On this particular morning, Karen had removed the mezuzah that was affixed to the outside of her apartment door in eastern Paris. Her neighbor's mezuzah had been burned the day before and Karen feared that this little symbol of the Jewish faith risked making her a target. Romain was sitting in a lecture hall at his university when he heard two of his classmates shout: "Those dirty Jews should all be killed!" In a restroom on the 14th floor of Tolbiac University, in the capital's 13th arrondissement, Sarah discovered an inscription that hadn't been there the day before: "Death to the Jews." As for Samuel, he was told to get out of an Uber by its driver, who was irritated by his phone conversation discussing the concerns of France's Jewish community and the risk of the conflict between Israel and Hamas expanding. He canceled the ride.
Samuel Lejoyeux, the Uber rider, is president of the Union of French Jewish Students, UEJF. The organization posted these anonymous testimonials on X (formerly Twitter) on October 25, to illustrate the daily lives of Jewish citizens after the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7. Since then, 584 anti-Semitic acts have been reported in France. The Interior Ministry documented 501 acts between October 7 and 22, along with 279 arrests. No further details were given, either on the nature of the acts or the attributes of the perpetrators. The upsurge has provoked anxiety within the Jewish community.
Lejoyeux said that "while there have not yet been any serious cases of violent aggression, all these graffiti acts and insults have contributed to the Jewish community's fears in recent weeks. In the past, it was anti-Semitism based on hatred of Israel that triggered the worst acts. And it's this anxiety that's very hard to live with."
According to data from the Interior Ministry and the Service for the Protection of the Jewish Community, upticks of violence in the Middle East conflict are typically accompanied by an upsurge in anti-Semitic acts in France. This has been the case since 2000 and the start of the second Intifada. "From around 100 acts a year in the 1990s − 81 in 1998 to be precise, and 82 the following year − we've reached 744 this year alone, a 10-fold increase," said historian Marc Knobel. "And the phenomenon has been repeated every time since, in 2004, 2014 and 2015."
This correlation has been regularly noted in reports by the French National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH). "These acts are responding to two forces: indignation and the contagion or copycat effect," said Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF). "My first reflex on Saturday, October 7, was to call the Interior Ministry at 8 am to ask it to step up security around our buildings − synagogues, Jewish schools. That says a lot." The ministry has in fact asked prefects to increase protection for places of worship and religious schools.
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