Jewish students cover Paris walls with photos of French hostages in Gaza
France’s Jewish community badly hit by Hamas’s massacre, with 19 killed and 13 missing; Jewish students union says not only Jews targeted, but ideas of freedom and democracy
France’s main Jewish student union has plastered walls around Paris with posters bearing the faces of French citizens believed to be held hostage by the Hamas terror group, taken amid a brutal massacre in southern Israel last week. The word “Kidnapped” is inscribed on a red banner at the top of each photograph.
Very little is known about the hostages held in the Gaza Strip or even whether they are still alive. A military spokesman on Monday said Israel had notified families of 199 hostages.
Some households in France, which has the largest Jewish population in Western Europe, have taken a direct hit from the Israel-Hamas war. French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said Sunday during a visit to Israel that 19 French citizens are known to have been killed and 13 are missing.
The students’ action in Paris follows a similar campaign by Jews in London, where hundreds of volunteers recently posted fliers around the city bearing images of British citizens believed to have been taken hostage.
The images, featuring children, were placed widely to publicize the details of the atrocity beyond the Jewish community, organizers told the UK’s Jewish News. In a sign of growing contention over the war, two robed women were seen in videos posted online last weekend angrily ripping the posters down.
“This isn’t about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s a question of a terror organization that is attacking a free and democratic state,” said Samuel Lejoyeux, president of the UEJF, glancing at the more than 50 posters on the walls near the Institute of Medicine on the Left Bank.
The union has mainly targeted universities, where the debate over the war has been heated — with one professor recently disciplined for expressing support of Hamas.
Sylvie Retailleau, France’s minister for higher education, has taken aim at professors and others in university circles for straying from France’s pro-Israel position in the war.
Two days after Hamas terrorists launched their brutal assault on Israel, Retailleau pinned a letter on the platform X addressed to university presidents telling them to take disciplinary — and legal — measures against those who break French law, including taking cases to prosecutors.
“It’s not a Jewish question. Everyone needs to act and be with us,” Lejoyeux, the student union leader, said. He claimed that a minority of people see expressions of solidarity for Israel as “an act of Zionism.”
“It isn’t simply the Jews who are targeted, it is the values of democracy and freedom that France has in common with Israel,” Lejoyeux said.
