PARIS: French diplomats are attempting to play down the matter, but the Quai d’Orsay is visibly upset over an accusation made early January by Israeli vice minister Michael Melchior, according to which France has been characterized as “the most antisemitic country in the West.”

And, to add insult to injury, French ambassador to Israel Jacques Huntzinger was summarily summoned to the Israel Foreign Ministry to be told that the government of PM Ariel Sharon was “preoccupied” by a list of 312 “incidents of antisemitism” that Israeli diplomats accuse the French government of more or less condoning because, says a governmental report, “the incidents are not taken seriously by French authorities who hesitate about taking action.”

As for Huntzinger, he was instructed by his superiors at the French Foreign Affairs Ministry to firmly let it be known to his Israeli counterparts that France had “vigorously condemned all antisemitic acts” and that it was “absolutely determined” to put an end to any and all acts if semitism in France.”

French foreign affairs minister Hubert Vedrine, for his part, felt obliged to telephone his old crony Shimon Peres, who has been known to intervene on France’s behalf in such situations, asking him to “put a damper” on the accusations.

Vedrine, during an official visit to Israel in late September, had himself been the target of aggressive Israeli security officials when he attempted to visit with Chairman Arafat to discuss the reopening of Orient House, closed August 9 by Mr Sharon.

According to Vedrine’s entourage at the time, the aggressive behaviour by the Israeli security officials even took the form, at one point, of fisticuffs between the Israelis and the French Minister’s bodyguards.

The matter came close to taking on the proportions of a full-scale diplomatic incident when Israeli police attempted to break into Vedrine’s suite at France’s Consulate General in Jerusalem, located theoretically on French territory.

Israel’s ambassador to Paris, the historian and academic Elie Barnavi, has attempted to cool tempers by telling Israeli national public radio that France was doing what it could, although he did make a series of statements that further miffed the French, firstly that French authorities were “helpless” in their fight against antisemitism which, he went on to say, was “a phenomenon of the extreme Left.”

The antisemitic incidents in France, he sent on, “were the result of frustration on the part of young Arabs from Maghreb Africa living in the French suburbs.” Overall, noted Barnavi, “only ten per cent of the French can be considered as expressing antisemitic sentiments,” and if that is so, he concluded, it’s largely because the Jewish community in France, estimated at 600,000, is “increasingly well integrated.”

But, that final statement is apparently the true explanation behind Israel’s most recent onslaught of anti-French sentiment as Israeli authorities let it be known January 8 that they apparently are not all that happy that French Jews are becoming more French than Jewish.

Israeli authorities made it plain in their announcement that they prefer that French Jews emigrate to Israel, rather than stay in France, when they announced that henceforth Israel was making available a cash payment of $9000 to any French Jew willing to emigrate. This also to stem a 20 per cent drop in the number of French Jews who became Israeli citizens last year, when only 1200 Jews emigrated from France.