France Sees Tripling of Antisemitic Incidents Since Last Fall

Paris, France - June 6, 2010: Pro-Palestinian demonstration. (Shutterstock) (Shutterstock)

Antisemitic outrages rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023.

Antisemitic acts in France have tripled over the last year amid a record surge in hate crimes targeting Jews, according to outgoing French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.

In the first half of 2024, 887 such incidents were recorded, almost triple the 304 recorded in the same period last year, Darmanin revealed on Friday.

Darmanin spoke at a ceremony for the victims of the Rue des Rosiers terrorist attack targeting a Jewish restaurant in Paris on Aug. 9, 1982.

Six people were killed and 22 wounded when terrorists threw a grenade and then opened fire in the Jo Goldenberg restaurant in the historic Jewish quarter of the Marais.

“Antisemitism, which has always existed, now no longer hides. It is an insult to the dead, the wounded, the humiliated, and our history,” Darmanin said, according to the European Jewish Press.

The minister added that “justice has not yet been served on this despicable and antisemitic crime,” referring to the fact that only one suspect from the Rue des Rosiers attack is in custody.

Despite the current surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes, Darmanin reiterated the French government’s “unwavering support for the Jews of France.”

Darmanin’s comments came about a month after an elderly Jewish woman was attacked in a Paris suburb by two assailants who punched her in the face, pushed her to the ground, and kicked her while hurling antisemitic slurs, including “dirty Jew, this is what you deserve.”

In another egregious attack that has garnered international headlines, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a different Paris suburb on June 15.

The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack.

In response to the incident, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “scourge of antisemitism” plaguing his country.

Around the same time in June, an Israeli family visiting Paris was denied service at a hotel after an attendant noticed their Israeli passports.

In May, French police shot dead a knife-wielding Algerian man who set fire to a synagogue and threatened law enforcement in the city of Rouen.

One month earlier, a Jewish woman was beaten and raped in a suburb of Paris as “vengeance for Palestine.”

France has experienced a record surge of antisemitism in the wake of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

Antisemitic outrages rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported — greater than the total number of incidents in France for the previous three years combined.

Amid the wave of attacks, France held snap parliamentary elections last month which brought an anti-Israel leftist coalition to power, leading French Jews to express deep apprehension about their future status in the country.

“It seems France has no future for Jews,” Rabbi Moshe Sebbag of Paris’ Grand Synagogue told the Times of Israel following the ascension of the New Popular Front, a coalition of far-left parties. “We fear for the future of our children.”

The largest member of the NFP is the far-left La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”) party, whose leader, Jean-Luc Melenchon, has been lambasted by French Jews as a threat to their community as well as those who support Israel.

Melenchon has a long history of pushing anti-Israel policies and, according to Jewish leaders, of making antisemitic comments — such as suggesting that Jews killed Jesus, echoing a false claim that was used to justify antisemitic violence and discrimination throughout the Middle Ages in Europe.

According to the European Jewish Press, Darmanin called out Melenchon during his remarks on Friday, asking, “How can politicians think antisemitism is residual?”

Darmanin was referring to a blog post published in June in which Melenchon wrote that antisemitism in France was “residual” and “absent” from anti-Israel rallies.

Critics argued that Melenchon, who in a 2017 speech referred to the French Jewish community as “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest,” was downplaying the significance of antisemitism in France.

Shortly after the NFP’s victory, Melenchon called for France to recognize a Palestinian state, and supporters of the hard-left coalition, which includes socialist and communist parties, poured into the streets of Paris waving Palestinian flags.

French flags were largely absent from the celebrations.

In the wake of the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, Melenchon and his party issued a statement declaring the attacks “an armed offensive of Palestinian forces” as a result of continued Israeli “occupation.” Melenchon also failed to condemn a deputy who called Hamas a “resistance movement.”