IN LIGHT OF THE PARIS RABBI-STABBING INCIDENT, Claire Berlinski emails this from Paris:

Another item to note from Paris: On 16 December 2002 the Conseil d’Administration of Université Paris VI passed a motion recommending the rupture of the European Union’s scientific cooperation agreement with Israel. A similar resolution is on the agenda of the meeting of the Université Paris VII Conseil d’Administration, which is to take place on January 7. This is in effect a call for boycott; the proposal would institutionalize the exclusion of Israeli researchers from scientific committees, conferences and scientific journals. It would kill international research projects involving Israeli scientists and academic hosting programs for university faculty. It would ban international student exchange programs. This has attracted surprisingly little attention from the press here, and none at all in the US, as far as I can tell. Is anyone going to stand up and point out that this is an absolute fucking outrage?

Note also that the rabbi who was stabbed was a prominent LEFT-WING PACIFIST. The French press has thus far been tactfully circumspect about the assailant’s probable ethnic origin, but earlier that morning, the synagogue received this communication: “Nous aurons la peau du rabbin Gabriel Farhi et vengerons le sang de nos frères palestiniens. -…- Nous lancerons contre lui le djihad, châtiment réservé aux ennemis de notre cause -…-. Après avoir mis feu à sa synagogue, nous nous vengerons directement sur lui.”*

*”We will have the skin of Rabbi Gabriel Farhi and we will venge the blood of our Palestinian brothers — we will hurl jihad against him, a punishment reserved for the enemies of our cause — after setting fire to his synagogue, we will venge ourselves upon him directly.”

I, for one, am inclined to view the two events as importantly connected.

Well, there you have it: a report from the scene.