Look at the EuroPalestine website (www.europalestine.com) and you don't need to understand French to get the flavour of their unabashed anti-Zionist operations. Islamists face the camera and spew out hate-filled talking points: Israel=Occupation, Genocide, Apartheid. A "commando" with a trademark beard and North African accent holds up an Israeli product, declaring: "We won't allow this stuff chez nous. This is our country." Then he sweeps up bottles of shampoo and threatens: "This is what will happen to anyone who supports Israel."

If it were only a few thousand wackos here, a handful of delinquents there, a few pinpricks in a healthy society, but this is not the case. It is an onslaught and it's moving fast. France-Info radio just reported a little sugar-coated item on the joyous Muslim converts attending the annual UOIF (French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) convention at Le Bourget.

Islamist movements are emboldened because the authorities, the media and secular society have failed to react properly to their show of force in January. Using the Israeli operation in Gaza as a pretext, the French-Arab street swung into action with a vengeance. I watched angry Muslims pouring from all directions into Place de la République on 3 January, hastily donning their keffiehs, marching as to war. While the
media (with the notable exception of an unsigned article in Le Figaro) painted this explosion of organised rage in the soft colours of anti-war protest, Islamist websites proudly displayed their true face: blood-curdling shouts of "Death to Israel, Death to the Jews"; Hamas and Hizbollah flags, slogans; violent attacks on the police; and the destruction of public and private property. Those were not demonstrations, they were acts of conquest by jihad foot soldiers claiming our streets, in our society, for the free expression of hate speech, death threats and genocidal promises.

As anti-Jewish attacks reached a new high, President Nicolas Sarkozy promised to punish anti-Semitism and Islamophobia with equal severity, reinforcing the myth of reciprocal inter-communitarian violence. When two naïve, Jewish 15-year-olds handing out pro-Israel leaflets in front of Lycée Jeansson-Sailly, in the affluent 16th arrondissement, got into a fight with some Muslim kids and won, Le Monde turned the Jewish kids into extremists from the Jewish Defence League. They were detained by the police and the incident was repeatedly cited to balance out real attacks against Jews.