Anyone who has studied the night of Nov. 9, 1938, will recognize the pattern in what has unfolded across France in recent days. During Kristallnacht, the mobs that moved through German and Austrian cities knew exactly which shop windows to smash and which synagogues to set alight, because someone had gone to the trouble of telling them where the Jews could be found. That same cold preparation has now resurfaced in the south of France, and we should have the honesty to call it by its name.

The French journalist Paul Amar, speaking on a national news channel, described what happened in Marseille with a clarity that ought to stop every reader in their tracks. “They came prepared,” he said. The rioters arrived carrying the addresses of town halls along with the addresses of Jewish shop owners, according to Amar, and on one street in Marseille, every business owned by a Jew was set on fire while the shops run by Muslims on that same street were left untouched. A synagogue in Paris has been vandalized. Churches have been targeted. The unrest that began in France has since spread into Milan and other parts of Italy, and I fear it will keep moving across the continent for as long as political leaders treat it as something other than what it plainly is.