The French Parliament “voted 494 to 36 to ban Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses and to expel pupils who insisted on wearing them.”
Meanwhile, according to the International Herald Tribune:
While the public discussion focuses on France’s vaunted secularism, on women’s rights and the definitions of Frenchness, racism is a silent but powerful undercurrent propelling the debate.
It’s an undercurrent that Sarah Aguado, a precocious 13-year-old, knows well. As the only Jew in a school with a large Muslim minority, she was repeatedly insulted and attacked and finally forced to flee.
Classmates called her a “˜”˜dirty Jew.– One student slapped her and made a racist remark. Another asked whether her family in Israel “˜”˜owned guns and killed Palestinians.–
And in nearby Belgium, “Jewish children going to the Athénée Maimonide Bruxelles, a Jewish school, are not allowed to take the subway at the nearby Lemonnier station anymore.”
Why? Were they forming gangs and terrorizing other passengers? Not quite:
Because of frequent attacks by ‘muslim youths’, the school board has decided that the kids are not allowed to use the station. One teacher said to the paper that the attacks follow current affairs, and have started when the ‘second intifada’ began. He also said hatred against Jews was something temporarily, and that it wouldn’t take long for the situation to cool down.
I would like to know what he thinks is going to cool it down. (Thanks to LGF.)