Terrorism: Killing Ground on the Seine

With Jews as their targets, urban guerrillas flourish in Paris

The assault was not only brutal and ugly; it was the latest symptom of what seemed to be a spreading and malignant disease. The two gunmen who burst into Paris' most famous Jewish restaurant last week, spraying lunchtime patrons of Jo Goldenberg's with submachine-gun fire before escaping, left more than just six people dead and 22 injured in their wake. The close-knit Parisian Jewish community reacted with rage, fearing that the attack presaged a new wave of anti-Semitic violence in Europe. The attacks were also part of a general war in Paris that suggested that the City of Light had become an urban oasis of terrorism.

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin bitterly proclaimed that "once again the cry is heard in the streets of Paris, 'Death to the Jews!' " deliberately stirring images of anti-Semitic incidents at the time of Jewish Army Officer Alfred Dreyfus' trial in the 1890s. Begin even indirectly accused President François Mitterrand of helping to create an anti-Semitic climate in France that fostered the attack. Begin charged that the massacre resulted from "the shocking talk and anti-Israeli incitement which has become like anti-Jewish incitement." The Prime Minister was referring to a remark by Mitterrand comparing the aggressive Israeli attacks on the P.L.O. with Nazi atrocities during World War II.

When the French President attended a memorial service for the victims of last week's shootings, Jewish demonstrators shouted, "Mitterrand is a traitor!" Deeply affected, Mitterrand said after the service, "I have always been a friend of the Jewish community of France."

In his anger with France, Begin went so far as to question the propriety of having the country's troops take part in any peace-keeping force in Lebanon. Begin also called for young Jews in France to guard their neighborhoods if the police did not. But his plea was rejected by the religious leaders of the 700,000-member Jewish community in France, the fourth largest in the world. Said Chief Rabbi of France René Samuel Sirat: "The sole responsibility of protecting the lives and property of Jews rests with the state and the police."

The Goldenberg's massacre was one of six anti-Jewish attacks in 14 days in Paris. The others, which wounded only one person, were directed against the automobile of an Israeli embassy employee, a Jewish hardware store in the Marais, a bank formerly owned by the Rothschilds, a firm that imports fruit from Israel and a small house of worship.

Responsibility for three of the minor attacks was claimed by Direct Action, a small group of anarchists. No one assumed the responsibility for the shooting at Goldenberg's, but police suspect it was the work of Black June, a dissident Palestinian group. Yet the escalation of terrorist attacks in France is not limited to anti-Jewish violence. Two days after the Goldenberg's massacre, two bombs, one on the Champs-Elysées and one at the Iraqi embassy, injured six people. Since May, terrorist attacks of all kinds in Paris have killed 20 and wounded 140.