For the second time in a week, Emmanuel Macron has been criticised for allowing antisemitism to run riot in France. Israel\u2019s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed last week that antisemitism had \u2018surged\u2019 in France after Macron announced his intention to recognise Palestinian statehood next month.<\/p>\n
\nIt is not only France\u2019s Jews who are living in fear. Last week police in Nantes warned the city\u2019s gay community to take extra precautions<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
On Sunday, the US ambassador to Paris, Charles Kushner, wrote to Macron to express his concern that the president was not doing enough to combat rising antisemitism in France. There have been several troubling incidents since Macron made his declaration about Palestine at the end of July. Cars belonging to British Jews on holiday in the French Alps have been spray-painted with the words \u2018Free Palestine\u2019. The owner of an adventure park in the Pyrenees refused access to a group of Israeli children citing \u2018personal beliefs\u2019. He has since been charged with \u2018discrimination based on origin, ethnicity, or nationality\u2019.<\/p>\n
There have been other more violent acts, including the assault of a man wearing a Kippa in a northern suburb of Paris, and the harassment of a Jewish couple by two men as they left a restaurant in Lyon.<\/p>\n
Such acts rocketed by 1000 per cent in the three months after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, and they have now become almost banal. Discrimination has spread from the street into schools, universities and even parliament, where one member of the far-left la France Insoumise has described Hamas as a \u2018resistance movement\u2019.<\/p>\n
Macron has reacted angrily to the suggestion that France is indifferent to the antisemitism that has taken hold in the last two years. He described Netanyahu\u2019s remarks as \u2018abject\u2019 and \u2018erroneous\u2019, and Kushner has been summoned to the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs to account for his \u2018unacceptable\u2019 letter.<\/p>\n
Many in France, however, share the criticisms of the Israelis and Americans. A recent opinion poll found that only 39 per cent of people support Macron\u2019s initiative to recognise Palestine. Large numbers of French are also concerned that their president has not been more robust in supporting the country\u2019s Jewish community, the largest in Europe.<\/p>\n
Macron declined an invitation to attend a rally in support of France\u2019s Jews in November 2023, a snub that caused much hurt. In an interview last week Israeli\u2019s ambassador to France, Joshua Zarka, intimated that Macron\u2019s priority was to avoid antagonising the country\u2019s banlieues.<\/p>\n
It is not only France\u2019s Jews who are living in fear. Last week police in Nantes warned the city\u2019s gay community to take extra precautions following a series of violent attacks. The assaults have followed a similar pattern: a man arranges to meet someone on a dating app, only to arrive at the location to be set upon by a gang of youths.<\/p>\n
The news is a further embarrassment for Nantes, which has long prided itself on being one of the most progressive cities in France, and the most migrant-friendly. At the start of this year it promised to make the streets safer for women and the LGBTQIA+ community after an increase in physical and verbal harassment. Among the measures are better street lighting.<\/p>\n
Across France homophobic attacks are on the up. Violent incidents increased by 7 per cent in 2024 on the previous year. Earlier this month, four corpses were recovered from the same spot in the river Seine, and police are working on the theory that the men \u2013 one French, two Algerian and one Tunisian \u2013 were likely murdered because they were gay. The man in custody is a Tunisian and, according to the French media, \u2018a follower of Salafist Islam, which is very strict and conservative\u2019.<\/p>\n
The furious response of Macron to the Israeli and American criticism indicate that the remarks hit a nerve. France\u2019s president admitted two years ago that violence was \u2018decivilising\u2019 France.<\/p>\n
This decivilisation is accelerating in the face of a helpless government, to the point where France is becoming an dangerous country for Jews, gays and women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the second time in a week, Emmanuel Macron has been criticised for allowing antisemitism to run riot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-374076","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115093257757811771","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}