Survey: 70% of French Jews Experienced Anti-Semitism

By: Aryeh Savir

A staggering 70% of French Jews say they have been victims of anti-Semitism, 59% suffered physical abuse in school and 46% suffered verbal abuse at work, according to a new survey by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) on the issue.

Other disturbing findings in the survey showed that young French Jews between the ages of 18-24 are most vulnerable to anti-Semitism.

More than 8 out of 10 young French Jews have suffered at least one anti-Semitic incident, and 39% have been the victims of physical violence.

Attempting to avoid anti-Semitic attacks, more than a third of French Jews refrain from wearing Jewish symbols in public, and a quarter avoids revealing their Jewish identity at work, and 40% avoid arriving at certain areas to circumvent attacks.

The report did not touch on the perpetrators’ identity, whether they be neo-Nazis or Muslim immigrants from Africa.

Overall, 44% of the Jewish respondents said the situation for French Jews is worse than a year ago, only 11% say it is better and 42% said it was not better or worse.

Some 52% of French Jews have considered leaving France while Israel has seen several large waves of Aliyah of French Jews in recent years.

Between the years 2000 and 2017, 10 percent of the French Jewish community, the largest in Europe, immigrated to Israel.

Some 38,000 arrived in Israel in the past decade. The number of Olim from France peaked this decade, with the new Olim coming in the past 10 years constituting nearly one-third of the total Olim from France since the establishment of Israel. In 2015, a record number of Olim came from France with the arrival of 7,892 French Jews.

Interestingly, 73% of the French general public and 72% of French Jews agree that anti-Semitism affects all of society and not only the Jews.

The National Assembly in France in December voted in favor of a resolution that endorses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which also defines anti-Zionism as a form of Jew-hatred.

“This has to stop,” said Ann Sebban-Bécache, Director of AJC Paris. “The fight against anti-Semitism must be a national priority which has the adequate means to cover all of France.”

The AJC Paris study was conducted by IFOP, a leading polling firm, in partnership with Fondapol, a major French think tank. They polled 505 French Jews and 1,027 French people between October 14 and November 19, 2019.

(TPS)