Bomb Scare in Jewish Day Schools Across France

An anonymous tip to the French Police claimed that a bomb had been placed in the vicinity of a Jewish school. France's Men and Women in Blue then came out in force.

We have two toddlers at a Jewish day school in Paris. To their glee, today turned into an unofficial Meet The Police day when a squad of policiers came for an extended visit to search the premises. At one point, the children were prepped to evacuate the school but that didn't happen in the end as the Police's sweep thankfully found nothing except discarded Shavuot pictures mostly drawn outside the lines.

Teachers informed parents of the situation at the end of the school day. My daughter's teacher was told by Police of the nation-wide scale of the alert which must have mobilized hundreds of officers across the country for similar searches. My daughter's father was told that she was really happy to have seen two, no three, no four fingers policemen in her play area.

Although not nearly as frequent as in Israel, bomb scares are known to happen in France, at least in the eyes of the Jewish community. This was our second occurrence this year, but the first time was just a suspicious package in front of the school which turned out to be a teacher's forgotten scooter trunk filled with books. In that case, the Police cordoned off the surrounding area and exploded the trunk in a puff of paper scraps. I prefer the Israeli method of shooting the package first but to each his own.

It will be interesting to see how the bomb scare is reported in tomorrow's newspapers, if it's even reported at all.

All's well that ends well.