Jewish Cemetery Vandalized because …Abandoned

Marquel, TPVs NYTimes Uninhabited Territories Section correspondent, was having breakfast when he read Jewish Graves Vandalized in France . Over 250 gravestones were vandalized in the Jewish cemetery but according to French authorities,

“it was not clear if the cemetery was targeted because it was Jewish, or rather because it was thought to be abandoned.”

Unfortunately, Jews seldom live in their cemeteries so it is actually surprising this doesn’t happen more often. It seems a testament to the lack of anti semitism in France since a careful census, which Marquel conducted on a recent trip to the Hexagone, of Jewish cemeteries revealed that all of them are abandoned. Nothing but dead Jews.

Marquel was still skeptical. It seemed as if the French would have said that Hiroshima was probably not bombed because it was Japanese. Far more likely it was bombed because it was, unfortunately, coincidentally, and amazingly, directly under the bomb when it was dropped.

Marquel wondered why the stones were overturned. Now there are certainly people who must be scandalized but what if bin Laden had crashed two airliners into Woodlawn cemetery? Wouldn’t we consider that a stroke of luck? As far as Marquel is concerned, go right ahead and turn those stones over. I’ll hold the gates open for you.

What if all that ISIS is doing right now is turning over headstones of Sunnis? I think we’d be quite happy except for George Bush who might have accused them of poisoning the dead with plutonium dust or something.

Marquel was going to interview the Mayor of Paris, who is quite attractive, or President Hollande, whose former girlfriend was not, but he really had nothing to say or ask. Turning over headstones is a rather non violent form of protest (just ask Charlie Hebdo). But Jewish cemeteries are not a Euro a dozen in France.

There must be some relationship between the vandalism and the Jewish nature of the cemeteries. Maybe Jewish headstones are heavier so a greater test of strength. Or perhaps they are more threatening–they are, after all, the chosen headstones–showing the vandals have real guts  or chutzpah. Our maybe there are so few of them that this was just an orienteering exercise that got out of hand. When they were told to find a Jewish cemetery, perhaps the orienteering leaders didn’t think it possible to find one.

But to say it wasn’t the Jewishness so much as the abandonment tells us something much more about the French authorities than it does about the vandals. Cinq will get you dix that the vandals were young teenage Muslims. I think the French were anticipating this and ready to criticize Islam for opposing abandonment. Anti-abandonism, the Eastern scourge of Western civilization.