Rabbi YY Gorodetsky on the Second Intifada

Rabbi Yossi Gorodetski, a Paris-based emissary for Chabad-Lubavitch, echoed these concerns.

“We don’t want it to turn into anything more than it is,” said Rabbi Gorodetski, an American who has lived in France for 13 years. “We don’t want it to take on an anti-Semitic or anti-Israel nature.”

He said the civil unrest, which started in the Paris suburbs and spread throughout France and to several other European cities in recent days, is an outgrowth of the anti-Semitic furor — synagogues have been firebombed, Jewish cemeteries desecrated, kipa-wearing Jews intimidated or assaulted — that has plagued French Jewry in recent years.

“It’s obvious that we were left out to dry for a certain amount of time,” Rabbi Gorodetski said, referring to what he sees as the government’s initial failure to acknowledge the scope of the anti-Semitic incidents. “Maybe if the French government had reacted properly when it was only affecting the Jewish community, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

Had the response to the wave of anti-Semitic attacks been swifter and more severe, he said, “whoever is rioting and burning and attacking the entire French population might think twice about what they’re doing.”

From "French Jews Worry Violence May Spread".