Postcards from Pétainistan

That’s no exaggeration. There are organized mobs or wastrels seeking strawmen to physically abuse in order to act out there hatred of demonized nations and cultures.

The violent assault of a young Jewish man, Saturday evening in Paris led to a thunderous outrage in the Jewish community at the Elysée and the government. The 17-year-old boy was beaten in public on Saturday around 8 pm Buttes-Chaumont, in the nineteenth arrondissement.

According to the National Office of Vigilance against anti-Semitism (BNVCA), the young man "was attacked with an steel bar by a group of "6 or 7" youths.
Five minors from that district and the Seine-Saint-Denis area were arrested and remanded in custody. The investigation was entrusted to Usit (Support Unit and territorial investigation) of the Metropolitan police nearby.

According to Public Assistance-Hospitals of Paris (AP-HP), the status of the victim is "stable" and his prognosis remains inconclusive.

For his father, interviewed by RTL, the young man was attacked "because he was wearing a kippa and is Jewish." Similarly, for UEJF and CRIF, the anti-Semitic nature of this attack is not in doubt. "The young man of 17 years age was brutally attacked last night, is currently in a coma, was wearing a kippa, and there is no doubt that this is an anti-Semitic act," said Ariel Goldmann , Vice-president of CRIF.

Through its chairman, Raphael Haddad, UEJF said he was "very concerned" by repeated fights in recent weeks between organized gangs, including in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont area.

There is no tangible motive in these attacks other than that of simple, mindless, irrational hatred. That the young man was not a “settler” in Israel should actually buoy the attackers’ world view, but that clearly isn’t the point. To the young attackers with their world view trained into them, the mere existence of something representing their enemy.

Even the comments to the article in Le Figaro reflecting outrage show us what kind of “brave new world” we’re living in. Many of those wanting to discuss this kind of criminality have to first qualify their opinions with a statement making sure that everyone knows that they “aren’t a Zionist”. Nonetheless, I found this one amusing:

Vive la France! Country of human rights and especially of giving lessons that are ignored and comments only on what suits them.

No doubt, we’ll also have comments here from the usual drive-by shooters who think beating a 17 year old into a coma is heroic. It’s rather that these sad and confused would do better not to conflate a teenager walking down the street with the usual “enlightened” lectures about how he’s no different than an Israeli soldier in the West Bank. Were they only to have that same form of moral equivalence used against them, instead of having their free speech rights defended, one might find them worthy of some passing attention.