Paris is Burning, but Europe Is In Denial - with Michael Moynihan and Simone Rodan-Benzaquen

0:00 Ignorance has a price, but independent Jewish journalism, like Arc Media's, is how we guard against paying it. If you're able, consider becoming an Arc Plus member and help keep these conversations going. Join Arc Plus at arcmedia.org. [Instrumental music] You are listening to an Arc Media podcast. This stuff has expanded so rapidly in Europe across so many European countries that I don't think if you, you could just, you could isolate it to France, but it's going to keep going.

0:37 And this is not to make the case against immigration. I am American. I love immigration, but I love the way we deal with immigration. I think Europe has made a number of very, very obvious mistakes in integration and just general immigration policy. The question I have is it, will it topple governments?

0:54 I don't think I have been to a Jewish event, a bar mitzvah, a wedding, a, a dinner where I have not encountered a conversation about where should we go. Do we still have a future here? Most people, um, I think have answered that question already. So I would really urge Americans to very, very closely look at what is happening in Europe and not believe that this is just gonna stay here.

1:18 [Instrumental music] [shouting] The streets of Paris are literally on fire. [shouting] Street signs are getting taken down. [glass breaking] Shoot, I just got shot. [shouting] Knocked it here, guys. Can't see anything. [explosion] Can't see anything. [explosion] Oh, my gosh. It's seven thirty AM on Tuesday, October twentieth here in New York City. It's two thirty PM on Tuesday, October twentieth in Israel, and it's one thirty PM on Tuesday, October twentieth in Paris.

2:04A quick housekeeping note on Tuesday, October twenty-seventh at ten PM Israel time, four PM here in New York, the exit polls will come out for the Israeli election.

2:15 That is the moment of truth, and it's when I'll host a live election night conversation for members of The Fold, our private community for listeners of Call Me Back and the rest of the Arc Media family. I'll be joined by expert guests from Israel to help unpack what exactly is happening. We'll track the results as they come in, and we'll work through which coalitions can actually get to sixty-one seats or not, sixty-one being the majority needed to form a new government.

2:43 To join us, go to arcmedia.org to subscribe to The Fold. We'll begin the live stream at three fifty-five PM. Now, onto the episode. Over the past week, France has witnessed some of its worst civil unrest in years. Cars torched, stores looted, public buildings set on fire, and thousands arrested, and the unrest has spread, with clashes and demonstrations across Europe from Milan to Brussels and even Madrid.

3:12 French officials have publicly admitted their failures in addressing the protests and subsequently issued curfews on Monday night. What do we know so far? Well, on the surface, these protests seem to have started with French high school students protesting the deteriorating schools and teacher shortages.

3:31 But their movement was quickly swallowed up by trade unions, radical left-wing activists, and of course, the Free Palestine movement, a combustible mix of groups angry at the government, the economy, and the political establishment. It's become almost a cliché that antisemitism isn't just a Jewish problem, but a warning that something deeper is going wrong in the societies that tolerate it.

3:54 That was what Brett Stevens was leaning into when he and I did an event in Michigan last week. But what exactly is going wrong here? For decades, France built one of the world's most generous welfare states, universal healthcare, free education, generous unemployment benefits, and comfortable pensions. The French social contract was simple.

4:14 The state would take care of you from cradle to grave. There was just one problem. France couldn't afford it. For fifty-one consecutive years, French governments have spent way more than they collected. So is this the sequel to the Greek debt crisis of two thousand and nine that led to the Eurozone crisis? If so, reform is unavoidable.

4:35 But every serious attempt triggers fierce public resistance, and commentators are calling this unrest a gift for Marine Le Pen, whose far-right National Rally Party is now the favorite to win the French presidency next year. Now zoom out to Europe, because there, there's an even bigger problem. For centuries, European powers dominated much of the world through their empires.

4:59 After World War II, Western Europe built its prosperity under the American security umbrella, allowing it to spend generously on welfare while relying on Washington for defense. But that era may also be coming to an end. Europe no longer has colonial empires, nor the reliable American ally it once had.

5:19 It relies heavily on imported energy, its economies are barely growing, and America, burdened by enormous debts of its own, is increasingly unwilling to underwrite European security. Europe is under pressure to rebuild its militaries at enormous cost, but with aging populations, stagnant economies, massive debts, and citizens fiercely protective of their benefits, Europe can no longer afford the social contract it promised its citizens.

5:47 Are we witnessing another episode of France's familiar protest culture or the unraveling of the European social contract? And is Europe prepared to confront this reality, or is it still in denial? Joining us are two guests with deep knowledge of Europe. Simone Rodan is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. She is former managing director of the American Jewish Committee in Europe.

6:13 She has an excellent piece on the current crisis in the Free Press right now, which we'll link to in the show notes. She is based in Paris. Michael Moynihan is a veteran journalist, formerly with Vice News and The Daily Beast. He's currently the co-host of the popular podcast, The Fifth Column, which I listen to regularly, and a new podcast called The Moynihan Report.

6:34 Michael, who also lived in Europe for some time and reported from there, has written extensively about European politics and culture. My conversation with Simone and Michael right after this short message. [whooshing] Ever listen to Call Me Back and think to yourself, "This would be so much better if Amit went on a rant about the latest celebrity who said something stupid about Israel?"

6:55 Or if Nadav ranked every member of Knesset by how hot they are. Tune into our show, Chosen People Problems, for the real news. Yeah, because that's what the world needs, more Jews in media. Yeah, like more Jews with strong opinions about things. [beep] I think we need to do it one more time. Okay. I don't want to do, "Yeah." I can't s- Yeah. You could say it. I just don't want to say it. What did I say?

7:14 We both did, "Yeah." Like, we're not... Why are we doing that? It sounds so [beep] retarded. [laughs] Sorry for those listening and editing this. It's gonna get worse from here, by the way. Listen to our [beep] show, Chosen People [laughs] Problems. This should actually be the intro. Okay. [beep] Chosen People Problems. We're like Amit and Nadav, but more so. Please tune in, or Dan Senor will be mad at us.

7:37 You can find Chosen People Problems wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen ad-free and get access to our weekly exclusive bonus episode by joining Arc Plus at arcmedia.org. [whooshing] Simone, Michael, thanks for joining Call Me Back. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having us. Simone, you are, you were there. You're in the lion's den, in the belly of the beast. So I want to start with you.

8:02 You're joining us from Paris. Yesterday I asked on the Fold, which is Arc Media's private community, I said, "Hey, we're, I'm preparing this episode. I'm preparing for this conversation I'd be having with the two of you. What is most on people's minds? What were people most curious about?" And I got some incredible suggestions and questions, and everybody basically wanted to know this: What happened in France seems to have begun as a student protest but turned into a multi-sector riot, and it's hard to gauge who the groups are in a way that doesn't, like...

8:32 You know, and I think everyone I'm talking to, and I could even see it in these comments in, in the Fold, everyone is going to their priors. Like, whatever you believe going into this about who's responsible for the problems in society, you can find a way to find those characters in this crisis. So I want you just in a kind of analytical way tell us who are the different groups driving the unrest, what unites them, what do they want. Like, who are we dealing with here?

8:57 So let me start out, I think, with something that I think nevertheless needs to be said. It started with students, and that is legitimate. It started with young students in the, what we call the banlieue, in the suburbs, um, who were unhappy with the situation in their schools. There were roofs leaking. There were problems with teachers.

9:18 That was basically a month ago. Um, but very, very quickly it has turned into something different, even before the latest unrest. I mean, even when you s- started to see the school unrests as well. And I think one major actor, um, that we need to talk about is Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Jean-Luc Mélenchon is, uh, the presidential candidate for the unbowed party. Uh, it's the far left.

9:45 The equivalent in the US is probably the DSA. He has run on a number of occasions already on, in the past. Is he currently in government in any role? No. He is not in cover- in government in any form. Okay. He is in the opposition. He has, uh, several members of parliament though, both in the national parliament and in the European Parliament. He's run before as a presidential candidate.

10:07 In the last, uh, presidential elections, he got 22%, which is pretty substantial. Um, he has a very clear plan. His objective is to be facing Marine Le Pen, the national far right candidate, in the second round of the presidential elections. So what he has done through his discourse is basically to try and get young people, people from immigrant background, to focus on certain aspects.

10:36 What we had about a year ago, and even, uh, in particular since October 7th, is he got young people and people from immigrant communities to focus on Gaza. So for months, for more than month, everything was about Gaza. Obviously, they've been calling it genocide. Everything issue they would be talking about would be Gaza.

10:56 Now he has managed to bring young students to focus on their unhappiness, and I think it's beyond just the issue of, you know, overcrowded classrooms, and it's their general generational unease. I mean, this is a generation to whom we are saying that, you know, they will be replaced by robots and AI, who are scared about the future, who are scared about the war currently on their continent.

11:20 And so it's very easy to get them engaged. And with that, he has also brought several sort of anti-far, radical far left groups that are willing to go and create violence. So this is what the government has told us. Um, the government and the intelligence community have clearly said that these are radical far left violent movements, but in particular anti-Israel and sometimes pro-Hamas movements that he had also previously activated.

11:51 And then of course you have Islamist groups, um, who have come to that as well. With that, you have social media. Uh, and very, very quickly, obviously this blows out of control. Does he think this is going well? I think he does. I think what he's probably not so happy about is all of the ransacking of, and people, like, really literally taking things out of shops. Uh, you know, that, that is probably not something he likes.

12:16 But I think the overall idea of creating violence and conflict, he does. He has said this and repeatedly said and written about this in the past. I mean, he has an actual theory about this. It's the idea, and it's based on a, on an intellectual called Chantal Mouffe, uh, and it's the idea, it's the politics of permanent confrontation.

12:36 It's the idea that, you know, you can bring different groups together who have different grievances, and, uh, you connect them. You create an adversary, which is the establishment, the elites, the existing order, and through that they create an inability to have any form of conversation or dialogue in the country.

12:55 Now, what is his political endgame? My belief is that he wants Marine Le Pen to be in the second round of the election, which, you know, according to all polls is currently the case, and for him to be the only candidate facing her. For him, it produces a win-win situation. Either Marine Le Pen will win, in which case he will be the only opposition figure, and if you think we, we-- you have seen violence now, I think we don't even know what's gonna happen the day after, and in the best case scenario for him, he will be able to convince people in the second round of the elections that y- we are facing, uh, you know, the great fascism and that it's better to vote for him, uh, than for her, and that, in my view, is entirely his strategy.

13:41 Okay. I want to talk, Michael, about where immigration and anti-Semitism fit into this crisis. France has struggled for decades to integrate parts of its immigrant population, and this immigrant population has been growing and growing and growing, especially over the past ten years or so. How did the Free Palestine movement become part of this wider protest movement, and what is the Free Palestine movement? Who's it comprised of in this context?

14:07 We haven't heard much about Gaza and Palace-- the Free Palestinian movement in the American coverage, even in European coverage. It is kind of odd, though, when you see images from France, and I think, uh, Simone is-- will, you know, go out in the streets and see this herself. You don't see a lot of French flags, do you? Right.

14:26 You see a lot of Algerian flags, you see a lot of Palestinian flags, and this is kind of the umbrella of it, despite the fact that it's not spoken of, right? The Free Palestine aspect of it, though, in Europe is a very curious thing. It is the thing that is the omni cause of the left at the moment, but it always was in the past.

14:46 I always thought it was curious when I lived in Sweden that, you know, we say this in America, we-- it concerns us Americans because so much American money goes to Israel, right? Why does it concern the Swedes so much, considering it's on the front cover of the newspaper every single day? Not a nickel of Swedish money is going into weapons in Israel, so why is this so important to them?

15:08 Well, I think there's a very, very deep history there. I mean, Sweden has a very small Jewish population. I think France has the largest Jewish population in, in Europe. There's about twenty thousand in Sweden, and so many of those were a result of the anti-Semitic campaigns in Poland, the Soviet anti-Zionist campaigns, et cetera.

15:26 But that kind of, I mean, as Christopher Hitchens said, you know, anti-Semitism is the godfather of racism and the gateway to tyranny and war, you know? I mean, I think I, [laughs] I agree with that. It's always the canary in the coal mine. But it's always that sort of unifying feature in the background which should always worry Jews, too. It's the thing that we can all agree upon, right?

15:45 I mean, the government that the people in the street want to see destroyed is also the government that recognized Palestine last year. A lot of good that did. But it's a very odd thing. I mean, if you look around the landscape in Europe, this is a disease in Europe, and unfortunately, it is a disease that hasn't gone away.

16:06 I mean, if we look at the choice, if you have a choice in the second round of elections, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose desire is the Nouvelle France, is the Sixth Republic, is to destroy the Republic as it is now, and on the other side, Marine Le Pen, who's somebody who's tried to distance herself from her father, but her father, of course, did call the Holocaust a detail of history.

16:29 I mean, so on both sides of this, where do Jews go? I know- Okay, but Michael, and maybe it's a question for you, Simone, as well. I mean, Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate, this is, I think, the fourth time now she's running for president. She ran in twenty twelve. She ran in twenty seventeen. She ran in twenty twenty-two.

16:43 Fourth time maybe a charm. It does seem to me, as an outside observer, that she has moderated over the years, and she's not her father's daughter anymore. She would never even go near the kind of language, Michael, that you just cited, the, you know, Holocaust being a detail of history. I guess, Simone, do you think the Jewish community, given what's going on, would be more open to Marine Le Pen in this environment? The Jewish community generally thinks [laughs] they are between two bad choices.

17:11 Uh, but yes, Marine Le Pen definitely has done everything to, you know, become more moderate. She actually does believe that to become so, to become a, a potential president, to become a, an actual real leader, it actually has to go through the issue of anti-Semitism. Uh, she has to get the kosher stamp.

17:31 She's done all of the effort possible to go to Israel, to meet with Jews, because she believes that, that, that in order to do so, it has to go through the Jews. You know, which in itself I think is interesting, to say the least. But yeah, I think most Jews, uh, to be entirely honest, understand that, don't particularly, uh, like her, because within her party you still have a lot of elements, uh, that are problematic.

17:54 You know, just a couple of weeks ago, Mediapart, which is the far-left, uh, newspaper, has, uh, released old messages of Jordan Bardella, who is the leader of the party, who has, uh, written horrifically anti-Semitic things more than a decade ago. So that is the leader of the party. I mean, whether it's true or not, there, there seems to be pretty clear it is true. So that's the leader of the party.

18:16 You still have a lot of elements within parliament, within, on a local level, where people have Nazi-owned Nazi shops with, where books of, are being sold, um, despite all of that effort. Now- Having said that, um, you compare her to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, I think most Jews would say, you know, if it really comes to that, uh, we would prefer her.

18:40 Uh, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has created his entire policy on anti-Zionism. Loads of members of parliament who are obsessively, obsessively anti-Zionist, who have, you know, said that October 7th was a form of resistance. So, um, you know, if Jews really had the, the choice, I think most would probably either leave or probably vote for her or not vote at all. Uh, but it's definitely not a very comfortable position.

19:06 I think that's the main issue. [laughs] But, but are... Let me ask you this question. In this current crisis, I mean, I saw reports that the Ohel Yaakov Synagogue was vandalized. I'm, I'm seeing other images on social media of Jewish places, Jews being targeted, but the Jewish Community Protection Service is saying that so far there's no evidence of systematic targeting of Jewish institutions or businesses.

19:28 I don't know if that's accurate. So w- to what extent on, on this point here are Jews being caught in the crossfire, or is antisemitism telling us something important about this, about the underlying crisis? No, listen, I think, yes, the SPCJ, uh, the Jewish Protection Service is right. For now there are no, no, no specific Jewish targets, but it doesn't really matter.

19:47 Uh, first of all, you have all sorts of anti-Zionist tags all over Paris. "Death to the Zionists, death to Zionists," these kind of things. And also I think more importantly, it's what you had said earlier on, Dan, is the fact that, you know, we have said for years that antisemitism was always the first sort of warning sign of a society falling apart.

20:10 Well, you know what, guess what? That's where we are. So I think to some extent many Jews feel that what they have been experiencing for the past two decades, the rest of the French population is now experiencing as well. Michael, I wanna, I wanna sort of raise the lens here, zoom out a bit. How did Europe get itself into this economic predicament?

20:30 It built an extraordinary welfare state, true, but its population is aging, its economies are barely growing, probably not growing at all, and its debts keep mounting. As I said earlier, it imports energy. I mean, the whole place starts to feel at some point like a museum, sorry, Simone, where there's not, like, new and exciting and innovative things happening in any, just about any aspect of its economy.

20:54 So was the European social model always unsustainable, or is something changing? You know, I lived in Sweden, where the place that people like Bernie Sanders always point to, and Sweden became more, to use the pejorative that people use, neoliberal over time. I mean, the experiments in social democracy in the 1970s almost destroyed the country, and then you'd have these little, like an interregnum of quote unquote conservative rule, but just sort of more free market stuff.

21:20 And you know, now Sweden has the most billionaires per capita in Europe. I mean, Sweden has a high tax country that has a very dynamic, uh, very sort of capitalist economy. France is not that, obviously. I mean, France hasn't had a balanced budget since 1973, I think, was the [laughs] last time. I mean, that's astonishing. I mean, you know, uh, the, the debt is b- 120% of GDP. 20. Is it 120% of GDP? Yes.

21:48 Like, it's astonishing. Like, y- these numbers are, are really shocking. I have a friend who was a journalist in France for many years, now lives in the United States. We've allowed her to escape here, and she worked at Liberation, and she said, "You know, there, we couldn't fire people. There were people that came into the office who didn't work for years, and you just couldn't get rid of them." It's not a dynamic, it's a sclerotic economy.

22:13 So when you hear people, this is the first thing to, for American listeners to kind of comprehend, is that if you look online, there's going to be a lot of conversation about austerity and neoliberalism, and this is a revolt against that. Well, I don't know where the money goes in France to create leaking roofs in, in schools in the banlieues, but there's no lack of...

22:34 I mean, the number of people that are public employees in France, compare that, look at the latest numbers, they change often, but it's astonishingly high versus a country like America and, and even a country like Sweden. I mean, and that's even if you cut out the health services and things like that which kind of inflate those numbers. This is not an issue of money in the state coffers. This is something very, very different.

22:57 How you fix that, I think, is funny. I'm going to do the thing that the DSA people do unknowingly here, is they say it's the Swedish model. If France was more like Sweden, we would have a very, very, uh, different and more dynamic economy. That is the problem. So if you think you can throw money at this problem, particularly when it comes to immigration and things, um... I mean, look, you, you look at the national rally, uh, Front National national rally now.

23:22 The Marine Le Pen's party. Marine Le Pen's party has always been, like so many populist parties of the right in Europe, extremely socialist in their economics. There are certain changes in that in recent times, particularly when it comes to funding services for immigrants. Um, but it is, it's always been a, you know, a socialist party for sort of native French people, but not so much for non-native French people.

23:43 But you don't have a lot of choices if those are your two choices in a runoff election between LFI, the Mélenchon far left party, and National Rally, the Le Pen party. You have two people that essentially have socialist economics as their backbone. So I don't see either of those parties being the solution.

24:00 There is a worry that I have that there's a common enemy issue, is that our common enemy now is Islamism, is immigration. The way that a lot of these people have started seeing that, o- one person who told me this in particular in Sweden, is that Jews are Swedish. Jews are European. They integrate. Our problem is the lack of integration from these people, so you are now our allies. That does worry me. But wait, why does that worry you?

24:27 Well, it, it worries me because I d- I wonder how honest they're being about these things. I've never had a moment in my life where I said, "I think I should speak at an SS funeral." Right. [laughs] "I think I should send messages that denounce Jews as, you know, horned usurers." I don't That's never been a part of me. It's been a part of a lot of these people.

24:44 Well, let me ask you a question practically then, Michael, because I, I was-- On my last trip to France, I was meeting with an official in the, in the US Embassy in Paris, and he made the point, 'cause I was curious about what was happening with the right in France, and this was before this crisis erupted.

24:58 And he said, "You need to understand, on the one hand, they're very pro-Israel, this conservative movement, this right-wing movement, so it is different. On the other hand, for instance, the stuff you don't hear much about is some of them are completely against... They wanna outlaw the kashrut, the whole kosher food industry in France."

25:14 So there's aspects of Jewish life where they are taking the assimilation agenda perhaps to extremes. And I think it's-- is that what you're referring to in terms of how it could manifest itself? I'm using the kashrut as, as one specific example, but one could start to imagine how much do Jews actually fit in? Should they fit in more, and where does that go? I mean, it's interesting.

25:32 I think that the idea, the, the one that worries me is, I suppose the parallel would be the Iranian Revolution, right? In 1979, the Ayatollah returns from Paris, by the way, and makes common cause with the Tudeh Party, the Communist Party, and they gain control, and then everyone in the Tudeh Party is arrested.

25:51 I don't think that there is a solution that would please many people in some of these far-right parties that worry me, that they can solve a immigration solution or people remigration, which is a, a word you hear a lot in Germany, Italy, Sweden in particular. That's not a thing that's gonna be-- Like, if that was solved, would they then come for the Jews? I don't think [chuckles] that is something that's going to easily be solved. But I, yeah, I just...

26:14 Look, it is also worth pointing out that Marine Le Pen did have a very famous break with her father and has done the work, as, [chuckles] as we say on the American left, to kind of make Jews feel more comfortable in the party. It's also an electoral opportunity because, you know, the LFI party is doing the exact opposite, right?

26:36 They're really, really scaring up support amongst disaffected migrants and people who are absolute extremists who do, as Iman said, call October 7th an act of resistance. I'm just-- That-that's a general worry that I think one should have in Europe. One final thing is that, uh, one of my favorite historians of modern Europe is, uh, the great George Mosse, who died a few years ago.

26:58 But George Mosse was-- said, uh, famously one time, "If you had said to me in 1933 that there's going to be a contagion that overwhelms Europe and antisemitism will get to a point where it's industrialized slaughter, my response would be, 'God damn the French.'" This is something that goes very deep.

27:15 It's, uh, I mean, from Dreyfus and even before, is, you know, I mean, this is not something we can sleep on because it has such a long tail in European history, and I'm just extra cautious about it. And Michael, how much is there overlaid onto this notion of the end, I think it's overstated, but the quote of the characterization of the end of American military protection for Europe while Europe has been building these welfare states?

27:37 Is there a sense that that bargain is coming to an end, that Europe now needs to spend substantially more on defense, just as its economic model has been coming under enormous pressure? I mean, o-one of the problems I have with so many populist parties in Europe is that they're so unbearably pro-Russian, [chuckles] inclu-including, you know, FPO in Austria and, and National Rally in France, et cetera.

27:59 Um, you know, look, it's, it's, it's a huge change. I mean, when I was in Sweden, there was no idea that there would ever be a conversation about Sweden joining NATO. Absolutely laughable. That was something that was solved many, many years ago. And now you see that obviously happened in Sweden. There's a very, very different attitude in so many countries.

28:18 But the thing that you do notice across countries in Western Europe where the populist or the, quote-unquote, "far right," I think that's a label that applies some places, not in others, could you find a country where the first place party in opinion polls or the second place party was not a populist party?

28:35 I couldn't find one. Uh, I think Portugal. Well, you know, Portugal, the Chega Party, I think is now first in the last poll that I saw. So I said there was a second. They might be fi-- But, but it's amazing in Portugal, you know, which had a weird form of fascism [chuckles] in the twentieth century in the Salazar government.

28:52 But if you look across the landscape, obviously in Switzerland, the People's Party of Switzerland, I think it's ten points above the second place, or the Social Democratic Party. This was across the board then when I moved to Europe twenty-odd years ago, that every number one party was some form of a social democratic party, some offshoot of like the SPD in Germany, some version of that.

29:16 And it is across the board, across the board, it is right-wing parties, populist parties. And the, the thing that actually unites them, because if you look at Norway or something, the Progress Party in Norway, they're a capitalist party, unlike, say, Le Pen's party. But the one thing that unites them is a skepticism of immigration. The end of immigration in every party is something that is driving the electoral wins in every single country.

29:43 What is the most stable government Italy has had in how many years? Giorgia Meloni. Right. What did Giorgia Meloni do when she was a young person? She was a little sympathetic to Mussolini. Right. Right? [chuckles] Her party was a little... But people get over it, so, you know, uh, maybe I should be less cautious. We'll be back in a minute. [Instrumental music] I'm Deborah Pardes, the host of Arc News Daily.

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31:36 Simone, I want to talk a little bit about what the conversation within the Jewish community is going on right now. So the Jewish community in France is the largest Jewish community in Europe. It's the third largest Jewish community in the world, or something. You can give me the precise numbers, but somewhere between four hundred and four hundred and fifty thousand Jews in France.

31:54 I was in Israel the week before last, before this crisis got into high gear, and even then I was struck by how many Israelis were telling me how thrilled they were with the number of French Jews who are now making Aliyah, who are now moving to Israel, and they were showing me the numbers, and it wasn't just the quantity, it was the quality, which is to say some of the most talented citizens of France, uh, in a range of different knowledge industries and professional industries, professional services, were, were moving their lives and their careers and their wealth to Israel.

32:26 So what's the conversation within the Jewish community? Are people leaving the way many Israelis are seeing Jews from France leaving? At least they're expecting a large influx, even larger than's already occurred, or are people staying put and saying, "We'll ride this out"? I don't think I have been to a Jewish event, a bar mitzvah, wedding, a, a dinner where I have not encountered a conversation about where should we go.

32:52 It's a conversation every single Jewish family is, "Do we still have a future here?" Most people, um, I think have answered that question already, but the question is, where should they go? That is very, very present. Now, that has two consequences. The first consequence is the one that you pointed towards, meaning that people are leaving. They're going to Israel. Um, they're going elsewhere. They're going, trying to go to the US.

33:16 Uh, it used to be the UK. That's over now. Canada used to be [chuckles] also the case. That's over as well. You know, the world's getting smaller as the globalization of, of antisemitism and the Intifada is happening. But yeah, no, there are, there are people leaving. I-- at this stage, I don't expect, you know, a big exodus as we have promised over the years.

33:35 And, you know, the biggest numbers, just so you understand, the biggest numbers of people leaving from France to Israel was, I think, at the height was about two thousand sixteen, where, uh, eight thousand Jews, uh, left to Israel, which of course is big, but, uh, you know, in this you don't also count people who are coming back, people who are in between.

33:53 But I think the more important point is, uh, that people are leaving in their minds, and that, I think, has been happening increasingly over the years. What does that mean? To what extent are you actually mentally still a citizen of that country? To what extent do you experience the same reality than the rest of the population is experiencing?

34:15 Uh, to what extent, you know, do you have the same questions that the rest of the population is, uh, has? You know, you are a Jew. You, for example, you live in a difficult neighborhood, and there are many Jews who do, do live in, in difficult neighborhoods in the banlieue somewhere, and, you know, your everyday decision is a difficult one.

34:32 Where will you put your kids in school? In public school? Well, in public school, they can get harassed every single day. If they go to private Jewish school, well, you remember two thousand twelve Toulouse, where kids were killed, uh, by a terrorist called Mohamed Merah. So there's definitely a security issue.

34:49 You know, you have police in front of every Jewish school, of course, and every, and in front of every synagogue, in front of every Jewish institution. Do you put your mezuzah on the door? Um, or, you know, is there a danger that you could be identified as being Jewish? Will you have your name on, uh, your Uber or your delivery app?

35:08 So that's just a very, very different reality that most Jews in France are experiencing. That, I think, is the main issue, is to what extent, you know, people in France who are Jewish still consider themselves to be part of society and, and protected by the state. For the past years, and in particular, of course, since October seventh, the general feeling was one of disconnect and solitude. Michael, I want to ask you about one name we've barely mentioned.

35:36 I don't think his name has even come up in this conversation, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, who was supposed to be this, like, knight in shining armor when he, you know, the sensible, moderate centrist, and at least on paper, supposed to have been the perfect candidate to lead this country through a crisis like this, and yet he seems completely paralyzed.

35:56 So what happened to Macron? Assume our listeners here don't know that much about him. So what should they know about him, given what he's governing over right now and seeming to be completely incapable of managing? One thing they should know is that I went back and checked these numbers. Macron's disapproval rating has been hovering between seventy-five and eighty percent for three years.

36:20 I mean, this is not somebody who's [chuckles] terribly popular. Wow. We're talking about a second-round runoff between two extreme parties. Why? Because the kind of Republican moderate stuff has, has done nothing. Everything is sort of symbol politics. What has changed in spending? What has changed in internal governance of France?

36:41 N-nothing that anyone can really point to, which is why I think Macron would have a very hard time if he wasn't term limited of running another election at the moment. You know, Simone can speak as to what the, the actual tenor is amongst people who are voting in France, but it's an amazing thing to sustain an unpopularity for as long as Macron has by just trying to be this leveling wind of somebody who doesn't do very much at all on either side and isn't particularly ideological.

37:09 Simone, your take on Macron? First of all, I, I actually think, um, your description of Macron was perfect. Uh, I don't think he actually believes in anything. This whole idea of en même temps, at the same time, at the same time being the left, at the same time being the right, all of that works very well when the- we are live in a very prosperous country and when everything is rosy and when everything is shiny.

37:32 That might all work. But at a time when, you know, things are falling apart, when the continent is at war, when the economy is in shambles, uh, when there is a sense of cultural insecurity, and I think that's one of the reasons as well why we have the far right gaining so much ground, um, in France and elsewhere in Europe, well, then you have a serious problem.

37:52 If you don't have anyone, if you don't have a president who has a very clear backbone and a very clear guideline of where he wants to go, you have a very, very, very serious problem, and I think that is the pro- problem we are currently facing. Uh, by the way, one of the reasons why the people on the center or center-left, center-right have, have such a hard time, that is the case of Sc- Gabriel Attal and Édouard Philippe, who are both candidates, uh, to become president, ha- are having such a hard time because they are being seen as inheriting Macron's, uh, legacy.

38:23 Nobody these days wants to be associated with Macron's legacy if they want to become, uh, the next president. Simone, is there anything Europe, France, and I guess Europe more broadly, can do to reform itself? The core problems, the core sources of this crisis, at least to the extent that they are, at least some of them are economic and not just cultural.

38:45 If you were advising the government of France or the government of any of these governments in Europe that will be dealing with this or have had to deal with a version of this, what would you advise them to do? Listen, there are many things that could be done. I think the problem is that Europe has a tendency to have to sort of re- hit rock bottom, uh, unfortunately, before things better.

39:04 I mean, there is a sort of state of denial that is pretty unbelievable. I mean, even on, on the war with Russia and, and Ukraine, I mean, you know, we spent since October 7th, hours, weeks, month, and years talking about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. We have war on our continent. I have not seen any Ukrainian flags in these demonstrations. So the pro- first problem I think is a problem of denial.

39:30 Now, if I was to advise any European leader, I think one of the key issues is the issue of cultural insecurity and everything that comes with it, meaning the issue of immigration, the issue of integration, and the issue of identity, therefore, obviously also the issue of as- antisemitism and Islamism that goes with it.

39:53 There has been a tendency, I think, amongst, uh, moderate governing parties to avoid some of those very difficult issues and therefore leaving the ground to the far right. One of the reasons why we have the far right is because we have not dealt with the issue. When you look at actually an interesting country, which is Denmark, your neighboring country, Denmark has had for a very long time a social democratic, uh, leadership that has not been afraid to deal with some of the more difficult issue, that has dealt with the issue of immigration, integration, identity Islamism, uh, in particular since the attacks in, in Copenhagen.

40:32 And the far right had been contained for a long time much more than any other European capital. Uh, that's not the case of Germany. That's not the case of Austria. That's not the case of France, where those governing parties have had a very, very hard time addressing those very serious issues. And then, of course, it's the issue of, of the economy.

40:51 I mean, we absolutely have to take the, [laughs] you know, as, as, as Michael said, the, the Swedish model. There is just a very clear evidence that this socialist or social democratic model that has worked for decades is coming to an end. So we will have to be able to think about a new way of opening up our, our economies, uh, creating more innovation that unfortunately, I believe French people and many European people are not yet ready to address.

41:22 But it needs to be done if the economies can-- should once again be opened up. France might be a museum, but it's a museum I like to go to, and I want to see it remain that. It is a very hard thing for people to say. It's an argument that nobody wants to have because sort of like wokeness, there is a thing, there's a dam that breaks because everyone say, understands the same thing, right?

41:45 They would send you these emails when you would do a, a podcast, they'd say, "Hey, I agree with you." And when the dam breaks, people can talk about it publicly. That's kind of the end of woke one, [laughs] as we call it in America now. That happened in Europe, too. Having these conversations about culture, what is that about? What is that conversation?

42:01 The complexion of, the physical complexion of the people coming in is changing, the culture is changing, and we don't like it. It's a left-wing cause in America. If you talk about that in Europe for years, you had to be confined to the far right. You were an extremist, you were a racist who didn't want immigration, and you had this kind of white European nationalism coursing through your veins. It is now acceptable to say, "We like the culture of our country."

42:25 Italy is a great example of this. "We don't want it to disappear." Um, it's really interesting because there was a, uh, a documentary that was made maybe a decade ago called Les Français et les autres, The French Are the Others. And the, the, it was a really interesting experiment because there were two people going into the banlieue, into the neighborhoods where, you know, you would have a classroom of majority of young, uh, kids from immigrant background, but they were all French.

42:51 And the first question they would ask them was, uh, "Who in this classroom is French?" And no one would raise their hand. No one. Meaning that you had an entire classroom of young kids who were born in France, who were raised in France, who would go to French schools, uh, who were French citizens, and who did not feel French And this is a major, major problem.

43:13 And that's one of the reasons why you see these, you know, Algerian flags, why you see, you know, but for every-- where you have issues every single day you-- every single time you have a football match, a soccer match between Algeria and any other, uh, other camp because y- these young kids do not feel French, and there you have a real problem.

43:34 And, and again, the politicians in the center, right, and left do not want to address that issue. But if you cannot solve that issue, how do you actually create a nation? All right, I've closing question for both of you, which is basically are we gonna be talking about this crisis in a month or a week, or pick your time horizon.

43:56 As we've, you know, alluded to, Paris and France has a long history of violent uprisings. You don't have to just go to seventeen eighty-nine and the storming of the Bastille. You can look at, you know, the Paris Commune of eighteen seventy-one. Michael, you mentioned the nineteen sixty-eight protests that literally paralyzed-- started as student protests, but then paralyzed the entire country.

44:13 But it just-- a, a friend of mine from France recently said, "Every few years in France, you have some kind of violent uprising." Like this is just, "This is the way we roll, and we move on." Are we just experiencing another one of those every few years, there's some crazy violent uprising in France, or is this different, and we actually will be talking about this in a week or a month or the medium term?

44:34 I would say that, slightly disagreeing one thing, is that the French are, you know, it's the cliché that French people love to protest. This level of violence is not normal. I mean, there's been violent protests in the past, but this is a next level of, of violence, and we can't, uh, look at even recent French history and say this is normal, right?

44:53 I mean, the nineteen sixty-eight uprisings are, you know, both the unions and the students and on the factory floor, they weren't stealing sneakers as such. But, [laughs] um, you know, I, I think that we're gonna see this across Europe because it is, you know, particularly amongst, um, young immigrants. We're talking about the school protests in France and how it started.

45:14 This stuff has expanded so rapidly in Europe across so many European countries that I don't think if you, y- you could just, you could isolate it to France, but it's going to keep going, and, you know, it won't happen in certain places like Poland. I wonder why not. There's not an enormous sort of disaffected immigrant population in Poland, and that's a s-- And this is not to make the case against immigration. I am American.

45:38 I love immigration, but I love the way we deal with immigration. I think Euro- Europe has made a number of very, very obvious mistakes in integration and just general immigration policy. So look, I think this is a old story in a lot of ways, but it's gonna be a current story, and it's gonna keep going. The question I have is that will it topple governments?

46:00 Will it actually have some serious effect rather than the insurance companies coming in and paying to put in new windows? Simone, last word here. Is this fleeting? I agree, and I think the wider question is that this sort of is a perfect storm. It's not just about the violence. Um, it is a perfect storm.

46:18 Again, um, you know, we've named it all, the economic situation, the extreme polarization, uh, the problem of immigration and Islamism, the problem of the war in our continent. And by the way, one thing we haven't ma- mentioned is the fact that we are the soft underbelly of the West. Um, we are being targeted by outside actors, whether it's Russia, China, Qatar, Turkey.

46:42 Everybody is having a feast, um, on our behalf, uh, China as well, obviously. So I think there, there are some... Unfortunately, I believe, at a stage where this is sort of a perfect storm. Again, I have no idea what the consequences will be politically, but I doubt that tomorrow we'll wake up and we'll-- everything is just gonna be fine. All right. On that upbeat note.

47:04 [laughing] [laughs] No, the one-- m-maybe-- But you know what? The one thing... No, no, it's not an upbeat note at all. But I think what I would say is that I would really want to have Americans look at what's happening in, in Europe because, you know, um, there is a tendency for things to become globalized and not stay in-- put in, in one, in one place.

47:26 I used to say this about anti-Semitism about, you know, more than a decade ago. Unfortunately, um, I was right. So I would really urge Americans to very, very closely look at what is happening in Europe and not believe that this is just gonna stay here. I tried to end on-- I thought you were gonna come back, Simone, with something positive, but you actually- There's nothing I can do You actually- I-- First of all, I'm not gonna lie You've actually depressed me even further.

47:47 You're like- I live in Europe. I'm a Jew. Too much. All right. Michael and Simone, thank you for this. Simone, stay safe, and look forward to having you both back on. Thanks. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. [upbeat music] How people come to understand Israel and Jewish life right now depends on who is telling our story.

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