Louvre Rebuked For Making Antisemitism Too Obvious

Mainstream French society delights in tasteful doses of prejudice against Jews but finds direct manifestations of it grotesque.

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Paris, June 16 – The government of France issued a stern admonishment to the management of the Louvre Museum Tuesday, warning it that displays of anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli prejudice must be much more subtle than the institution’s recent refusal to allow Israeli students to book a group visit.

Last month an Israeli professor at Tel Aviv University attempted to reserve time and space to take his art students to the museum, but was rebuffed, despite having made the same reservations and trip several times previously. The professor then assumed the guise of an educator from Abu Dhabi, and encountered no trouble in reserving the dates and times. Museum management denied wrongdoing, blaming the refusal on technical issues with the computerized system, narrowly avoiding explicit invocation of politics and prejudice, but the government, which provides the majority of the museum’s funding, expressed its displeasure at the carelessness with which the Louvre allowed French antisemitism to surface.

Minister of Culture Fleur Pellerin ordered the museum to immediately adopt measures to more effectively pass off its anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli leanings as more legitimate motives. “In the twenty-first century, displays of crude discrimination against any group are not welcome in our society,” the Minister Perellin wrote to Louvre Director Jean-Luc Martinez. “As such, the institution under your care and leadership must take active, immediate, and effective steps to dress up Jew-hatred in more palatable garb.”

Recent increases in antisemitic attacks and behavior all over Europe, and notably in France, have confronted Paris with an uncomfortable social dilemma. Far-right groups and left-wing activists have found unusual common ground in antisemitism, to the consternation of mainstream French society, which delights in tasteful doses of prejudice against Jews but finds direct manifestations of it grotesque.

The Louvre director promised a thorough examination of the policies and practices that led to the Tel Aviv University group’s refused admittance. “On behalf of the Louvre I offer my apologies for the blatant discrimination we have shown, and I hereby undertake to make any such manifestations of antisemitism harder to prove,” he said.

Part of the process to blur those manifestations involves a more prominent insistence on distinguishing between opposition to Jews and opposition to the nation-state of the Jews. “Many activists and regimes purport not to have anything against Jews per se, just Israel,” explained Martinez. “But when it comes to the manifestations of that hate, few, if any, practitioners take pains to make sure that the distinction is observed consistently. We could have defended the refusal on the grounds of political protest over Israeli policies, but that would simply raise the question of why not a single such refusal has ever been issued to groups from countries with a far more horrific record on human rights.”

“Also, the official position of the French government, which officially controls the Louvre, is against BDS,” added Martinez. “If we want to indulge in more blatant prejudice we’ll have to wait until the Jews don’t control the gov- I mean, until that position changes.”