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August 27, 2004/Elul 10 5763, Vol. 55, No. 49
French Jews make aliyah
DINA KRAFT
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
TEL AVIV - French is one of the common languages spoken around the sparkling blue pool at the David Intercontinental in Tel Aviv, along the sandy beaches of Netanya and Eilat and the hotel lobbies of Jerusalem this summer.
Some 50,000 French Jews decided to forgo usual vacation favorites such as the French Riviera this summer and come to Israel instead.
The French tourist boom is credited with making August the best single month in a decade for hotels in the greater Tel Aviv area. According to Ha'aretz, an Israeli independent daily newspaper, for the past three weeks, there has not been a single room available at a beachfront hotel in Tel Aviv, Bat Yam, Herzliya or Netanya.
"This never happened before," said Lyon Rosen-baum, chairman of the French-speaking Immigrants Association, noting the unprecedented numbers that are credited, in part, to a campaign by community leaders to make Israel the destination this summer.
The tourism exodus from France is not only a quest for solidarity with the Jewish state and for sun during troubled times in Israel. For some it is about shopping for property and looking into schools for their children: A growing number of French Jews - some spooked by the upsurge in anti-Semitic attacks in France - are considering the possibility of making aliyah, or immigrating to Israel.
Some 3,000 French Jews are expected to make aliyah in 2004, say officials in Israel - about double the number that came in 2001.
Numbers have been rising, the Jewish Agency for Israel says. About 2,085 new French immigrants arrived in 2003, at a time when immigration figures overall were down in part because of the intifada.
Last month, the issue of French Jewish immigration to Israel became the center of an international diplomatic flap after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called on French Jews to make aliyah immediately.
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