Millions also perished in the Chinese camps, and there have been terrible genocides in Cambodia and Vietnam.

I have no idea what `classic anti-Semitism' is. I'm not familiar with this term. I don't know where it comes from and what connection it has to France and what is occurring here. There wasn't anti-Semitism in France. An isolated incident can always happen. When two drivers curse each other on the road, and one of them happens to be a Jew, you can't define that as anti-Semitism. In recent years - before the intifada - there were three or four incidents of anti-Semitism a year, and that's out of 18 million crimes and violations of the law.

However, the wind only changes the picture temporarily, the substrate remains the same and sooner or later the same picture surfaces once again.

There wasn't anti-Semitism in France.

You must either suffer in this life or give up the hope of seeing God in Heaven. Sufferings and persecutions are of the greatest avail to us, because we can find therein a very efficient means to make atonement for our sins, since we are bound to suffer for them either in this world or in the next.

The government would have preferred not to take a stand, but the constant presence of the Israeli-Arab conflict on our television screens made it an issue that could no longer be avoided.

Political rivals attacked me. I was savagely beaten. I was kicked in the face and I lost my eye as a result.