Dinner on crif: the unmissable policies – BBC

This event is designed to be a bridge between the aspirations of the Jewish community and policy. These have found a new platform.

The annual dinner of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) will be held probably in an atmosphere particular, on Monday evening. After the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen, the desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Alsace, the president of CRIF, Roger Cukierman should give a speech which “result concerns [they] raise, but also hope that is born of the burst January 11 “.

Without replay unity that prevailed during the big event, many will these policies. The executive, the president, the prime minister and a dozen members of the government will travel. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to be present, as are the former heads of government, Alain Juppé and Edith Cresson. UMP, PS and other parties will also be widely represented in what is shaping up as one of the appointment by the most popular political early this year.

• A dinner that has gained importance

This is the 30th dinner of its kind, created in 1985. Confidential departure, he has become increasingly important with time to establish itself as an almost inescapable political event. The goal is clear: it is, as since the CRIF in 1943 to bring the political path of the Jews of France and establish a dialogue with the government. If the CRIF is relatively inconspicuous mediatically before this event, he will become in the 1980s, including consulting on topics related to Judaism or the duty of memory. Dinner of CRIF wins parallel in importance. If they were fifty participants in 1985 in the premises of the Senate, they will be close to 700 this year to recover from 20:30 in the restaurant Pullman-Montparnasse hotel in the fourteenth district of Paris.

• A political forum

The policies themselves have helped to make this dinner event it has become. Prime ministers and presidents use it as a platform. Several marked the spirits of their speeches. As Alain Juppe, who in 1997, it announced the creation of a study mission on the spoliation of Jewish property during the Second World War in France. His goal: to create an inventory of what has been or not returned since the Liberation. His successor at Matignon, Lionel Jospin, in 2000, it addresses the issue of duty of memory. The Prime Minister is not limited to the 1940s, it expands to torture during the war in Algeria. He wants France looks at her past as she was able to do on the Occupation and Vichy. Or in 2008 when Nicolas Sarkozy, after defending his vision of secularism (a controversy was born after one of the previous speeches to the Vatican), proposed to “entrust the memory” of a child victim of the Holocaust each student CM2. An idea that will never be applied.

• Absent

All the policies do not wish to go to dinner or simply are not invited. Philippe Seguin, then leader of the opposition decided to boycott, considering it was a forum for Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. The president of the Modem, Francois Bayrou, decided in 2012 not to participate, wishing to avoid “community meetings, regardless of the community that invites”. This type of event “where political crowd in serried ranks [...] always bothered me because there is somehow a desire to capture the votes,” he explained. But following the anti-Semitic attacks and the degradation of the Jewish cemetery in Sarre-Union, Marielle de Sarnez will be well represented this year. There are also those who are not invited. This was the case for several years to the Greens and the Communists, which the CRIF criticized too different position of his own on the conflict in the Middle East. A quarrel that ended this year with representatives of both formations were invited and “will be represented,” according to Roger Cukierman. For the Greens, the patron of ecologists senators, Jean-Vincent Place will make the trip. A political party, however was never invited: the National Front, whether that of Jean-Marie or that of Marine Le Pen. If the latter is considered “irreproachably personally” by the president of CRIF, the latter believes that behind it are “all deniers, Vichy, Pétain. For us the FN is a party to avoid. “

• A new meeting between Sarkozy and Hollande

In 2012, it was the image that everyone expected. In the presidential campaign, the image of the two major candidates side by side. It’s François Hollande who then took the initiative to greet his rival. Through the crowd, he managed to make their way to the table of the president, who had just completed his speech. The two men exchanged a handshake and a few words before the cameras before being joined by the president of CRIF, Richard Prasquier. This year, the roles between the two men are reversed, the question is who will take the lead this time.

• Avoid blunders

When you have a forum , it is still necessary to enjoy it properly. In his speech at a dinner at the Elysee for 70 years of CRIF, in 2013, François Hollande had released one of the good words he is accustomed. Evoking the trip to Algeria Manuel Valls, he explained that his interior minister was returning to France “unharmed” and added “that’s a lot.” A little phrase that was not spent in Algiers, who saw it as a “regrettable incident.” The outcry, the French president had to express his “sincere regret”.

The following year, in 2014, new blunder of the French president, this time at the dinner organized by the CRIF. Then he mentions the victims of Mohamed Merah, Hollande proceed to count the victims of the killer: “Four Jews, three Muslims, seven French.” With the “three Muslims,” ​​the president thinks designate the murdered soldiers. If one of them had a North African sounding name, yet he was a Catholic. The father of the young man protest in an open letter against the “ignorance,” “verbal abuse” and “abuse” was in his evidence Francois Hollande.