366 anti-Semitic incidents in 3 months in 2024, increase of 300%
European Jewish Press (07.05.2024) – French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced on Monday that 366 anti-Semitic incidents had been recorded in France in the first quarter of 2024, representing “a 300% increase on the first three months of 2023.
“No one can deny this surge in anti-Semitism. Nobody can deny the fact that French Jews represent an estimated 1% of the French population, but that over 60% of anti-religious acts are anti-Semitic,” he declared in a speech at the annual dinner of Crif, the representative Council of French Jewish institutions in Paris.
‘’Not one act must go unpunished, not one anti-Semite must have peace of mind”, the Prime Minister, who is himself from a Jewish family, said. He promised to “show exemplary firmness with every act”.
Attal The French Union of Jewish Students has called for sanctions against people who have written antisemitic and homophobic comments about France’s new prime minister, Gabriel Attal, on the social network X.
Attal, 35, is France’s youngest Prime Minister. His father, a lawyer and film producer who died in 2015, was Jewish and his mother is Orthodox Christian. He was baptised as Christian but Attal has said his father told him he would feel Jewish all his life and would always face antisemitism because he had a Jewish name. Since his nomination last January he has been the target of antisemitic comments on social media.
“My family name stirs up a lot of hatred”, he noted in his speech.
“We are facing a wave of anti-Semitism on a rare scale, stronger, more violent, more widespread and more established than in recent years,’’ he stressed, opening his speech by telling his personal and family history. “It’s a document that never leaves me. It’s framed in my office. It’s a little yellowed with age, the ink has faded slightly, but its meaning and horror are intact and have survived the years. On this document, I read the name of my grandmother, Jeanine Weil (…). This document is the receipt given to her after she removed her yellow star at the police station,” he said.
Deploring the fact that it is not possible to know precisely the number of cases and convictions for acts committed because of religion, he announced that he had asked the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, “to find the means to implement a census of these cases and convictions throughout France”.
“Islamism is a serious threat to our Republic, and one of the most dangerous and destructive faces of anti-Semitism”, he added, promising to “tackle Islamism and separatism head-on”.
Attal also lashed out at the extreme-left La France insoumise party and its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whom he accused of “stirring up hatred as well as the most outrageous undertones”.
“I’ve often felt ashamed lately. Ashamed to listen to certain elected members of the France insoumise party talk about a resistance movement” in relation to Hamas, he asserted. But he also criticized the far-right Rassemblement National, saying: “Let’s not be fooled by the absolute cynicism of those who claim to support French Jews out of an anti-Muslim reflex.
A few days after pro-Palestinian mobilizations in the student world, mainly at Sciences Po University in Paris, the Prime Minister assured that “there will never be a right to blockade” because “we will never accept that a manipulated minority claims to make the law”.
Citing the names of the three French-Israeli nationals still held hostage in Gaza – Ohad Yahalomi, Ofer Kalderon and Orión Hernández-Radoux, Attal shared the testimony of the family of one of the October 7th victims. “When I hear this, I find it very hard to listen to the moral lessons of those who are snug and warm and who explain to Israeli society that it is overreacting,” he hammered, directly targeting La France Insoumise. “
Since the bloody attacks by Hamas in Israel on October 7, anti-Semitism has exploded around the world and particularly in France, where it now seems to have become uninhibited and commonplace, with anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism becoming confused, according to a survey recently unveiled by daily Le Parisien.
44% of Jews no longer wear a kippah in the street, survey shows
A quarter of the country’s Jews say they have been the victim of a verbal or physical anti-Semitic act, with 12% claiming to have been subjected to such acts several times. Fear has prompted 33% of Jewish respondents to reduce or stop their Uber trips, while 44% of those who used to wear it no longer wear their kippah in the street.
The main cause of anti-Semitism, according to 57% of French people in general, and 73% of those of the Jewish faith, is “hatred of Israel”.
The survey also points to a “rejuvenation of anti-Semitism”, with 35% of the under-25s believing it justified to attack Jews because of their supposed support for Israel, compared with 21% of the general population.
A quarter of the country’s Jews say they have been the victim of a verbal or physical anti-Semitic act, with 12% claiming to have been subjected to such acts several times.
Photo: Gabriel Attal revealed this statistic on Monday evening in a speech at the 38th Crif (Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France) dinner in Paris.