My Word: When Europe fiddles and burns - opinion

It was a searing image. The sight of the historic city hall in Limoges, France, going up in flames, and the spire collapsing into the blazing building was haunting.

Two different news clips captured two sides of the story: In one, the crowd of onlookers could be heard cheering as the tower fell; in the other, someone called out in a shocked voice: “It’s fallen!” I wondered whether he was referring just to the spire or to French civilization in general.

According to Smithsonian Magazine, the city hall first opened its doors on Bastille Day in 1883, and “has been celebrated as an architectural wonder. Well-known for its tall spire and ornate metal belfry, the 143-year-old building gained historic monument status in 1975 as a prime example of late 19th-century French architecture and civic pride.”

There’s something sadly symbolic in the beautiful building that opened on the French National Day all those years ago being burned down in the 2026 French riots. Beautiful architecture and civic pride are being willfully destroyed.

For the masked assailants, arsonists, and looters rampaging throughout France – and elsewhere in Europe – this is a modern version of Bastille Day. The mobs are ruling through fear and violence.

Whatever initially triggered the riots – ostensibly highschoolers complaining about their conditions – the flames are being fanned from other directions. This is not about the cost of living, the price of fuel, or crowded classrooms.

News footage showed shocked storekeepers along the iconic Champs-Élysées helplessly looking on as their stores were looted and trashed. Not only were their livelihoods being stolen, but their very way of life.

It’s not by chance that symbols of the government, and of France itself, were attacked. The Statue of the Republic was defaced in Paris; the marble bust of Marianne was damaged in an attack in the historic Marseilles City Hall building; and the tourist office in Lyon, housed in a 19th-century architectural gem, was also destroyed – not that the city can expect an influx of tourists any time soon.

France has seen demonstrations before, even violent ones, but “vive la difference” – these were not French students holding philosophical discussions as they marched in May 1968; nor were they “the Yellow Vests,” protesting fuel prices in the mass rallies that petered out with COVID 19 restrictions; and today’s rioters are not the workers who took to the streets three years ago to protest the planned rise of the retirement age.

The Yellow Vests have made a comeback, but these riots are not quintessentially French. Thanks to immigrants and illegal migrants, and their children and grandchildren, foreign flags of former colonies like Morocco and Algeria rival the French tricolor, and Palestinian flags and keffiyehs are prevalent.

I couldn’t help but note the guest appearance last week by keffiyeh-clad, omni-activist Greta Thunberg. She is now absorbed by the global political climate rather than the world’s weather.

More than ever, when protesters chant, “From the river to the sea,” the question is which river and sea they are referring to. Anarchists and jihadists are agents of chaos and destruction – they create a lethal combination.

In some French cities, the lingua franca of the rioters was Arabic. There’s a word for it: “Intifada.” The Intifada has been globalized, and the results can be seen on the streets of France, where hundreds of protesters and police officers have been injured, and damage could reach a billion euros.

The current conflagration in France is not (yet) specifically an attack on Jews, but the writing was spray-painted on the wall years ago, along with the slogan “Free Palestine.”

When French President Emmanuel Macron last year declared his unconditional recognition of a State of Palestine, he did not strengthen France and French values; he rewarded terrorism and violence. No wonder there are jokes and memes about first implementing a “Two-state solution” in France.

Newsweek and other media noted the appearance of protest videos featuring the song “MRH” by rapper BORO700, which refers to jihadist Mohamed Merah, who murdered 30-year-old teacher Rabbi Jonathan Sandler and his two young sons along with eight-year-old Myriam Monsonego at a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012, as well as killing French soldiers in other attacks.

The lyrics also praise a perpetrator of the November 2015 jihadist assault in Paris, in which 130 people were murdered, including those at a concert at the Bataclan hall, at a football stadium, and at cafés and bars. The victims were not chosen specifically, but the targets were carefully selected to include all that the young, carefree, French way of life represents.

What's causing the French riots?

As Abe Greenwald put it in Commentary, trying to explain “the real cause” of the riots in France is “kind of like trying to determine the official cause of death in someone who suffered from multiple fatal conditions at the end of his life. That someone is Europe, and the conditions are progressive, in more than one sense of the word. 

“There are the real crises: welfare-state failure, education collapse, the disappearance of community, an unsustainable old-age dependency ratio, and unassimilated immigration. Then there are the isms, the activist theologies ensuring that solutions remain out of reach: socialism, anarchism, Islamism, Palestinianism, and antisemitism…

“This indecipherable convergence of radical pursuits is now everywhere in the West, and it’s been with us for a while…

“In the years since 2011, the storm has been fueled by Black Lives Matter, Antifa, gender radicalism, anti-Israel mania, and jihad fandom… The riots in France will add something new, too.”

Macron had his “let them eat cake” moment last week, attending a Celine Dion concert with his wife Brigitte as the riots worsened. Perhaps it was more like Nero fiddling as Rome burned. The French president is quacking like the lame duck he is ahead of the scheduled April 2027 elections.

Both far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon  and far-Right front-runner Marine Le Pen are hoping to gain from the current protests. Neither bodes well for the Jewish community.  

Marseilles-born rector of Bar-Ilan University Prof. Cyrille Cohen, speaking on Reshet Bet’s “International Hour” radio show, pointed out that polarization is not a byproduct of the riots but an aim.

Whether the Right or the Left wins, there is likely to be a wave of aliyah. Bar-Ilan, like other Israeli universities, is already absorbing more French-speaking students, he noted. Cohen quipped about a French cartoon ahead of the presidential elections showing Jews “undecided how to vote: whether to choose Jerusalem or Netanya.”

Those Israelis threatening to leave the country if next week’s general election doesn’t bring about their desired results, should keep in mind that there is no guarantee of a safe haven and a warm welcome for Jews anywhere in the global village, no matter which camp they belong to.

Israelis also need to be aware that outside forces – including Iran, Russia, Turkey, and Qatar – are happy to foster Israeli divisions and foment unrest as a way of weakening the Jewish state.

The attacks on Israel have long morphed into an assault on Judeo-Christian values. Ahead of November 11, the British Commonwealth’s Remembrance Day for its war dead, it is customary to wear poppy pins. Indeed, November 11 is also known as Poppy Day.

This year, the Palestinians and their supporters have hijacked that too, selling a poppy badge in Palestinian colors while claiming the poppy-anemone is the Palestinian national flower. It’s not; it’s Israel’s national flower, and the red anemones that carpet the Negev in the spring have come in particular to symbolize the 1,200 slaughtered in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion and mega-atrocity.

Europe is discovering that the nightmare wasn’t a bad dream but reality of its own making. It needs to wake up and smell the burning buildings. Violent riots are not demonstrations of free speech and democracy. This is war. But the world has yet to internationalize the message of the French maxim, “En la guerre comme en la guerre.”