PARIS ? The Jewish school in Toulouse that was terrorized by an unknown gunman on a motorbike will reopen on Wednesday as a statement of courage and continuity. The hundreds of mourners who filled the stone courtyard of the palatial redbrick town hall there on Tuesday morning, joining others across the country in a moment of silence, will return grimly to their daily lives.
But the political debate around the shootings, and whether the deaths of an instructor and three young children were somehow inspired by anti-immigrant political talk, is likely to continue ? both as a weapon in the presidential campaign and as a more general soul-searching about the nature of France.
No one is suggesting that the French presidential campaign inspired a serial killer to put a bullet in the head of an 8-year-old Jewish girl. The candidates largely suspended their campaigning and uniformly condemned the killings, as well as the murders of three French soldiers ? two Muslims and a black man ? apparently by the same man.
But in a period of economic anxiety, high unemployment and concerns about the war in Afghanistan and radical Islam, the far right in Europe has made considerable gains, even in essentially liberal democratic countries like Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and France.
And in the middle of a long and heated presidential campaign, with President Nicolas Sarkozy trying to win back disaffected supporters who have drifted to the far-right National Front party, the shootings at Toulouse have raised new questions about the tone and tenor of the debate here about what it is to be French.
A debate on the role of immigration, assimilation, halal butchering, street prayers, the full veil and other elements of cultural difference is inevitably about French identity ? and the nature of tolerance and intolerance. But it has mostly centered on Muslims, not Jews.
In some ways, the debate here is similar to that in Norway after Anders Behring Breivik killed dozens of young campers in cold blood in July. Were his actions encouraged in some way by too harsh a debate in Norway about immigrants and foreigners, or were they the acts of a madman who lived in a fantasy world and could have been from anywhere?
Fran�ois Bayrou, a centrist presidential candidate who came in third in the 2007 election, touched off the debate on Monday night. He criticized the tone of the campaign, especially from Mr. Sarkozy, who is running to the right to try to ensure that he survives the first round of voting on April 22. The top two finishers will meet in a runoff on May 6, and the Socialist candidate, Fran�ois Hollande, has been leading in most polls.
The murder of children ?because of their origin, of the religion of their family,? is linked, Mr. Bayrou said, ?to a growing climate of intolerance.? In a speech in Grenoble, he said: ?I believe this kind of madness has roots in the state of a society, and in French society this kind of attack, of acts, is multiplying. There is a degree of violence and of stigmatization in the French society that is growing, and it is unacceptable.?
Public figures, he said, ?have the duty to make sure that tensions, passions, hatred should not be kept alive at every moment. To point the finger at one or another according to their origins, it is to inflame passions, and we do it because in that flame there are votes to get.?
Mr. Sarkozy?s aides reacted quickly and angrily. The foreign minister, Alain Jupp�, said on Tuesday morning that Mr. Bayrou was seeking to make political capital out of the murders.
?What is good in the French political class is that, until now, it has reacted with dignity in a spirit of national unity,? Mr. Jupp� said. ?So let?s not add the disgusting to the horrific. Let?s not try to profit in one way or another.?
But there were other notes of unease. Abderrahmane Dahmane, Mr. Sarkozy?s former adviser on issues of diversity who heads France?s Council of Muslim Democrats, said that ?these acts are a strong signal sent to politicians, and more particularly to those who, for several months, have played with fire.?
Mr. Hollande has reacted cautiously, citing a need to remain ?all united.? But he said politicians must watch their words: ?There are words that influence, that sink in, that liberate,? in the sense of freeing people from inhibitions.
And Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, France?s chief rabbi, said that ?it is the values of France that are concerned from the moment we observe that soldiers and schoolchildren are murdered.? He continued: ?It is France that is affected, not just the Jewish community. France is not anti-Semitic, but there are frightening acts of anti-Semitism in France.?
Mr. Sarkozy is considered one of the most pro-Israel presidents in French history, and even Marine Le Pen, the head of the National Front, does not share the anti-Semitism of her father, who founded the party. She, too, condemned the murders and suspended campaigning.
Yet, as Christophe Barbier, the editor of L?Express, wrote on Tuesday, ?you can suspend a campaign, but you can?t stop politics.?
There is no question that Mr. Sarkozy has made appeals throughout his political career to French anxieties about crime and foreigners, and this campaign has been no exception.
Mr. Bayrou singled out a speech by Mr. Sarkozy in Grenoble in the summer of 2010, after a clash between poor Muslims and the police, that linked ?unchecked? immigration and security problems. ?We are subjected to the consequences of 50 years of insufficiently controlled immigration, which has produced a failure of integration,? Mr. Sarkozy said.
He was criticized at the time, as he was for his move last summer to deport Romanian and Bulgarian Roma, or gypsies, who had illegally overstayed their six-month visa-free stay in France. He was also criticized for a law banning the full-face veil and for a failed national debate on French ?identity? and values, including secularism.
During the last weeks, Mr. Sarkozy, trailing in the polls, has returned to some of the same themes, saying there are ?too many foreigners in France,? calling for tighter controls on immigration and a cut in the number of foreigners allowed to become French, and arguing against special treatment for minorities in public places and schools. He said that no one should get special meals, that boys and girls should swim together, and, controversially, that meat that was butchered to be halal in the Muslim tradition should be labeled that way. His numbers improved markedly in a poll after he began the offensive, bringing him into a virtual tie with Mr. Hollande.
But the events in Toulouse may change the nature of the campaign.
?What is going to change in the campaign is its violent tone,? Dominique Reyni�, head of Fondapol, a political research institute, told Agence France-Presse.
The voters want healing, he said. ?I believe that politicians who do not respect this change in tone will be punished.?
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=aa9173c45395d0f720993fa11f7771c9
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