Will French Immigrants Change the Face of Israel?

Jan. 21 2015

Historians customarily count ten waves of Jewish immigration (aliyot) to the land of Israel, beginning with the first in the 1880s and ending with the tenth following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Amotz Asa-El claims that we may now be witnessing the eleventh, made up of West European Jews fleeing anti-Semitism, and describes this cohort’s defining features:

The unfolding French immigration is different from all [the previous aliyot]. Unlike the German immigration of the 1930s, it is happening despite, rather than because of, the country of origin’s government and elite. . . . Yet like the German immigration, and unlike the immigrations from the Middle East, Ethiopia, and post-World War II Europe, French Jews are arriving with some capital [and include] many professionals and entrepreneurs who are ready to join the middle class and in some cases, the upper class. . . .

[In addition], unlike the so-called Russian immigration and the German one before it, the French immigrants are mostly traditional. This will have political repercussions, as they can on the whole be expected to feel more at home on the Israeli Right. Then again, before it makes a political impact, this immigration will have to number at least 100,000—a figure which for now remains distant, even if it might be reached by the end of the decade.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Aliyah, Anti-Semitism, European Jewry, French Jewry, Israeli politics

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023