Antisemitic acts at ‘historic’ highs in France, Jewish council says

By AFP 22 January 2025, 7:00 pm

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Protesters hold a banner reading "raped at 12 because Jewish" during a demonstration called by associations including SOS Racisme and the Women's Foundation to denounce antisemitism, in Paris on June 20, 2024, after the alleged antisemetic gang rape of a 12-year-old girl in Paris' suburb of Courbevoie. (Zakaria ABDELKAFI / AFP)

France saw nearly 1,600 antisemitic acts in 2024, a slight dip from the year before but still at levels unseen in recent years as the Israel-Hamas war raged in Gaza, the country’s main Jewish organization says.

The figure of 1,570 incidents marked a six percent fall from the 1,676 recorded in 2023 but well above the numbers in the past decade or so.

By comparison, 436 antisemitic acts were recorded in 2022 and since 2012 they have fluctuated between 311 and 851 per year.

“For the second consecutive year, we are facing a historic number of antisemitic acts,” says the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), an umbrella body of French Jewish groups, in a report based on figures from the Jewish community and the ministry of the interior.

CRIF has emphasized that antisemitic incidents surged in France in 2023 following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which was followed by Israel’s war in Gaza.

The figures only cover acts that have been the subject of a complaint, and therefore “this does not cover the entire phenomenon of antisemitism in France,” CRIF president Yonathan Arfi says. “Unfortunately, a large part of the phenomenon does not give rise to complaints, particularly in schools.”