Pak Nukes- nothing to be paranoid of, but nothing to dismiss either

A recent report published in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, suggested that Pakistan has amassed an estimated stockpile of 130 to 140 warheads for delivery and will be the fifth largest nuke capable nation by 2025. Earlier it was thought that Pakistan had around 100-110 warhead, but the latest update means that Pakistan is ahead of India in nuke capabilities, atleast by volume.Not only this, Pakistan may become the world's third-largest nuclear weapon state in a decade from now, overtaking France, says the report titled "Pakistan is expanding its nuclear power".

Its an open secret that Pakistan’s nuclear missiles are nothing more than Chinese and North Korean missiles painted green, some examples given in the link:-
http://www.b14643.de/Spacerockets/Specials/Dong-Feng/index.htm

Speculation that Pakistan may become the world's third-largest nuclear weapon state - with a stockpile of some 350 warheads a decade from now - is not the least exaggerated because that would require a build up two to three times faster than growth over the past two decades, the authors have said. And, if tomorrow, Pakistan is cleared a designated terrorist state, then it will be a rogue state with a substantial nuclear arsenal. In late 1970s, Zulfikar Bhutto had declared “Our people will eat grass if need be, but will do everything to build a nuclear bomb”.

Pakistan gives justification of its nuclear arsenal to India’s cold start doctrine (proactive strategy to mobilise major formations at short notice to launch a surprise strike). Though India officially denies the existence of such a doctrine, it was first enunciated by the Indian army after the Kargil War in 1999 and the terror attack on Parliament in 2001. Policy experts had complained that it took months for the Indian army to ready its strike corps for a counter-attack on Pakistan. Since then, India is supposed to have developed a proactive strategy to mobilise major formations at short notice to launch a surprise strike.Pakistan has always been brave in its stance against India because it knows that if something goes wrong , which is always the case, USA and China and the OPEC lobby will always be there to save it.  Cold start was designed to avoid the wastage of time due to mobilization period  (the shortcoming was seen most prominently during Op Parakram in 2002) for the forces to assemble . This will enable the Indian armed forces to launch a multi pronged attack within 24-48 hours.  

A word Pakistan uses often is ‘’tactical nukes”, ie the nuclear payload that can be delivered over short distances,  with missiles like Nasr, to deliver a crippling blow to the advancing troops in its territory. Pakistan's NCA, in 2002, had listed four conditions that would elicit a Pakistani nuclear riposte. These were: if India conquers a large swathe of Pakistani territory; if it destroys a large part of its armed forces; if it strangulates the Pakistani economy; or if it causes political destabilisation. Pakistan also retained the option of striking first and its nuclear threshold is deliberately ambiguous so as to generate uncertainty in the minds of Indian leaders. In contrast, India has a No First Use (NFU) nuclear doctrine but reserves the right to massively retaliate if Indian forces, populace or territory suffer a nuclear, biological or chemical strike.

So has Pakistan finally got the edge over India ? Has it checkmated India?

Hassan Nisar, the celebrated Pakistani  columnist,  says that the nuclear capability that Pakistan is so proud of, is like a wheelchair bound wrestler, with strong biceps, but paralysed legs, who can only brandish his bulging arms, but wont be able to run even a step to retaliate if a kid slaps him. He has a good reason to say that.

A difference of 10-20 nuclear warheads is no reason to panic. Having a nuclear warhead and having the capacity to fire all of them at the given targets effectively are two different things. Even if Pakistan overtakes France’s tally, they simply cant use them. India is too big a country to be finished in a primary strike, but Pakistan can be annihilated with no more than a dozen nuclear warheads. US strategic analyst Ralph Peters, the author of Looking for Trouble, explains, “Pakistan’s leaders know full well a nuclear exchange would leave their country a wasteland. India would dust itself off and move on.” Ashley Tellis , who has written several defining books on India's nuclear programme ,points out that it would take "300 to 400 Hiroshima-sized weapons, not tactical weapons, to stop an armoured corps". He says that Pakistan just doesn't have the numbers to sustain such a nuclear battle.  And even the US has abandoned tactical nukes because they are not effective war-fighting instruments

(http://www.tehelka.com/let-us-not-go-ballistic-over-pakistans-nukes/?singlepage=1)

Plus, if Pakistan even does use its so hyped tactical nukes on advancing Indian forces, only a part of the Indian forces would be destroyed, but vast territory of its Punjabi hinterland will be made barren forever, bringing starvation to its people. And the rest of remaining Pakistani territory will be destroyed by Indian retaliation.

Nuclear warfare is not some hit and run counter terror raid or a covert commando military operation. Even the American presidents or Chinese Premiers get overwhelmed thinking about its possible use.

Pakistan has been bled badly by the madrassa bred dogs it had reared to attack India, with terrorist attacks over the years costing close to a 100000 civilian lives, with even the police and paramilitary training academies and naval ports suffering . It is also since 2004, been fighting a bloody war against the Waziristan separatists (a war which has received little coverage in the media), costing close to 10000 soldiers killed and over 10000 injured (official figures, real figures can be more than double. According to some reports, Pak Army has lost an equivalent of two divisions in Waziristan alone), with no end in sight. Add to that the separatists in Balochistan, and now growing Pashtun separatism in places like FATA, Pakistan army has its hands full. Rhetoric aside, a full blown confrontation with India is its worst nightmare.

Pakistan’s economy simply cannot sustain a long drawn war. It cannot keep producing nuclear weapons in huge quantities without bankrupting itself, no matter how much handouts it receives from the gulf states and USA or China. Having more nuclear warheads is by no means an assured strong position. Soviet Union had much more nuclear warheads than USA did, but that did not prevent its collapse due to its own weight.

An arms race will be hundreds of times more ruinous for Pakistan than it will be for India. In its race to destroy India, it is well on its way to become a Chinese satellite state, if it isn’t one already. Piling on weapons at the cost of other development issues due to arms race can ruin the mightiest of nations. Soviet Union is the biggest example of this.  USA did not go that way, but the military industrial complex bleeds it dry, making it necessary to manufacture wars around the world in case there is none already. No president who comes to power can counter the arms lobby, and is forced to keep these industries running to produce useless arms which have little use at the cost of billions of dollars every year

Some examples are :-

M1 Abrams tank manufacturing is kept going to keep 10000 jobs , and literally hundreds and thousands of tanks are rotting away in their ‘’graveyard”

F 22 raptor. More than USD 400 million have been spent on its development and yet its yet to be combat worthy.

SWAT tactics used by policemen in USA for the flimsiest of ‘’crimes’’ like breaking into a house to arrest a person smoking marijuana. Militarized police exists in many cities because the govt is compelled to buy excess arms left over after sales to the army and terrorists around the world

 

Pics: When you have a police like this, understand that they are there to keep you in order, and not to protect you. Thank your lucky stars that India is not USA. Imagine if your local corrupt policeman had this power to lord over you.

While it is true that Pakistan is a land held by the world’s seventh largest army (which unlike India’s is self funded via its own money laundering racket and owning 40-45% of the country’s assets) and is strategically important for the west and China, there is simply no excuse to not taking a strong stand against it because “good god they have nukes”. Peace at the cost of self respect is not different from being a second class dhimmi citizen in sharia rule. ISI’s infiltration into India is much more than RAW’s into Pakistan, for the simple reason that they have their ‘’aman ki asha’’ agents among the politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and artistes to subvert the Indian public. And that is more dangerous than any nuclear bomb.

http://www.thefrustratedindian.com/2017/01/pakistan-india-nuclear-warfare/

What to make of Russia-pak bonhomie

In a surprise move rattling India, Russia has shown great interest in part of CPEC, and is working rapidly towards being a part of the USD 51 billion project that aims to facilitate trade along an overland route that connects Kashgar and Gwadar, through the construction of a network of highways, railways, and pipelines. Pakistan has already dumped USA in favour of China as its most valuable ally, after it had double crossed USA on many fronts after taking USD 18 billion in over 15 years for ‘’war on terror’’.

Russia is also working with China, using the capacity of both as permanent members of UNSC to delist Taliban from UN sanctions, in order to bring peace to Afghanistan by brokering talks between Taliban and Afghan government. Both of these formed a part of the tri party peace talks in Islamabad on this issue. This can only mean these three backing Taliban for a big role in Afghanistan government. Interestingly, Afghanistan was not part of the discussions, causing concerns in Kabul. The joint communique, however, said all the three countries agreed to proceed with consultations in an expanded format and would welcome the participation of Afghanistan.

All of this is severely against the interests of India and Afghanistan. Under agreement as per being Russian weapons biggest buyer, India is assured that the same weapons that are sold to it cannot be sold to Pakistan. Yet, this kind of proximity of Russia to an economic corridor which runs right through Gilgit Baltistan is not something to be dismissed lightly. Immediately after their joint military exercise, Pakistan offered Russia the use of Gwadar, its new Chinese-built port on the Gulf (which from Tsarist times, Russia has always wanted), which is close to Iran and opposite Oman. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Pakistan was convinced that the Russian dream was to have a base on Pakistan's Gulf coastline. Ironically, Pakistan is now offering the same facility. However, Gwadar port is not yet fully operational and is surrounded by insurgencies in Afghanistan and Balochistan . Its capacity is being enhanced by a Chinese-built network of roads that will eventually connect to the Chinese border in northern Pakistan.  The use of the port for docking foreign ships is still far  (Chinese navy already has been given all landing spots), and its not known if Russian navy vessels will be permitted there.

Russia, Pakistan and China want Taliban to be used as a force to counter the Islamic State and its undeterred influence. Taliban is a result of the CIA armed mujahideen nurtured by ISI which wrecked havoc in Afghanistan during its five year rule and preceeding violence with various factions, notably the northern alliance. Its only after 9/11 that the Americans stopped their support to the Taliban via Pakistan and ended their reign. But even today, the writ of the USA propped Afghan government does not run very far beyond Kabul. Pakistan Army knows that Taliban is its Trojan horse and can very well rule Afghanistan once again. 

Islamic state is the erstwhile Iraqi Al Qaeda, which has been strengthened by many personnel of the former Iraqi army , as well as aid & arms from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar (all of them deny it) and of course, CIA. It today rules an area in Syria and Iraq combined which is bigger than Belgium. It earns millions of dollars via oil and gas sale, and is even in possession of heavy artillery and a few fighter jets. Unlike Taliban, which is completely comprised of Pashtuns, Islamic State has recruited Sunnis from all over the world, from Britian to India and Pakistan. And it makes Taliban look like Elmer Fudd when it comes to violence and cruelty.

Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they have only permanent national interests. Diplomacy is a dynamic affair, and there is never romance between any two nations. It is no secret that last PM and current PM of India are much more interested in Washington than they are in Moscow. India now is spending more money buying US weapons than Russian ones (and has further diversified its basket by adding Israel, Sweden, France), and similar is the tale of trade. Pakistan was in the western camp during the cold war,  had airbases from which CIA spy planes flew to survey Soviet territory (one of them was shot down in 1960, leading to a tense standoff, captured by the film Bridge of Spies) and during the Soviet Afghan war, was the main conduit to route funds and weapons to the mujahideen that fought the Soviets. A lot of Pakistanis also fought in the Chechen wars ,and Pakistan’s ideological support to them is no secret. Inspite of that Russia is warming towards Pakistan as it wants to keep the Afghan disturbances from spreading to central Asia and mar its influence there. Pakistan faces increasing isolation in the region - led by India, Afghanistan and Iran, and criticised by the US and NATO countries for continuing to aid Taliban. At present, it is solely dependent on Chinese economic and political support on this front. Pakistan is desperately keen to rebuild relations with Russia, as  warmer ties with Moscow will counter US and western pressure and will give it another powerful ally besides China.  

 India has a major stake in Afghanistan it must not allow Taliban to walk over it. Besides Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar  has returned in Afghanistan after an exile of 20 years. This is bad news for India, which has the added work of  convincing the US of having no truce with Taliban factions as well as  the Haqqani & Hekmatyar network. Indian installations in Afghanistan are a constant target for ISI and Taliban. At the same time in conjunction with Iran and Afghanistan India must revive Northern Alliance of yesteryears composed of Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara tribes of Afghanistan, which form 48% of its population in the north Afghanistan. These ethnicities coming together can build a platform for demanding their own share in governing Afghanistan. If this happens, the tables can turn on Pakistan as the semi autonomous FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa can be a hot ground for the demand of the demand of Pakhtoonistan, and Pakistan stands to lose a lot of ground. Its already lost more than 10000 personnel in the Waziristan war (real figures can be way higher) and there is no end to that in sight.  It cant afford another separatist movement.  India must also work towards forming a network of anti Pakistan pashtun warlords to make  the already burdened Pakistani army divert their personnel on the eastern border to be engaged in attrition war in Afghan Pak border areas.

India must also remember that like the last thousand years, its has to do its fighting alone against global jihad. It cannot rely on assured support of any old friend always (like during 1962 Indo China war or  Kargil conflict of 1999) or new found allies (inspite of dozens of joint military exercises every year, trade ties, US foreign policy will always be bad for India). To its credit, its position is much stronger than it was in the 1990s while at the same time, Pakistan is a much weaker state whose  utility for the NATO block is diminishing every day

http://www.thefrustratedindian.com/2017/01/india-russia-cpec-pakistan-china/

India overtakes UK to become the 5th largest economy

In what can be described as how destiny turns tables around,  India has now overtaken the United Kingdom, its erstwhile colonizer, as the fifth largest economy in the world (after USA, China, Japan & Germany). Whats more, this gap is expected to widen, as India is estimated to grow at six to eight per cent per year compared to UK's expected growth of one to two per cent until 2020.

This dramatic shift has been driven by India’s rapid economic growth over the past 25 years as well as Britain’s recent economic woes, particularly caused by Brexit. Once expected to overtake the UK GDP in 2020, the surpasso has been accelerated by the nearly 20% decline in the value of the pound over the last 12 months. As per various reports,UK’s 2016 GDP of GBP 1.87 trillion converts to $2.29 trillion at exchange rate of GBP 0.81 per $1, whereas India’s GDP of INR 153 trillion converts to $2.30 trillion at exchange rate of INR 66.6 per $1. Even if we take into account the currencies fluctuating that will modify these figures to rough equality, there is no denying that India’s economy has surpassed that of the UK based on future growth prospects.

This marks a significant landmark in India’s economic history, whose story over the last 200 years is full of being looted, first by the British empire and later on by the Socialist politicians and bureaucrats post independence. The British empire stripped its “jewel crown” of every available resource, natural , manpower or otherwise, funding everything from its industrial revolution to its various wars (from the various battles it fought with the Dutch, Portuguese, French , and the Boers to the two huge world wars). This period of loot, plunder and rape of India comprises the years from the fall of the Maratha confederacy (the last remaining power in India that they took nearly a century to subdue) in early 1800s to India’s independence in 1947 when the UK’s growth significantly outpaced India’s, since Britain enriched itself at the cost of its colony, making India one of the poorest nations in the world in less than four generations while itself becoming the apex colonizer in the world, who at its height ruled over one fourth of the world. Everything that Britain did for India’s development during this time ( as the Raj romanticizers keep telling us that British Raj brought India development and stability) was just a bare minimum of what was required to keep the empire intact. Railways were made for quick mobilization of troops to quell any revolt, post offices made for keeping the empire bureaucracy connected, a limited number of colleges were made to nurture a whole generation of coolies, Indian in appearance but English in tastes and loyalty. It was the subsequent generation of coolies who kept the empire running via proxy (the number of British personnel in India never surpassed 100000, even at the zenith of the raj) and it is to these coolies that the power was transferred in 1947. They still survive as India’s intelligentsia, media and the so called elite, and by and large still carry the colonial conditioning.  

All who credit the British for building those few dozen colleges ignore the fact that they destroyed all the village schools and cottage industries in the matter of a few decades, for one simple reason:- they wanted a populace of menial labourers, not literate people from the villages. There was absolutely no attempt made to bring any kind of development in the villages, for that matter they were deliberately kept in the dark.

As for the claim of them bringing social reforms, its nothing but a hoax. Infact the British destroyed the women's right to property in India, and therefore the dowry which was meant to be gift to the bride from her parents, was instead seized by the husband and other male members of her family, and henceforth wedding became just another business deal and the bride seen as a source of income. The woman also lost any share of her ancestral property. Tax collectors under the erstwhile kings were given private ownership of land and were made Zamindars, to loot the peasants for the maximum amount of tax. And of course there is that famous lie of Willliam Bentick abolishing the Sati to reform the evil Hindus. As if the Governor Generals were saints!!

Also swept under the carpet are the losses of millions of lives due to the structural violence unleashed by the East India Company which destroyed large areas of food crops to make way for the growing of indigo plants for dye and opium poppies for the production of psychoactive drugs (Most of the opium used by the British to cripple China’s youth to render them incapable to fight was grown in Bengal) . In case of Bengal in 1770, it increased the tax on agricultural produce from 10% to 50%, transferring much of Bengal's wealth to the company's shareholders., via various famines caused by forcing the growing of cash crops even on agricultural lands that were meant for foodcrops. The Bengal famine of 1770 killed 10 million , the famine of South India 1876-78 killed 5.5 million , Bundelkhand in 1896-97  killed 1 million. The Bengal famine of 1943 killed 4 million people because the British seized control of all food reserves to feed their troops fighting the Axis in Europe and North Africa.

To give an idea of how massive these figures are, the population of undivided India during 1946-47 was 350 million.

But the very notion that the British empire was solely responsible for India remaining poor is avoiding responsibility for our own follies and selfishness. India adopted the disastrous closed, centrally planned, socialist economy (which was primarily based on the Soviet model) due to Nehru’s admiration of Soviet Union which began during his visit there in 1927.  The entire political class saw multinational companies as the successors of the East India Company, and hence stressed a protectionist, socialist, bureaucratically controlled economy full of barriers and tariffs. This horrid choice prevented a bruised India from any sort of recovery and condemned it to more than four decades of stagnant , ill being. Add to that the rampant corruption and red tape and the horror story is complete. Countries like Malaysia,South Korea and China, which were much poorer than India, got a headstart of 10-15 years wrt India in economic reforms. The result is for everyone to see, with India still languishing at the bottom in any kind of human development indez.  The amount of resources that India spent on its perpetually ill public sector is astronomical, and  had they been utilized nicely , it would have been a prosperous country today with education and housing for all.   The period of stagnation extended from 1947 to 1991 (called the Hindu rate of growth , when actually it should have been named as the Nehruvian rate of growth) where both India and the UK grew at roughly the same rate, even inspite of India being under the license permit raj.

Had India adopted for a free market economy in the 1950s than the disastrous Nehruvian model, India would have surpassed the UK economy by the 1970s, instead of taking forty more years for the same.

The last and the most refreshing part of the period of the last 200 years began in 1991, when India abandoned its license permit raj and finally implemented market reforms, and continues to this day. During this period India has experienced much faster economic growth than the UK and has finally in 2016 overtaken it in absolute terms, although is still less than one-fifth that of the UK in per capita terms. It will not be an exaggeration to say that 1991 is when Indians found true freedom, when they gained an upper hand on their own ruling class that was keeping them from becoming prosperous and making them wait in queues for daily necessities, making them wait for seven years to purchase a scooter or to get a telephone connection, to make do with shoddiest of consumer goods.

We can see from history that milestones are important in changing the present trends and scenarios on their head, and usher in a new world, as well as encourage people to shed their biases. Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905 is a huge example: It proved that an Asian nation could militarily defeat a western power , and also highlighted the economic rise of Japan that had gradually taken place over the second half of the 19th century. India’s overtaking of the UK’s GDP in 2016 could serve as a similar moment.

This milestone has three important implications:-

First, it highlights India’s arrival on the global stage and a significant change in power dynamics between India and the west. The effects of this are already being witnessed in India’s repudiation of a trade deal with the UK, where it stood firm to demand more favorable immigration for Indian nationals.

Second, it should be a signal to India to shed any remnants of colonial inferiority , develop  a more open mindset and look at alternative nations to emulate, and to understand that the west is not the only benchmark for progress. Look east policy can be of great help here, as India can relate to Asian countries model much better for its own economic growth.

Lastly, it should spur India’s efforts towards furthering market reform given that India’s per capita GDP is still less than one-fifth that of the UK, highlighting the tremendous scope for further improvement. This milestone is not a laurel to rest on, it’s an clarion call to build and progress the economy at a war footing. 

http://www.thefrustratedindian.com/2016/12/india-overtakes-uk-5th-largest-economy/

Ne pas un pays pour les Juifs

"The aliyah (the act of moving to Israel) of French Jews has been significant over the last decade, the tally for 2016 being 5000. The French Jewish community is the biggest in Europe and is thought to number around 500,000 people, most of them Sephardic and of North African origin.  This is the second-largest population outside of Israel and the United States. The 5,000 departures in 2016 add to the record 7,900 who left in 2015 and 7,231 in 2014. The Jewish Agency of Israel stated that that insecurity had been a "catalyst" for many Jews who were already thinking of leavingThough violence is  not the only reason people are leaving, with family, religious and economic reasons also playing a role, yet one cant deny the panic these recent horrific attacks in 2016 France have unleashed, biggest among them were the Bataclan attacks and the 14^th july 2016 attack where a terrorist mowed down nearly 80 people with a truck.

http://www.vox.com/2016/1/29/10871054/jews-france-aliyah-charts

In total, 40,000 French Jews have emigrated since 2006, according to figures seen by AFP. However, it has been observed that a significant number of Jews who migrate, do choose to return eventually. The number of those who return has been estimated to be around 10 to 35 percent. Its hardly surprising because they cannot take the much harder life in Israel in comparison to the relatively comfortable life in European countries.

Jewish people have a nearly two millennia old  history in France, of running businesses and participating in public life as early as the first century when Paris was part of the Roman empire, and it has seen ups and downs of extreme ends, including everything, be it exploitation, welcome, abuse, glorification and deportation. France, like its European neighbours has a rich history of anti semitism, whether it be in middle ages or modern times. On 22 July, 1306 King Philip IV of France expelled all Jews from his kingdom, the main reason being that he wanted to seize the property of Jews to get the resources for funding with the Flemish and the currency revaluation problem. They had to leave behind their belongings and had to leave the country only with the clothes they were wearing and a small sum of money. Any Jew found after the deadline was liable to be executed. Confiscating Jewish property and their expulsion was a normal event in medieval times, as were in effect already the king’s property. Just a few decades earlier, in 1290, Jews living in England were expelled by King Edward I, many of them had moved to France. Unfortunately for them, France proved only a slight respite. Earlier, the Lateran Council of 1215 summoned by Pope Innocent III banned coexistence or working / trading between Jews and Christians. Jews were banned from all trades except pawn broking and mending old clothes. They had to wear a special garment to differentiate them from Christians. This applied throughout the Christian world wherever canon law was followed (This was the yellow star of David that the Jews had to wear in the Nazi occupied areas). They acted as tax collectors for the king but this role was gradually taken over by Italian bankers. So by the beginning of the 14th century they were no longer indispensable to the crown. Jews had been expelled from France in 1182 by an earlier King Philip and regularly throughout the 13th century but within a few years they were allowed back. The auctioning of the Jews property was still happening at the time of King Philip's death. His son Louis , who succeeded him, allowed the Jews back in 1315. However by 1322 the Jews were banished once more. This pattern of expulsion and return would continue for decades. It concluded with the expulsion of 1394. This is regarded as  the last exodus from France in the medieval period. Jews returned as France expanded to the areas to which they were banished.

Inspite of this, France in the last two centuries has a much better record in tolerance in comparison to Spain, Germany, Hungary or Poland among others. By the 19th century, though resentment  remained toward Jewish people, many Jewish citizens had risen to top business, military and political positions — something that was nearly impossible in many European countries.  In contrast, in Germany till 1800s, Jews had virtually no citizenship rights. In Tsarist Russia,  and eastern Europe , regular pogroms against Jews were regular fare. In comparison, France had a Jewsih Prime Minister , Léon Blum, who served three terms during the 1930s, and later as a vice premier in late 1940s.

 Incidently speaking, the birth of Zionism was not at all inspired by Nazi atrocities. Its origins are a few decades earlier, during the  Dreyfus case (1894-1906) in which Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian and Jewish descent was sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. He was imprisoned  for nearly five years, before being exonerated. Theodore Herzl, one of the founding fathers of Zionism, witnessed crowds in Paris chant “Death to Jews” , calling for Capt Dreyfus’s head, and it was one of the turning points for promoting Palestine as a migration point to the Jewsih community worldwide. In 1895, Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews), which argued that the Jewish people should leave Europe if they wished to, either for Argentina or, preferably, for Palestine, their historic homeland. During the second world war , the Vichy government  which was a Nazi collaborator, rounded up and executed thousands of jews. A quarter of the historic Ashkenazi Jewish population in France died in the Holocaust of World War II. 

During the last thirty years or so, the problem has resurfaced, and in a much more threatening way, owing to a mass immigration from Muslim countries into EU countries and also the rapidly falling birth rates among western European nations. The majority population of Europe has been hit bad due to this, and hence the other minorities cannot be expected to fare any better.

The Gayssot Act or Gayssot Law enacted on 13 July 1990, makes it an offense in France to question the existence or size of the category of crimes against humanity as defined in the London Charter of 1945, on the basis of which Nazi leaders were convicted by the Nuremberg Trails of1946.  It is one of several European laws prohibiting Holocaust denial. But attacks on Jews have risen by sevenfold since then 1990s and 40%of all hate crimes in 2013 were committed against Jews, according to a study conducted by the European Jewish Congress and Tel Aviv University in Israel.

 

Historically numerous North African Arabs had lived and worked in France since before World War II, having emigrated to France in the for economic reasons and to escape civil wars in their home nations. The Muslim community built the Grand Mosque in Paris in 1929. Its Imam and numerous members helped protect Jews from deportation during the Holocaust. This sounds unbelievable in today’s rapidly declining scenario of Muslim-Jewish relations. At least 1 in 10 Jews in France have been physically assaulted for their religious identity, according to a survey in Journal de Dimanche . Jews are less than 1% of the French population, and they have become an even smaller minority due an influx of predominantly Muslim refugees and immigrants in various ghettos and housing projects in various cities, from the former French colonies of Algeria, Morocco over the years, and now the Syrian refugees .

This sort of renewed jihad fuelled anti Semitism is not just limited to France (Paris alone has more than 200 plus no go zones) but also all over western Europe. British historian Maud S. Mandel  in her book  Jews and Muslims in France: A History of a Conflict (2014) states that Muslim antisemitism among second-generation immigrants in France is more prominent than the one preceding them, due to various factors which lie in  earlier inter-communal relations among the peoples in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco following their life as a colony of France and the  decolonization in North Africa; and the  Arab-Israeli conflict, and most prominently the extremism funded by petrodollars. Many other historians downplay this anti semitism and instead state that it is a part of racism, much to the displeasure of the Jewish community.

It’s naïve to assume that anti-Semitism began and ended with the rise and fall of the third reich. Anti Semitism has existed ever since Christianity and Islam branched out of the same semitic tradition where Judaism comes from. These three people of the book have hated each other since centuries. Nazis merely borrowed elements from the various church and royal dictats centuries before. Anti Semitism has its real roots in the earliest Christians regarding jews as ‘’Christ killers’’, and it is a fact that Jews were not given any kind of rights in any Christian or Islamic kingdom (. They had been tolerated, because of their material usefulness, but never accepted. Not just anti Semitism, most of the other Nazi trademarks were rip offs. Nazi salute was a straight lift off of the Roman one, the swastika emblem was a mutilated version of the Hindu swastika, the racial profiling of Jews by having them wear the star of David or regular pogroms against them were similar to what the Jews endured in medieval Europe. In case of exterminating Jews, SS firing squads were just an upgrade of planned jewish extermination by various kings. Concentration camps were first used by British during the Anglo Boer war of 1899 (In which Mr Gandhi served proudly as a stretcher bearer). Even the idea of gas chamber wasn’t original. Protestantism founder Martin Luther advocated  Jewish homes and synagogues should be destroyed, their money confiscated, and liberty curtailed and that they should be locked inside a building and burnt. All that the Nazis did was replace fire with Zyklon B. Vatican too did nothing to condemn the mass killings of Jews, Gypsies, central Asians and Russians during WW II.

Holocaust happened only because the local populace in the occupied territories had anti semitic tendencies, be it Poland or Hungary or Lithuania or Ukraine. Most of the Jew killing was done with the help of the collaborators in occupied territories, whether it be mass shootings or deportation to death camps like  Auschwitz . 

Jews today face an enemy far greater than Nazism, and which has roots of over a millennium and a half, simply because unlike Nazism or Communism, it does not have a single power centre. Nazism finished with the fall of the Third Reich, and Communism suffered a fatal blow with the disintegration of Soviet Union. But jihad has no single base. A Chechen, a Morrocan, a Pakistani, A Palestinian (whatever that means) or any other Arab has the same kind of hatred for the Jews. Israel is a great example that there is no other way than taking violence to your enemies. The European Jews who died in mass executions and gas chambers during WW II  were intellectuals, unlike their counterparts in Palestine, who lived on little and fought hard for every inch of land. It is them who did much of the fighting (joined by the other jewish settlers, most prominently the eastern European jews) throughout the early 1900s to create a base where the future Israel could form in 1948But one cannot live by history alone. No matter how much bravely Israel has fought, it is still a fragile state, and Jews outside it are as vulnerable as they were during Kristallnacht or second world war.

  http://www.thefrustratedindian.com/2017/01/jews-exodus-france/