French way of life wins — for now

clamour for tickets for the first nights is a reminder that the Paris attacks failed.

Naim told the French press that she had “hesitated only for a second” before agreeing to appear. “I was afraid that it would be too painful,” she said. “But then we decided that life must win.”

Life, yes, but also a way of life. The Friday November 13 massacres were an attack not on random crowds of people, but on the French “art de vivre”. Previously, most French people could imagine themselves sheltered from jihadist terror. Until then, the victims of choice in France had been satirists, Jews, police officers or members of the military.

The Bataclan and associated attacks were aimed at young, trendy Paris, at places frequented by relatively well-off, racially diverse and tolerant people in their 20s and 30s. The publicly declared aim was to foment hatred of Muslims and tip France, then Europe, towards a civil war.

Twelve months on, what has been the result? There has been a rash of random anti-Muslim incidents but scarcely more than in a normal year. French Muslims have been more willing than ever before to demonstrate and speak out against jihadism. The flow of young French recruits to Isis has slowed, although it has not dried up completely.

France is still living under a State of Emergency which gives the government substantial extra powers of surveillance and arrest. But the pressure for even more radical suspension of the rule of law —such as mass internment of suspected jihadi sympathisers — has been resisted.

Marine Le Pen’s Front National rides high in the polls but no higher before November 13 2015. She will reach the second round of the presidential elections next Spring but she will be Présidente de la République, as Daesh might have hoped.

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy has attempted to resurrect his political career with an approach more repressive, in some respects, than that of the FN. He is trailing in opinion polls before the centre-right presidential primary this month. The winner looks likely to be the capable and plodding former Prime Minister Alain Juppé.

There is another intriguing example of something that did happen post-Bataclan. The flow of French Jewish emigrants, which increased sharply in 2014 and 2015, fell substantially this year.

Almost 5,000 French Jews are expected to emigrate to Israel by the end of 2016, a 30 per cent fall on 2015. The figures can be interpreted in various ways but it appears that, once France as a whole came under attack, many decided to stay. There was also a 64 per cent fall in antisemitic incidents in France up to the end of September.

Marc Knobel, head of research at the French-Jewish Le Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives, warns that the “trauma” of November 2015 is far from over.

He said: “President François Hollande announced after the attacks that that we were in a state of war. He was right. Nothing has changed. We are in still in a state of war…but it is clear that, whatever Daesh might have intended, France, and all the communities in France, are determined to avoid a civil war.”

More murderous provocations — more Bataclans, more Nices — are possible, even likely. Life and the French way of life are winning. So far.

The attacks were on the French ‘art de vivre’

John Lichfield is a freelance journalist and former Paris correspondent of the Independent