From the Liveblog of
Sunday, August 31, 2025
Deputy foreign minister: French government ‘isn’t doing a thing’ to fight antisemitism
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleLazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
The French government “isn’t doing a thing” to fight antisemitism, says Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel. “There is no deterrence. There is no enforcement.”
“France is no longer safe for Jews,” she says in an interview with Army Radio, after the Holocaust memorial in Lyon was defaced with the words “Free Gaza” scratched into it.
She accuses the French government of “consent by silence.”
Un acte abject.
Un tag "Free Gaza" a été gravé sur le Mémorial de la Shoah de Lyon.
Souiller ainsi la mémoire des victimes de la Shoah, c'est tenter de nazifier les Juifs mais c'est aussi s'en prendre aux valeurs fondamentales de la République, car la Mémoire de la Shoah est… pic.twitter.com/XF85vrpVlS
— Yonathan Arfi (@Yonathan_Arfi) August 30, 2025
In a letter sent in mid-August, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained that French President Emmanuel Macron’s promise that France would recognize a Palestinian state was fueling antisemitism.
US Ambassador to France Charles Kushner also wrote in a letter to Macron expressing “deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it.”
Asked whether Netanyahu had coordinated his declared recognition of the Armenian Genocide last week with the Foreign Ministry, Haskel says that “the prime minister and Foreign Minister [Gideon Sa’ar] are coordinated, they work together.”
“The prime minister did well” in recognizing the genocide, she says, but does not say whether there will be additional steps by the Foreign Ministry.
The Times of Israel Community.