If you were wondering whether the Dark Side of Old Europe was rising again, doubt no more. On Sunday, May 30, a mob of Black Panther—type militants stormed the Old Jewish Quarter of Paris, shouting and threatening people. The "Ka Tribe," led by one "Fara (pharaoh) Kemi Saba" has the usual mush of grandiose paranoid cult beliefs; naturally it blames the Jews. It has been allowed to operate freely in Paris.

The most salient point: The gendarmes were nowhere to be found, and didn't show up in response to panicked phone calls. They only arrived when the near—riot was over.

According to Nidra Poller in the City Journal:

Three months after the torture—murder of Ilan Halimi, the intimidating incursion of the Ka militia into the narrow 'Jewish' street of the Marais looks like an ominous sign of worse to come. The Ka Tribe is the lunatic fringe of a broad anti—Semitic movement ...

Eyewitnesses concur about the incursion: 30 men in paramilitary formation stormed into rue des Rosiers, shouting threats and insults against Jews. Some wore boxer's mouthpieces and leather gloves with brass knuckles. They burned with anger and itched for a fight. Frantic calls to the police met with laconic replies: 'Yes, we have been informed.'

According to Poller,

... a dapper gray—haired shop owner said, with dignified regret, 'It's over for Jews in France.' And added, 'The police told me . . . they said it's over for us . . . they can't handle this problem. . . . It's too late.'

According to James Wilson and Rudy Giuliani's "broken windows theory" of city crime, bad guys will test society in small ways ——— breaking windows ——— to see if they can get away with bigger crimes. If you don't enforce laws against window breaking, pretty soon  you will see worse. In France, by all accounts, the windows are being broken all over. Gang rapes are common in La Zone, the grey high—rise suburbs where immigrants and their many children are housed and fed by the welfare state. Tourists are routinely rolled on the Paris subway ——— it was tried with me twice on two consecutive days a couple of years ago, both times by Arab—looking teenagers who working in pairs. And the thuggish "Ka Tribe" has just found out something very significant ——— if you riot in the Old Jewish Quarter, nobody will try to stop you. Broken windows indeed.

History repeats ad nauseam, but its victims don't need to play along. The Jews of the Old Quarter can learn to defend themselves, just as Israel has. Guns are outlawed in Paris, naturally, which is why crime without consequences is rampant. The legal system punishes self—defense, just as it does across the Channel in London. But in the Warsaw Ghetto the Jews were able to arm themselves in secret. Apparently some are learning unarmed self—defense. The community can hire former soldiers from Israel to help create a self—defense corps. Videocams can monitor the streets to protect residents and track criminals. Political pressure can be mounted on the do—nothing police. France can be publicly shamed in the international press.

Minister of Interior Nicholas Sarkozy, who nominally runs the police, at least showed up after the riot to promise an investigation. Sarkozy, who is half—Jewish by birth, is running for President, and has a good chance of winning. But in the atmosphere of cultural breakdown created by  France's most famous intellectuals over the last several decades, no single individual can reverse the tide. France must somehow rediscover its own values; its chattering classes may have to invent post—Postmodernism very quickly, before the country tumbles backward into the Dark Ages.

James Lewis    6 9 06