Professor Emeritus of the Universities, Shmuel Trigano is a philosopher and sociologist, specialist in the Hebrew tradition and contemporary Judaism.
What I have seen on Israeli television for the past two days does not leave me for a moment. I never thought I would see an anti-Jewish pogrom take place in the sovereign State of Israel, in the land created by Zionism. I would never have thought to be invaded by an archaic anguish, the one we inherited from our ancestors in the Arab countries, the one that physically and morally embraced the adolescent that I was in Algeria when the French State abandoned a million of its citizens with the lynchous peat that was about to assail them, a threat so powerful and an abandonment of power so great that this enormous population vanished in a fortnight,in a kind of lightning ethnic cleansing leaving behind the one hundred and twenty thousand Harkis and thousands of French people promised to certain death, and whose fate was truly sealed after the fateful day of Independence ...
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While hearing live on television the testimonies of the Jewish inhabitants of Lod, I believed to relive those two fatal days of frantic flight which destroyed my life before.
“Little” things that emanate from Lod's testimonies plunge me into carnal memories: the neighbor who indicates to the rioters, in search of destruction, the address of her Jewish neighbors;
the neighbor who tells a Jewish tenant that tonight will see its end, so many behaviors experienced 60 years ago.
I never thought I would see an anti-Jewish pogrom happen in the sovereign State of Israel
Shmuel Trigano
In all towns where the population is mixed, similar scenes of anti-Jewish violence have occurred: Lod, first, Yafo, Akko, Haifa, Ramleh, Jerusalem and up to the Negev where the Bedouins destroyed a large number of Lampposts on an access road to the city of Arad obstructing all traffic under a shower of stones.
In Lod, the damage was considerable: a large number of cars, a museum, shops, street furniture were set on fire, as many stations in the systematic route of the city by small groups of rioters in search of Jews to attack and houses to burn. End-time scenes show us a bunch of police officers exfiltrating entire Jewish families who have only been able to take from their homes what is strictly necessary to flee before being attacked or even killed, leaving their apartment up for auction. to find it ransacked on their return; scenes of Jews carrying their Sifre Torah so that they are not burnt as their synagogue will be.
And worst of all, the police who are called and who do not answer and do not come despite repeated calls.
We could hear live the poignant appeal for help from the mayor of Lod to the police and the army.
Without answer.
There is nothing worse than this feeling of abandonment, this exposure to a possible death that one awaits without being able to do anything.
This feeling has never left me since the exodus from Algeria.
And seeing all of this today rekindles a lived experience in my flesh.
End-of-time scenes show us a squad of police officers exfiltrating entire Jewish families who were only able to take away from their homes what was strictly necessary
Shmuel Trigano
It is a religious war that is being waged: three synagogues, a Beit Midrash burnt down, the mufti of the mosque encouraging the rioters to attack the Jews, the Jewish cemetery of Ramleh set on fire .... The Jews are clearly attacked with the war cry of jihad:
"Khyber O Jews, Mohamad's army is back"
,
"Allah Akar"
,
"We will redeem the El Aqsa mosque"
...
It had all started a few days before. Jews were then assaulted and beaten by Arabs: a rabbi in Jaffa, a young ultra-Orthodox child in the Jerusalem tram (whose film made the rounds on social networks), Jewish passers-by assaulted while going to the Wall in the old town. town, for no reason, except that they had signs identifying them as Jews. People who have lived in Arab countries know that Ramadan is a dangerous month for non-Muslims, during which they were often victims of violence, if not more. But that the situation of the Arab countries of yesteryear was repeated in the State of Israel, it was unimaginable to me. If the Palestinian PLO flags fluttered among the lynching crowd of Israeli Arab demonstrators,at the very moment when the country of which they are equal citizens is attacked by the enemy, the jihadic factor of their violence remains decisive. It all started from Jerusalem where Hamas wanted to shine in order to win the support of the masses at the very moment when the head of the Palestinian Authority (of Fatakh and not of Hamas) canceled the elections for the umpteenth time, by causing riots and spreading the rumor that
"The Jews desecrate El Aqsa", "set El Aksa on fire"
or "
go up to the mosque esplanade",
very classic lies - which have always ignited the riots in Jerusalem.
It did not take more to provoke the conflagration fanned by the religious authorities, the Mufti, the Arab deputies of the Knesset and the Israeli Islamists.
On the other hand, no appeal for calm from the Israeli Muslim authorities, nor from the deputies of the Arab and Islamic lists.
Behind their facade speeches, this attitude shows which side these parties are on.
People who have lived in Arab countries know that Ramadan is a dangerous month for non-Muslims
Shmuel Trigano
What will happen tonight?
There are lots of illegal weapons circulating in the Arab sector.
But also what will the Israeli society of tomorrow look like?
Has the war for Jerusalem started?
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