are saying, even thought hey didn't predict the first round, they're not predicting that Chriac, the current president of France, is going to win by a massive landslide on Sunday night. What do you think?
DICKEY: I'm not convinced. I'm convinced he'll win, but I don't think that hems going to win by 80 percent, maybe not even by 70 percent. One of the things that happens here is that numbers are very funny. The polls are very strange. Why is it that polls didn't predict what was going to happen with Le Pen?
Today in the discussion of the crowds at these various demonstrations, I was out on the street all day. The police are saying Le Pen only had 10,000 people out there. There were at least five times that many people out there, and they say there were 250,000 people protesting against Le Pen. Maybe there were, but they were scattered all over the place, and Chirac and none of his people even showed up at that rally.
So it's not clear what's going to happen, and in the last round, 28 percent of the people didn't vote, so we don't know what will happen when they do.
AMANPOUR: And on that rather dramatic note, we have to end our program. Thank you very much for joining us and CNN will be here on Sunday, May 5th to see what happens and to see which way France will turn. I'm Christiane Amanpour. Goodnight from Paris.
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