THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

I don’t know the man in the Le Monde story, and I don’t identify at allwith his opinions . . . I abhor the man from the story; he is evenrevolting. He is he, and I am I. To my astonishment, since the day thestory ran, it has become clear that we have the same name. 12No doubt this is an elegant denial. Stylish. It isn’t me; it’s the bad boy in me, as Israelipoet Leah Goldberg wrote in a children’s song. It is a song that tries to build a bridgebetween two temperaments of a child; I am good but the bad boy inside me tookover. It is the scared Jew in me, descendant of Auschwitz survivors. But it was he,expressing in his words what many in France and Israel feel nowadays, illuminatingwith a spotlight the Jews’ changed place in the world, and among themselves. Frombeing the one in the family of displaced persons, migrants, persecuted, and hated—toour elevated new status as speakers of the new white conservatism, alienating thosewho are stuck in the position that we left just a few decades ago. What motivatedFinkielkraut to remember our Auschwitz past was the injury to the Jews—which waspart of the injury to the native French—by the immigrant youths from the poorsuburbs. Instead of identifying with the troubles of the suburban youth from our ownplace and experience, to put his immense clout behind them for changing thesegregationist, rightist agenda of contemporary France, he only saw us, andembarked on a one-way road of racism. He went as far as self-denial and usedverbal acrobatics to the point of virtually erasing his own identity. This is what he toldHaaretz.The problem is that most of the youths are blacks and Arabs whoidentify with Islam. There are other immigrants who live in difficultconditions in France ...but they do not participate in the riots. It is clearthen that the rebellion has an ethno-religious character...Their messageis not a cry for help or a demand for better schools. It is the will toeliminate all the mediators that stand between them and the objects oftheir desires: money, brand names, sometimes young women . . . Ithink this is a stage in an anti-Republican pogrom. There are people inFrance who hate France as a republic . . . Colonial history is taught inschool only as negative. We do not teach them that the colonial projectalso strove to educate, to bring culture to the savages. 13Why did Finkielkraut give this revealing interview in Israel, to be published in Hebrew