The terrorist attacks in Paris in early January demand an awakening of French society, writes Mediapart editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel. Not one driven by the politics of fear that put the country at war, but one of democratic and social aspirations that demand equality for every member of the population and which, he argues here, is the only solution for eradicating the necrosis of hope that fuels the ‘identity’ conflict blighting France today.
Earlier this month, the south-east Paris suburb of Créteil became a symbol of the sharp recent rise in anti-Semitic crimes committed in France when a young Jewish couple were the target of a vicious attack by three armed men who had come to rob them because, the assailants explained after their arrest, they were Jewish and therefore rich. The arrested men, who repeatedly raped the young woman victim during the robbery, are also suspected of being behind the beating-up of an elderly Jewish man at his home just weeks earlier. Lucie Delaporte reports from Créteil, where over several weeks, before and after the attack on the young couple, she interviewed members of the Jewish community who spoke candidly of their fears of anti-Semitic violence and why they believe it has become rampant in a suburb once regarded as a model of co-existence between religious and ethnic groups.
A senior figure in the Socialist Party has angrily criticised French culture minister Aurélie Filippetti for allegedly snubbing Rivesaltes, a former internment and deportation camp in southern France which is set to become a memorial in 2015, during a recent trip to the area. The culture minister has dismissed the claims as 'absurd'. To understand the importance of the memorial site behind this political squabble, Mediapart asked historian Denis Peschanski to describe the political and historical issues at stake in a camp that revives some of the worst memories of the Second World War in France. Antoine Perraud reports.
In her recently-published book Causes communes (Common causes), French social anthropologist Nicole Lapierre traces the extraordinary stories of 20th-century blacks and Jews who made the causes of other peoples their own. "Running through their stories is the red thread of the communist ideal of a society stripped of inequalities and racism, on which a great many Jews and many blacks had pinned their hopes," writes Lapierre. Antoine Perraud reviews the work and presents selected portraits of those who braved danger and opprobrium by fighting for the rights of others.
Directeur de la publication : Edwy Plenel
Direction éditoriale : Stéphane Alliès et Carine Fouteau
Le journal MEDIAPART est édité par la Société Editrice de Mediapart (SAS).
Durée de la société : quatre-vingt-dix-neuf ans à compter du 24 octobre 2007.
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