TEL AVIV/PARIS (EJP)---Jacques Attali, a French Jewish intellectual and economist, believes that "there is no problem of anti-Semitism in France."
"Zero! None whatsoever. It's a lie. It's a pure lie. Not true. There are some well-known anti-Semites, but it is not a problem at the national level,” he said in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in Paris.
"There are more important things to discuss than my view on a nonexistent problem," he told me last week in an interview conducted in the headquarters of his consulting firm.
Attali, a former special adviser to French president Francois Mitterrand, prolific writer and head of a nongovernmental organization for microcredit, takes part this week in the Israeli Presidential Conference “Facing Tomorrow” in Jerusalem.
He said that all the talk about anti-Semitism in France "is dangerous if not altogether organized propaganda by Israel."
When the Israeli journalist noted that there is a trend among French Jews to immigrate to Israel because of the anti-Semitic atmosphere, Attali reportedly responded: "I think it is not true. I think it is propaganda, Israeli propaganda."
He added: "There are some French Jews who take a two-week holiday in Tel Aviv and then they are back to Paris or elsewhere. There are French Jews who buy apartments in Israel the same way the British buy apartments in the south of France: for vacations."
"France has the most modern Jewish community and the most modern Arab and Muslim community. It is absolutely crucial for there to be success in relations between Jews and Arabs in France. It's crucial to Israel and to the whole world for the two communities to get along. These relations are of strategic importance: if they cannot live in harmony here, they cannot live in harmony anywhere."
Attali doesn’t believe that there is a problem of anti-Semitism among the Muslim community in France.
"“Absolutely not. They are absolutely adamant to avoid it, wherever and whenever. Of course they are against the Israeli policy in the territories. Of course you can't say there is no problem at all. You can always find crazy people in every part of society. But it's not a political problem; it is not growing, and in fact it does not exist. If you look at the numbers you cannot prove it."
He also said that "the survival of Israel needs 200 million Jews around the world, which means it's a question of conversion. This question is not really addressed. We should have a much broader definition of who is a Jew, and active conversion."