No Watts in Paris

Nidra Poller writes at Pajamas Media about the aura of expectancy that has settled on France a year after the émeutes that brought civil unrest unseen since 1968. There are dozens of 'incidents' that happen every night that the media simply are not 'making an issue of'--perhaps because, as Mme Poller suggests, "the French media are accused from some corners of pouring oil on the bus fires of France".  The facts are different.

France suffers from the absence of healthy sensationalism to deal appropriately with sensational events. Words bring people to life. The victim of this vicious attack hardly exists in the public mind. Her friends and family are shown from a distance walking into the hospital, a professor speaks a few words, there is no image of her face in happier times.

 
The most moving description comes from 30 year-old Rachid, cited in Le Parisien. He was standing at the bus stop when the bus went up in flames. He saw the young woman get off the bus, almost fainted at the sight of her burning body, “she was black but she looked white, her skin was peeled.” Overcoming his fear that he would cause further harm by touching her, he carried her away from the bus, even more afraid that it might explode. He tried to douse the flames by covering her with his jacket and at the same time handed his cell phone to a friend who called for an ambulance.

 
Why we aren’t shown Rachid’s heroic face? Is he afraid of being identified by neighborhood racaille that would seek revenge if they could get their hands on him? Police investigators are encouraging escaped passengers who had not yet not come forward by offering them the exceptional possibility of testifying anonymously.

Mme Poller rejects the notion that France is dealing with riotous behavior consequent to 'marginalisation' and poverty:

Desperate efforts to squeeze last year’s uprising into a comfortable Watts scenario may have silenced some observers but they had no effect on reality. Now we hear French policemen talking about an intifada in the banlieues. The nature of this guerilla warfare against the state is willfully obscured by the argument that the rioters are not all Muslims, and they don’t parade behind a “religious” cause.

No, the images that inspire them", Mme Poller concludes, "are shababs throwing killer rocks at soldiers and policemen, Iraqi 'insurgents' burning and quartering American contractors, car bombs in mosques and markets, and charred gutted Israeli buses with body parts strewn around.  That’s what these cats are copying".