“Is there a Jewish vote?” François Mitterrand asked his aide Pierre Aidenbaum in the car taking them to the Douze Heures pour Israël (Twelve Hours for Israel) organized by the Renouveau juif movement.1 And the man who was not yet the Socialist mayor of the third arrondissement of Paris replied to the future president, not without mischief: “No, but the Jews vote.” And that says it all, for the electoral behavior of the Jews of France is little known, is the object of few studies, and prompts hardly any articles in the mainstream press. Even the media and organizations of the Jewish community broach the subject warily, fearing that it may give rise to an antisemitic campaign on the theme of “Jewish power.”2 One therefore hesitates to examine seriously whether or not a Jewish vote exists, even if to pose the question is already, in a small way, to answer it. It remains to take the measure of this often overestimated vote, whose determinants remain difficult to assess.

*

Contrary to a legend complacently maintained by the UMP, it is not Nicolas Sarkozy who is at the origin of the rightward turn of the Jews of France.

A RIGHTWARD TURN

As always in politics, the phenomenon, long in gestation, crystallized in 2002 and was amplified in 2007.

The slide

A very precise political sequence, the one running from the outbreak of the second Intifada (28 September 2000) to the first round of the 2002 presidential election, confirmed and amplified the continuous rightward slide of the Jews of France. It is true that forces working in this direction had been at work for several years and have persisted since.3 This movement was marked by successive ruptures: first Lebanon war (1982), Yasser Arafat’s visit to Paris (1989), first Intifada (1987–1990), second Intifada (2000–2004). A few rare periods of improvement, from the Madrid conference to that of Oslo (1991–1995) and after the evacuation of the Gaza Strip (2005), did not offset this historic distancing.

In fact, the parliamentary left, often silent on many dimensions of the Israeli-Arab conflict—notably on the abuses of the Palestinian Authority, the ideology of Hamas, or even the attacks against Israeli civilians—left to the far left a monopoly of expression on these questions. It is the far left’s discourse, marked by a systematic anti-Zionism, that was retained by the Jews of France as the sole expression coming from the left. The paroxysm of this evolution was reached during the great protest demonstration organized by the CRIF on 7 April 2002 against antisemitism, where the left was conspicuous by its absence. If the remarks attributed to Dominique Strauss-Kahn are to be believed (Lionel Jospin himself reportedly forbade him to take part in the demonstration), the Socialist candidate lost 50,000 Jewish votes there.4 This policy—or rather this absence of policy—had received its ideological justification in Pascal Boniface’s memo to the leadership of the PS,5 titled Le Proche-Orient, les socialistes, l’équité internationale, l’efficacité électorale (The Middle East, the Socialists, International Fairness, Electoral Effectiveness) and founded on a certainty: the PS’s “balanced” policy was at once morally unjust and politically ineffective, since it alienated the Muslim electorate. Pascal Boniface concluded: “It is certainly better to lose an election than one’s soul. But by placing the government of Israel and the Palestinians on the same plane, one risks quite simply losing both.”

This type of argument could only provoke a rejection of the left among the Jews of France. All the more so since, in addition to the controversies over Israeli policy, the left was perceived by the Jews of France as less active than the right in denouncing antisemitism. It is true that for a long time the left has deserted the communal institutions, leaving to figures classed on the right a near-monopoly of the official representation of the Jews of France.6 Add to this a few blunders, such as the negligence of left-wing local elected officials toward their Israeli counterparts (with the notable exception of Bertrand Delanoë). In the same vein, the sidelining of François Zimeray from the European Parliament in 2004 deprived the left of one of its few representatives still audible within the organized community.

The electoral translation of this slide was not slow in coming. In January 2002, in the course of an in-depth survey on the identity of the Jews of France conducted under the direction of the Franco-Israeli sociologist Erik Cohen, 45% of Jews described themselves as left-wing, while 40% situated themselves at the center and 15% on the right.7 The center was thus clearly favored and, indeed, certain results recorded on 21 April 2002 by François Bayrou, and above all by Alain Madelin (classed rightly or wrongly outside the traditional right), show that these two candidates met with a certain success in the districts where Jews are numerous.8 On 21 April 2002, the centrist or liberal vote had therefore served as an antechamber for left-wing voters hesitant to rally directly to the Chiraquian party. This electoral divorce between the left and many Jews was confirmed by observations on the ground.9 What do these estimates teach us? First of all that, as before 1981, the Jewish vote amplifies national phenomena but is distinguished by its moderation: a refusal of the extremes, a rightward slide but by way of the center, at least until 2002. For in 2007 it was without complexes that the immense majority of the Jews of France supported the leader of the French right. It must be said that the latter had long since perceived this rightward turn and all the electoral benefit he could draw from it.

Sarkozy, king of the Jews

For a very long time the UMP candidate had openly played the ethnic card with the Jews of France. Not without success. Nicolas Sarkozy owes his popularity among the Jews first of all to his firm positions on antisemitism. It is also true that the rise of antisemitism had been very well perceived and combated by Nicolas Sarkozy when he was minister of the interior, in any case better than by his Socialist predecessor, Daniel Vaillant, whom the Jews of France accused of negligence during the brutal eruption of violent acts at the end of 2000 (why not say so?). The right-wing leader’s discourse on this point was all the more striking for being tirelessly repeated (“To strike a Jew is to strike the Republic”).

In fact, Nicolas Sarkozy has long maintained close relations with the Jews of France. These relations are of a sentimental, ideological and electoral order.10 But one will refrain from putting Nicolas Sarkozy on trial for sincerity, all the more unjustified since sincerity plays a minor role in politics. One will be content to observe that this support for the Jews and the Jewish State often slides into communitarianism and Atlanticism and does not exclude other friendships, however little compatible.11 For Nicolas Sarkozy, all these steps do not have a merely electoralist character. Indeed, faced with the challenges of intermixing, Nicolas Sarkozy takes his inspiration from the American model, which consists of organizing society into a juxtaposition of groups defined by their geographic or ethnic origins, their philosophical or religious beliefs.

Moreover, when Nicolas Sarkozy speaks of Israel, he speaks a language of the heart that pleases the Jews.12 In fact, the president of the UMP is distinguished from the whole of the French political class by his indulgence toward American positions. This Atlanticism is not displeasing to the Jews of France, who see in the United States Israel’s only reliable partner. It is therefore also for this reason that Nicolas Sarkozy is acclaimed by the immense majority of the Jews of France belonging to the organized community.13

Thus there can be no doubt that, a few months before the presidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy had already managed to capture tens of thousands of Jewish votes that were not from the outset won over to the right. The UMP candidate knew how to impose himself, especially when on these questions—as on so many others—the left is no longer taken seriously.

The inaudible left

Ségolène Royal always refrained from any communitarian approach toward the Jews of France.14 She never sought to develop relations with the Jewish organizations and, elected in a region where there are few Jews, she had no particular reason to do so. The presidential campaign led her to respond to solicitations, since, after receiving the president of the CRIF, she attended that organization’s dinner on 23 January 2007, her adviser David Assouline specifying that “she came because the CRIF dinner takes place in a republican and not a communitarian framework.”15 This position has the merit of consistency: Ségolène Royal refuses to play the ethnic card and frames questions in purely political terms.

This is also the case regarding the Middle East, Ségolène Royal having sounded on regional questions a rather original little tune and, above all, a capacity to evolve. On the war between Israel and Lebanon in July 2006, she criticizes the attitude of the United States (a constant of her foreign policy). On the Iranian nuclear question, by contrast, she displays a constancy and firmness rather rare among French political figures. On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ségolène Royal’s position conforms more to the traditional ones of the left. Thus she declares on 12 October 2006 that European aid to the Palestinians must be restored immediately, for “if famine sets in, if despair sets in, then civil war sets in. To count on this prospect of civil war to eliminate Hamas would be irresponsible.”16 But on this question the Socialist candidate also knows how to show a capacity for inflection, since, less than a month later, on Radio J, she holds that Israel has “a right to security… and that one cannot but observe that this security is constantly being undermined.” And she adds: “So I recognize Israel’s right to guarantee its security. But at the same time one must take care not to enter into a logic of escalation of violence—provocation, riposte, provocation, riposte—and to ensure that things remain in their right place, in their proper measure.”

All in all, it is in the very classic register of the policy of balance that François Mitterrand had so well illustrated that the Socialist candidate situates herself. But the times have changed. Now it is the pro-Iranian organizations that must be confronted, and during her highly controversial journey to the Middle East from 30 November to 3 December 2006, the Socialist candidate was to experience the difficulties of the exercise. By meeting, within a parliamentary delegation, a Hezbollah deputy in Beirut, Ségolène Royal committed a misstep. She did not hesitate to take to task the spokesman of the terrorist organization speaking of Israel as a “Zionist entity,” recalling Israel’s right to existence and security. But the Hezbollah deputy did not stop there, comparing the Israeli occupation to Nazism without provoking any reaction from the French delegation. Twenty-four hours later, Ségolène Royal—citing a translation problem that meant she had not heard this comparison—declared: “these remarks, which would have been inadmissible, abominable, odious, would have prompted on our part a departure from the room.” But the harm was done, and the French right leapt on the occasion to reproach the candidate with a “serious blunder” (Valérie Pécresse, UMP spokeswoman). The CRIF, but also the Cercle Léon Blum, though close to the PS, likewise condemned the meeting with Hezbollah. Learning the lesson, Ségolène Royal took good care not to meet Hamas in Gaza, contenting herself with reminding President Mahmoud Abbas of his commitment to resume aid to the Palestinian Authority.

On Middle Eastern questions, as in many other domains, Ségolène Royal had thus known how to leave the beaten paths of the left and inflect her discourse. But this was to have no electoral impact among the majority of the Jews of France, where the left had become inaudible. For, as in 2002—the same causes producing the same effects, but this time in still more visible and massive fashion—Jewish voters come from the left manifested their distrust toward the Socialist candidate. Ségolène Royal, who had played no role in this distancing (but no role in the opposite direction either), paid, after Lionel Jospin in 2002, with tens of thousands of Jewish votes, the price of the left’s rallying to Palestinian theses. This worked directly to the benefit of Nicolas Sarkozy, François Bayrou—despite his very good image—no longer being in 2007 the preferred candidate of the organized community. As for the other candidates, they were consigned to their marginality without further ado: Jean-Marie Le Pen for obvious reasons, and the far-left candidates because, for the immense majority of the Jews of France, their policy boils down to a very simple equation: far left = anti-Zionism = antisemitism.

JEWISH VOTE, ETHNIC VOTE AND CLASS VOTE

The rightward turn being largely confirmed, it remains to assess its scale, and above all its determinants. But the quantification of this vote is not easy—it borders on the impossible. It is true that the statistical base, the number and sociological characteristics of the Jews in France, is poorly known. But here recent studies bring an interesting illumination.17

Communal anxieties and the ethnic vote

To assess the evolution of communal behaviors, the aforementioned study conducted under the direction of Erik Cohen shows very clearly that a new Jewish identity has taken hold between logics that the sociologist links to tradition or to a revivalist approach: the communal belonging of the Jews of France is more marked. In fact, the new model reduces the boundary between the private sphere (the family essentially) and the public sphere, where, henceforth, religious practice, the fight against antisemitism and the defense of the State of Israel are openly displayed. This uninhibited belonging is underpinned by a greater individual involvement, marked by attendance at the Jewish school, participation in communal life and religious practice.18 For many observers, this would thus lead to a dichotomy between the Jews belonging to the organized community (about half) and the others. But, if this distinction is often pertinent in sociology, on a more political plane the surveyors directed by Erik Cohen, soliciting the various types of Jews on their preoccupations, were struck by a common denominator: religious or not, “communal” or not, right-wing or left-wing, the Jews of France express the same anxieties on two themes: the fear of antisemitism and the future of Israel.

For, faced with antisemitism, the Jews of France are anxious, and it is not a matter of a feeling of insecurity, but of a very real insecurity, confirmed each year by the official and unofficial statistics.19 And as this new antisemitism is highly correlated with the Middle Eastern conflict (in its most violent manifestations it is largely the deed of young Arabs), this phenomenon strikes the Jews doubly: it puts at stake their physical and psychological integrity, but also their attachment to Israel, which is great.20 In plain terms, the internal dynamic of the community—this attachment or this return to tradition—and the external pressure—an environment often hostile to Israel and to the Jews—converge to give contemporary Jewish experience a feeling of belonging to a threatened minority whose destiny is intimately linked to that of the State of Israel.

And this is not neutral on the electoral plane. The Jews do not necessarily vote according to communal considerations but add identity-related preoccupations to those they experience like all French people. In plain terms, the Jews of France vote like the others, but… they pile it on! They amplify the swings of opinion at each presidential election: a shift to the left in 1981 confirmed in 1988, the right’s revenge in 1995, the vote of every refusal21 in 2002, the anticipation of Nicolas Sarkozy’s victory in 2007. Very clearly, the Jews sanction the candidates who do not understand them and support those who show vigilance in the face of the rise of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Henceforth one will have to reckon with an ethnic dimension of the vote, without however overestimating it, for, among the Jews as among the others, the voter’s social position plays a role at least as decisive.

Social model and class vote

To assess the electoral behavior of the French on 22 April and 6 May 2007, one will note first a few lessons: the interest taken in this election, with a turnout unequaled since 1965 and 15 points higher than that of 2002; the persistence of the right/left cleavage; the retreat of the extremist parties; the rightward turn from the first round on. It is precisely this rightward turn that the Jews of France largely amplified. All the testimonies gathered, whether from officials (of the CRIF, of the Consistory of Paris, etc.) or on the ground (in the synagogues and other communal institutions) and within the family and friendship circle of each Jew of France, augured an undisguised enthusiasm for Nicolas Sarkozy. This mobilization does not appear in the final results, for obvious demographic reasons: the Jews represent less than 1% of the French population, and the exit polls could not quantify their vote, unlike those of Christians and Muslims.

But, in a few significant cases, one can approach a reality of this communal vote. First of all, among the French of Israel, very largely Jewish, who gave (with a low turnout, it is true, but higher than usual) 81.2% of their votes to the candidate of the right, with a record exceeding 92% in Netanya!22 On French soil, things are obviously less clear-cut, except in Paris23 and in a few suburban towns,24 where the Jews have a significant demographic weight.

At this stage, doubt is no longer permitted: the Jews of France meant to sanction the left, but not only that. It is in a sense a 1981 in reverse. At that time, the Jews of France had chosen, about two-thirds of them, François Mitterrand, in an anti-Giscard vote. In 2007, the Jews of France supported, in the same proportions it seems, the candidate of the right, and this from the first round on. Which leads one to think that in the second round Nicolas Sarkozy benefited among the Jews from a score that must have exceeded 70%!

Yet one would be wrong to analyze this Jewish vote as the expression of an exclusively communal sentiment. One must add to it the great determinants of the national ballot, this vote also expressing a genuine adherence to the project of the right. The Jews of France simply translated the same motivations as all of Nicolas Sarkozy’s voters, but adding to them a small specifically Jewish touch. The adherence of Jewish voters to his economic promises inspired by a pure liberalism (“Less tax, more work”) is reinforced in a community where the independent professions (artisans, shopkeepers, lawyers, doctors, consultants…) are over-represented. His law-and-order postures (“Punish repeat juvenile offenders like adults, crack down on illegal immigration”) made their fortune among the Jews of all conditions, but above all among those of modest condition who, from La Courneuve in the Neuf-Trois (Seine-Saint-Denis) to La Duchère in Lyon, by way of Marseille, are confronted every day with delinquency often aggravated by a primitive and violent antisemitism. But there is more: beyond the programs and the situational positions, the social model conveyed by the UMP candidate corresponds entirely to that of many Jews, in particular the youngest and the most disadvantaged. Far from the revolutionary aspirations of their elders, the young Feujs (Jews, in verlan slang) of Aubervilliers or Villeurbanne have made individual success the quintessence of their projects. For them, the social model is Arthur, that other little Sephardi who, succeeding on television in a breathtaking career, is propelled from his parents’ public housing in Massy-Palaiseau25 to the smart neighborhoods of Paris, where, having become a billionaire, he too will pass from left to right, by supporting Nicolas Sarkozy.

Other times, other dreams

*

At the close of this rapid analysis, let us wager that, among the Jews too, the time of disappointment will come. In any event, for the Jews too, the most structuring elements of electoral behavior will once again become the traditional cleavages. In other words, the class vote that had been buried a little too quickly will doubtless end up pushing the ethnic dross of the debate to the margins. And that is fortunate, for one must wish for, and favor, the ebb of communitarianism, on the electoral plane too. All the more so as, by returning to an electoral behavior corresponding to a living democracy, the Jews will be better able to combat all the anti-Zionist obsessions and the antisemitic violence. Otherwise, the republican pact would be undermined a little further in its foundations. And for all minorities that is never a good sign.

Notes

  1. Testimony gathered by the author.↩︎

  2. See in this regard the CRIF declaration of 13 July 2006, which evokes the all-too-famous concept of the “Jewish vote.”↩︎

  3. See our article “La Gauche en Europe et Israël, entre Angélisme et Hostilité” (“The Left in Europe and Israel, between Naïveté and Hostility”), Cahiers Bernard Lazare, Paris, March 2006, pp. 16–20.↩︎

  4. Frédéric Haziza, Chirac ou la victoire en pleurant (Chirac, or Victory in Tears), Paris, Ramsay, 2002, pp. 265–266.↩︎

  5. Memo reproduced in his book Est-il permis de critiquer Israël ? (Is One Permitted to Criticize Israel?), Paris, Robert Laffont, 2003.↩︎

  6. Such as Roger Cukierman, president of the CRIF from 2001 to 2007, or Joël Mergui, elected president of the Consistory of Paris at the end of 2005. One will also observe that, of the three other important institutions, two are occupied by right-wing figures (Joseph Sitruk, very close to Jacques Chirac, for the Chief Rabbinate of France, and at the presidency of the central Consistory, Jean Kahn, who has always marked his preferences for the non-Gaullist right). The presidency of the Fonds Social Juif Unifié has since 2005 been occupied by Pierre Besnainou, whose opinions are not known. Only the Union of Jewish Students of France does not hesitate to commit itself alongside the left, notably in the initiatives it takes with SOS Racisme.↩︎

  7. Erik Cohen, Valeurs et Identité des Juifs de France (Values and Identity of the Jews of France), Paris, FSJU, 1982, of which a good summary was published in L’Observatoire du Monde Juif no. 10–11, May 2004, pp. 7–14. Synthetic and critical approaches to this work were made by Michel Wieviorka in “Un modèle en Crise ?” (“A Model in Crisis?”), L’Arche, no. 538, December 2002, and by Prof. Sergio Della Pergola, considered the foremost world specialist in Jewish demography: “Un nouveau regard sur les Juifs Français” (“A New Look at the French Jews”) in L’Arche no. 546–547, August–September 2003.↩︎

  8. Thus François Bayrou recorded a national score of 6.84%, and Alain Madelin of 3.91%. But in Paris, where the Jewish community is nearly ten times larger than at the national level, these scores reached respectively 7.9% and 6.5%. Alain Madelin seems to have profited most from this microclimate, since he obtained 7.3% in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris and 7.6% in the 19th. Whereas in the Val-de-Marne, with 4.9% of the votes, he was only one point above his national average, he recorded three points above it in Créteil (6.9%). This tendency was still clearer in the Val-d’Oise, where, despite a score (4.4%) only half a point above his national average, he benefited from a record score in Sarcelles, the “little Jerusalem”: 11.9%!↩︎

  9. See the excellent survey by the UEJF journal, Tohu Bohu, 2003 no. 3: “La gauche et Israël, analyse d’un divorce” (“The Left and Israel, Analysis of a Divorce”). Moreover, Arié Bensemhoun, president of the CRIF in Toulouse, confirmed this disaffection of Jewish voters on 21 April 2002. In Paris, the vice-president of the very left-wing Cercle Bernard Lazare, Jean-Michel Rosenfeld, estimated that half of its members had not voted for Lionel Jospin on that famous 21 April.↩︎

  10. Grandson of a Jew from Salonika, Dr. Benedict Mallah, who married his maternal grandmother and Catholicism at the same time, Nicolas Sarkozy had from a very young age a very positive image of the Jews embodied by this grandfather whom he adored and at whose home he lived a great part of his childhood. But it was first as a local elected official that he began to maintain a sustained relationship with the Jewish community. Like most of his colleagues, the mayor of Neuilly supports the Jewish institutions of his commune and takes part in many of its festivals (such as the public lighting of the Hanukkah candles). He even goes a little further than most municipal officials by receiving once a year the board of the synagogue for lunch at the town hall.↩︎

  11. Knowing how to count, the minister of the interior Nicolas Sarkozy had sought to win the good graces of the five million Muslims of France by organizing the representation of this faith, without hesitating to favor openly the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF), the federation best implanted at the local level, for the designation of the heads of the CFCM. Strengthened by this conquest, Nicolas Sarkozy imprinted on the UMP a similar approach by appointing, in the person of Abderrahmane Dahmane, a national secretary in charge of relations with associations stemming from immigration, who, without complexes, displays an electoralist approach to the benefit of his leader. A few months before the presidential elections, this UMP official held that, having rallied a part of the beur (French of North African descent) electorate, Nicolas Sarkozy should focus his effort on Black voters (see the article by Jean-Baptiste de Montvalon: “Sarkozy: ‘Les Communautés c’est Moi’” [“Sarkozy: ‘The Communities, That’s Me’”], Le Monde, 8 March 2006, p. 3).↩︎

  12. It will be remembered that in January 2005, Nicolas Sarkozy devoted his first international trip as president of the UMP to Israel. It will also be remembered that he was (along with François Bayrou) the only French political figure to recognize Israel’s right to defend itself during the second Lebanon war (July 2006).↩︎

  13. Here one must distinguish what stems from spontaneous expression from organized support for the candidate of the right. Like Jacques Chirac, who shaped him, Nicolas Sarkozy knows how to show all the necessary attentions to the leaders of the Jewish community of France. In the Jewish media, the traditional balance between right and left (rather well respected on the radio stations) yields easily to the natural tendency of Actualité Juive, which, week after week, distills in its “Indiscrétions”—written under a pseudonym by a journalist close to the UMP—information that readily highlights the right-wing officials and does a disservice to those of the left.↩︎

  14. The Socialist candidate came to know Jews late. A member of the Socialist Party from 1978, she immediately met Jews there. It was Jacques Attali who recruited her to the Élysée to assist him in 1982. There she struck up a friendship with Charles Salzmann, a specialist in opinion surveys, which interested her greatly (already!). With Julien Dray, who founded SOS Racisme in 1984—François Hollande being his correspondent at the Élysée—still more solid relations were forged: close relations among the children, shared holidays, sealing a lasting friendship between the two families. Other friendly relations (with Michèle Fitoussi, her partner in feminism, the couple Eric Ghebali and Daniela Lumbroso, or Elie Semoun for example) mean that Ségolène Royal and her children have Jews in their close circle. But nothing authorizes one to think that these relations have a connotation other than friendly.↩︎

  15. Le Monde, 24 January 2007.↩︎

  16. As Philippe Val was finely to remark, to propose restoring European aid to the Palestinians immediately means unconditionally: “Without the slightest guarantee of recognition of the State of Israel by Hamas? Without any means of verifying that the money really goes to hospitals, to food and to schools, and not to the militias, to the purchase of weapons and to terrorist networks?” (Charlie Hebdo, 20 October 2006).↩︎

  17. See the works of Prof. Sergio Della Pergola, article cited above, the study conducted under the direction of the FSJU, supra, and our estimate of the electoral weight of the Jewish community of France in our article: “Y-a-t-il un vote juif en France ?” (“Is There a Jewish Vote in France?”), Cahiers Bernard Lazare, January 2007. According to the figures of the 2007 presidential election, the number of registered voters was 44,472,834, the number of voters 37,254,242 (i.e. an 83.77% turnout rate), of whom 36,719,396 cast valid votes (source: La Documentation Française, “L’élection présidentielle française de 2007”). From these data we proceed to the following projection: on 1 January 2007, France had 61,538,000 inhabitants. One may therefore consider that 72% of French people were registered and that 59% of them had voted. That is, for about 500,000 Jews in France, a little more than 350,000 registered and a little less than 300,000 valid votes cast.↩︎

  18. In 2002, the establishments of the Jewish community schooled about 30% of Jewish children, whereas at the end of the 1980s this proportion was 15%. As for Jewish life, 30% of families declared attending the community regularly, whereas they were only 22% in 2002. On the religious plane, 22% of Jews declared attending a synagogue regularly (against 9% in 1975).↩︎

  19. Thus the antisemitic acts and threats recorded by the Ministry of the Interior exploded in the year of the outbreak of the second Intifada (744 in 2000 against 82 in 1999), peaked in 2002 (936) and 2004 (974), before declining again in 2005 (504). Source: Commission Nationale Consultative des Droits de l’Homme, “La lutte contre le racisme, l’antisémitisme et la xénophobie. Année 2005,” La Documentation française, 2006 (see in particular the table on p. 28).↩︎

  20. In the study directed by Erik Cohen, 86% of Jews declared themselves close or very close to the Jewish State and 78% have family there. Finally, last but not least, the Jews of France said they were more desirous than before of making their aliyah.↩︎

  21. See the study under the direction of Pascal Perrineau: Le vote de tous les refus, les élections présidentielle et législatives de 2002 (The Vote of Every Refusal: The 2002 Presidential and Legislative Elections). Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2003.↩︎

  22. Nicolas Sarkozy’s score in Netanya is particularly interesting to observe, for the French of this city are Jewish almost in their entirety, generally born in France and immigrated to Israel. They are very representative of the evolution of the French Jewish community over the past thirty or so years: majority Sephardi, belonging to the working or middle classes (very few to the upper bourgeoisie), observant to varying degrees but faithful to tradition, Zionist by definition and supporting the Israeli right.↩︎

  23. Thus, in Paris, the Jewish vote interferes only very moderately with other parameters: in the capital, the candidate of the right obtains 35.07% of the votes. But in the 4th arrondissement, which has had a left-wing mayor since 2002 (Dominique Bertinotti), Nicolas Sarkozy outpaces Ségolène Royal with 34% of the votes against 32%. The same observation can be made for the 9th arrondissement. If one descends to the level of the polling stations, the imprint of the Jewish vote is more evident in the first round. At the heart of the 19th constituency, a left-wing bastion (held by the former minister of the interior, Daniel Vaillant, and his substitute, Daniel Marcovitch), the Socialist candidate achieves some of her best Parisian scores. But in two polling stations comprising many religious Jewish voters (including those of the Lubavitch community of the avenue de Flandre), the Socialist candidate is beaten by Nicolas Sarkozy. The analysis of the first-round results in all the polling stations of the 19th arrondissement, which has the largest Jewish community in Europe, shows it: the Jews, often very observant, of the place des Fêtes, of the rue Manin, of the rues Archereau, Curial, and of Thionville, contradicted the very fine score obtained by Ségolène Royal at the level of the arrondissement: 39.6% against 27.8% for Nicolas Sarkozy, i.e. a lead of nearly twelve points. But in all the aforementioned polling stations, one observes a gap of nearly ten points with the average recorded in the arrondissement.↩︎

  24. In right-wing lands, in the Val-d’Oise, a rather residential department, Nicolas Sarkozy obtains 32.37%, i.e. a little more than his national score, which seems logical. But in Sarcelles, a working-class, left-wing town and stronghold of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the candidate of the right achieves a more than honorable score, higher than his departmental average (33.98%), close to the disappointing result of the Socialist candidate: 37.35%. The analysis of the results station by station shows here too that the numerous Jews of this town, often very observant, largely contributed to the pleasant surprise offered to the candidate of the right and to the local under-performance of Ségolène Royal.↩︎

  25. See the interview given by the creator of Les Enfants de la Télé, on Sept à Huit on TF1 on 25 February 2006.↩︎

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