"The lone wolf thesis offers a prism too convenient to exonerate us from our responsibilities"

Chief Rabbi of France since 2014, Haïm Korsia is the great figure of French Judaism.

In particular, he published at Fayard a very committed book for a religious leader,

Réinventer les aurores, Plaidoyer pour la République

When a tragedy strikes us, we look for what can it look like known, I would say almost reassuring.

But nothing comes close to the terrible assassination of Samuel Paty, neither in its terrifying reality nor in its symbolism against Education.

And the rhetoric of the lone wolf returns.

Obviously yes, the wolves are back.

But no, they are not solitary: wolves always hunt in packs, even if it happens sometimes that one of them moves away a little to blend in with the night which obscures the silhouettes and blurs the eyes.

In front of them, those who must act, that is to say all of us, must not go to battle in dispersed order.

We must stand united to face it.

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First, say things without diluting or distorting them: there is no self-indoctrination.

It is even precisely the opposite: in the minds of these terrorists made in France, it is the election as a hero, the inscription in a filiation of horror, the ennobling promised by an international of fanaticism, who is targeted.

The lone wolf thesis offers too convenient a prism to exonerate us from our responsibilities and justify the general apathy in the face of these repeated attacks.

Things are definitely starting to change.

A little late, but still.

Finally, we clearly name the enemy to fight, we finally dare to assert our values ​​without seeking compromises which always fall into compromise and we finally launch operations and real sanctions which give weight to the word of the State.

Obviously yes, the wolves are back.

But no, they are not lonely: wolves always hunt in packs

In this intransigent struggle, force must always remain within the law of men, that which is based on legitimate constraint.

But it is also necessary to maintain faith in Man, to bring for the whole of the Nation a discourse of consolidation of the social bond.

Without this convergence between the iron law to fight terrorism and the message of hope in man, the fight will never end because the wolves will become phoenixes and the fire will constantly rise from the ashes.

However, despite the authorities' firm words to denounce these acts and recall the strength of the republican pact, the indifference of many continues.

It is therefore a general mobilization of all that we must launch.

We must restore confidence to the police of the Republic to wage a merciless fight against this terrorism, without weakness or relaxation, without mistakes or sins against reason by denial of a tragic reality which has already killed too much.

But without forgetting to address ourselves to the souls, the consciences and the humanism of our societies which must produce hope, rediscover a common dream and, more simply, learn again to hear several voices expressing themselves, certainly distinct, of diverse roots, but fixed on the same ideal of humanity.

It is not about abolishing the differences that we hold dear and which forge our identities, but it is to find our common values.

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And these values, fraternal as they are, oblige us to consider, if necessary, the fight to defend them.

However, on the denunciation, the hatred and the outburst of violence on social networks which methodically and tragically preceded, called and announced the horrible assassination of Samuel Paty, we did not have the legal arsenal to act as quickly as possible and firmly.

Indeed, by censoring the essentials of the Avia law, the Constitutional Council has unfortunately retreated behind concepts, a vocabulary and finally arguments which are neither adapted nor proportionate to the goals pursued by the company.

Their search for a balance, vain in this case, between freedom of expression and the fight against hatred online, is illusory.

This decision is therefore retroactively terrible consequence.

This is what the Talmud affirms when it says: "

".

What is it in fact?

The law of May 14 last passed by Laetitia Avia required social network operators to remove any hate speech from their sites within 24 hours.

The Constitutional Council has deliberately chosen not to leave the beaten track when a new dimension was finally needed in the fight against hatred on the Internet which nevertheless plagues our society.

He could have seized this unique opportunity to go beyond the legal criterion of proportionality, totally inoperative in this case, the Constitutional Council confined itself to passivity and conformism.

And these values, fraternal as they are, oblige us to consider, if necessary, the fight to defend them.

Instead of breaking with a cautious attitude and showing courage and determination, the Sages preferred to side with those who do not see the reality and the influence of social networks.

The Council did not want to admit and understand that the notion of proportionality allowed the terrible error of considering hatred, racism or anti-Semitism as phenomena that should not be combated at all costs when it is the ferment of what undermines the soul of peoples.

This approach is totally incomprehensible to me.

Should the evil forces that can be deployed in this way benefit from lasting impunity?

Such a power would be unprecedented in the history of mankind, and its concrete consequences totally unprecedented, because so recent, can escape the accumulated experience of our most eminent jurisconsults.

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People will say to me, as during the debates on the Avia law: what is the definition of hate speech?

We now know the name of the victim, it is Samuel Paty.

I want, in the name of French Judaism, to express to Samuel Paty's family all our pain, our compassion and our brotherhood.

I am also thinking of his students, his colleagues from Bois d'Aulne and the entire large educational community in the country.

I ask all synagogues in France to recite a prayer in his memory this Shabbat and hope that all cults join in.

I have long compared racism and anti-Semitism to virtual viruses, propagated by words and cultures, which infect minds with a virulence and contagiousness that are well worth those of the worst of their fellows when they attack our bodies.

I do not allow myself here, in these cruel times of a pandemic, the ease of going further with this metaphor.

I nevertheless want to affirm that like the Covid-19, we will not get rid of the virus of racist and anti-Semitic hatred by half-measures.

The hate virus must be eradicated by the most expeditious and firm routes.

The great evils of the hour, material and spiritual, call for great remedies

Perhaps the time will come for a vaccine, through education, but failing that, it is the time for treatment through severity.

As with the Covid-19, we must impose the most definitive barrier-verbal gestures, confine the cultural-racist clusters without the slightest gap, unceremoniously cut the chains of hate transmission, pound without nuance and without qualms the slightest bit of resurgence.

The only difference: never wash your hands of it, indifference being guilty to the highest degree.

The great evils of the hour, material and spiritual, call for great remedies and the most traditional pharmacopoeias, in all their dosages, would they be inherited from the Age of Enlightenment, have amply proved their therapeutic utility in the face of racism.

Racism and anti-Semitism are comorbidities which, in the face of so many other perils that threaten us, we must now get rid of as a priority.

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This is why I am calling for part of the text to be rewritten, but especially not to abandon this Avia law which will make it possible to fight against hatred on the internet with steel swords and not with paper swords.

It is up to us to be totally determined to be ourselves, to be the Republic, to be France.