A fragile cease-fire has silenced the violence in Gaza, but a continent away, a Muslim prayer leader known for reaching out to France’s Jews is facing death threats.
Hassen Chalghoumi is one of the most visible victims of the raw friction between French Jews and Muslims, and among the best poised to help heal the wounds between the two faiths.
France is home to western Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities, with 600,000 Jews and an estimated 5 million Muslims. Anti-Semitic attacks have soared in France after Israel opened its Dec. 27 offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza.
The Tunisian-born Chalghoumi, 35, has found himself caught in the middle. His car had oil poured on it. He has received anonymous death threats on his cell phone. His house is now under police watch and he is shadowed by a bodyguard.
“There are those who are not happy with what I do,” Chalghoumi said after a recent prayer service in this suburb northeast of Paris, a former World War II transit station for Jews on their way to Nazi death camps.
“They say, ‘He goes to the synagogue, shakes hands with the rabbi while Israel is bombing the Palestinians.’ Some (Muslim) youths don’t want to shake my hand,” he said.
The Middle East conflict has ricocheted through Europe, and particularly France, since Israel began its offensive. A temporary cease-fire called by Israel then Hamas went into effect Sunday with nearly 1,300 Gazans killed.
French officials have provided no count of the number of Jews attacked, synagogues firebombed or vandalism. Jewish organizations have counted between 58 and 97 acts, depending on whether hate e-mails and threatening phone calls are included.
“I don’t think the cease-fire will diminish anything because there has been an incitement to hate,” said Sammy Ghozlan, who heads the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism. He claims the current climate is worse than that during the second Palestinian uprising in 2001.
Still, Chalghoumi, a father of five, vows to keep alive his private mission of cultivating harmony between France’s Muslim and Jewish communities.
Giving up “would mean that I stop everything, abandon the dialogue,” Chalghoumi said. “I’ve worked three years for a rapprochement. I feel it is going up in thin air.”
In 2006, the imam attended a ceremony commemorating the Holocaust at the Drancy deportation memorial, and called on Muslims to respect the memory of Jewish deportees. For his efforts, his home was vandalized.
The cease-fire has lowered tensions, giving him some room to work, and Chalghoumi says his first job is renewing confidence within the Muslim community.
Still, he has postponed plans for a visit this week to the Drancy mosque by 200 Jewish and Muslim women.
“We’re not just working for rapprochement, but to take away the hate,” Chalghoumi said. “This conflict has made a huge gap between the Jewish and Muslim communities.”