Rising Antisemitism And Islamophobia Splinter France Once Again

The Israel-Gaza conflict has taken center stage in domestic French politics.

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While the whole world is fixated on the fighting in Gaza, beyond the borders of Israel it has felt like France is one of the countries where the fallout has been felt most dramatically. As the French government has sought to insert itself in various ways on the foreign policy stage, on the domestic front it has become one of this year’s biggest political hot-button issues.

And considering the year France has had, that’s saying something.

"For several years now, French people have considered, much more than before, that international affairs concern them," Frédéric Dabi, managing director of the IFOP polling institute, told Le Monde. "But since the Hamas attack, the level of anxiety has been spectacular."

The reason it has become so central here is pure demographics. France has the world’s third-largest Jewish population after Israel and the US. But the size of that community — about .5% of the nation’s population — has been dwarfed by a decades-long flow of Muslim immigrants — now 11% of the population, that have transformed the country’s demographics, according to the most recent data from INSEE, France’s statistics agency.

As a result, France walks a thin line in trying to figure out how, and how much, to engage. And how to balance the responses of its Muslim and Jewish communities.

It was clear from the start that France would have to respond to the crisis in some fashion. At least 35 French nationals were killed in the Hamas attacks on Israel, and 9 are missing including some who are believed to be among the 200 hostages being held by Hamas. That includes Mia Schem, a 21-year-old French-Israeli woman who was seized by Hamas which then subsequently released a video of her pleading to be returned to her family. President Emmanuel Macron described the video as “odious.”

Right after the Hamas attacks on Israel, Macron made a nationally televised speech calling for unity. He then took a tour of Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, to both wield some diplomatic might while also making it clear to the French on the homefront that he was working to win the return of the hostages.

That diplomatic message has grown more nuanced. Another 54 French were trapped inside Gaza, including 2 French children who were killed while their mother and another sibling were badly wounded. The government sent a ship from its navy to support Gaza hospitals. Now it’s sending two military flights with humanitarian aid. Last week, French officials were outraged by an Israeli strike that hit the French Institute in Gaza and have been demanding an explanation from Israel’s government ever since. On Friday, Israel bombed the Agence France-Presse offices in Gaza.

What began as full-throated support for Israel by Macron’s government has quickly evolved into messaging like this:

“France reiterates its urgent call for a humanitarian truce to enable humanitarian aid to reach those who need it,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. “Humanitarian access must be continuous, swift, secure and unhindered, in order to meet the needs of civilians in Gaza on a long-term basis.” In another statement, it added: “France expresses its deep concern over the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, which has now risen to several thousand, and over the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza. It condemns the attacks on UN sites and humanitarian personnel, whose work is vital to civilians in Gaza, as well as attacks on media headquarters.”

Disquiet On The Homefront

During his television address, Macron signalled that he was worried about a potential increase of threats to Jewish people, and so he announced a plan to deploy more security to Jewish schools and places of worship and culture. Unfortunately, this has been a recurring theme in France following terrorist attacks over the past decade that have made machine-gun-toting soldiers a common sight on city streets.

In the wake of the Hamas attacks, France’s Muslims once again are coming under suspicion, with their loyalty being questioned. In one case, leaflets reading “Death to Arabs” in Hebrew were passed out at a Lyon school. French soccer star Karim Benzema faced a massive backlash after he tweeted that he was sending “prayers for the people of Gaza, victims once again of unjust bombings which don’t spare women or children.”

Interior minister Gérald Darmanin levelled a shocking accusation that Benzema must have ties to Muslim terrorist organizations. Darmanin, rumored to have presidential aspirations and a taste for the culture wars, had initially been banning pro-Palestinian protests claiming they might incite violence.

Such political targeting of France’s Muslim community has increased in the past decade. The crackdown on “Islamic separatism” gradually gained momentum following a shooting in 2012 at a Jewish school in Toulouse that killed a rabbi and three children, the Charlie Hebdo and Jewish market killings in 2015, the Bataclan attack later that same year, the beheading of a school teacher for showing cartoons of Muhammed, and then the stabbing of a high school teacher just a few weeks ago.

Macron’s government has attempted to address these issues by insisting there is a subset of the Muslim community that has refused to integrate and promotes Islamic identity over French identity. This concept is referred to as “communitarianism” here. In 2020, Macron became more vocal on this issue and the government began investigating and then closing various Mosques it viewed as promoting radicalism. In 2021, the French government adopted a law widely interpreted as an attempt to crack down on Islamic separatism in France. At the start of this school year, government officials announced a ban on wearing the abaya in schools.

In the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel, French Muslims are again feeling under siege. The Grand Mosque of Paris in a press release said it was “extremely concerned” about the increase of “racist and hateful” speech against Muslims. Several complaints have been lodged with the Audiovisual and Digital Regulatory Authority (Arcom) over anti-Muslim pundits made on TV.

Just as Muslims are feeling targeted, so is France’s Jewish population.

Unfortunately, Macron’s premonition regarding the Jewish community was correct: There has been also a surge in reports of antisemitic acts across France. (A trend mirrored across Europe.) More than 400 people have been arrested and charged with antisemitic acts. Dozens of Stars of David were painted on buildings around Paris, prompting an investigation by French prosecutors. A viral video of people chanting anti-Jewish slogans on the Paris metro also triggered disgust and an investigation. Several Jewish schools were evacuated following bomb threats.

"Antisemitism continues to kill," Emmanuel Grégoire, deputy to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, told the BBC. "We will never give up the fight."

As I was writing this over the weekend, a 30-year-old Jewish woman in Lyon was stabbed in her home and rushed to the hospital. While the injuries were not said to be life-threatening, police reports indicated that outside her door someone had carved a Nazi cross not far from her mezuzah.

“All these graffiti acts and insults have contributed to the Jewish community's fears in recent weeks,” Samuel Lejoyeux, president of the Union of French Jewish Students, said in an interview with Le Monde. “In the past, it was antisemitism based on hatred of Israel that triggered the worst acts. And it's this anxiety that's very hard to live with."

Political Posturing

Naturally, this has touched off a firestorm across the political spectrum.

Marine Le Pen, of all people, has sought to position herself as Israel’s most aggressive ally. An effort no doubt to distance herself from her antisemitic father, the Nazi-loving Jean-Marie Le Pen who founded her political party. She hoped her deep anti-Muslim leanings would make common cause with Israel’s current leadership.

“Israel has the right to defend itself and I even consider that it is a duty of the Israeli state to defend its population,” Le Pen declared.

Her response was in stark contrast to the far-left LFI party and its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who equivocated in the wake of the Hamas attack, refusing to denounce it outright and instead issuing a statement describing it as an “armed offensive by Palestinian forces…in the context of the intensification by Israel of the policy of occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

After a big pro-Palestine rally in Paris last weekend, Mélenchon praised the protestors and accused the National Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet — a member of Macron’s center-right party — of “camping” out in Tel Aviv to “encourage a massacre” in Gaza.

Braun-Pivet, who is Jewish, said the use of “camping” was meant to invoke “concentration camps.”

“I am convinced that the word ‘camper’ was not chosen by chance and the claim that I favor massacres is once again a new target being put on my back,” she said in an interview. “This is very serious.”

Olivier Véran, a spokesperson for Macron’s government, said in an interview that both the far-left and far-right had problems with antisemitism which they refused to recognize.

“You have people on the far right who will condemn antisemitism when it is on the far left or among Islamists. And then you have the far left which will condemn antisemitism when it comes from the far right,” he said. “When it comes to looking at home, whether to the extreme right or the extreme left, no one sees very clearly.”

Macron has scheduled a humanitarian conference on November 9 to discuss the Israel-Gaza conflict as he stepped up his calls for a truce to allow for negotiations. That seems like a long shot at this point, but he’s also likely hoping that it will reduce tensions at home. Which also might be hard to cool as long as the fighting in Gaza rages.

Chris O’Brien

Le Pecq