Hatred of the Jews now comes mainly from the Arab-Muslim world, French Minister of Overseas Manuel Valls said earlier this week.
In an interview with CNEWS-Europe 1 on Monday, Valls reacted to anti-Jewish slogans chanted at anti-racist demonstrations over the weekend.
“What has changed over the last twenty-five years is that this hatred of Jews comes essentially from the Arab-Muslim world, in France as elsewhere,” he said. “Islamism makes hatred of the Jews its matrix and its main objective,’’ added the former prime minister.
The statement echoes the words of French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, who has said that antisemitism now wears a “double face” in France, “Islamism and the far left,” while far-right anti-Semitism has become “residual.”
In an article published in the Le Monde daily of Friday, over 200 personalities pleaded “so that anti-Zionism no longer serves as a pretext for antisemitism”.
“It’s up to the Republic to protect Jews,’’ they wrote, denouncing “anti-Zionism” as a “pretext for antisemitism.”
“Anti-Zionism is all the rage,” begins the article, written by the “Nous vivrons” collective set up in the wake of the unprecedented Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“The message is simple: Zionism is colonialism that must be eliminated,” the letter states.
Signatories include Yonathan Arfi, president of Crif, the umbrella body of French Jewish institutions, former French premier Gabriel Attal, former French president François Hollande, philosopher Elisabeth Badinter, Minister for Equality between Women and Men Aurore Bergé, actress Charlotte Gainsbourg and writer Anne Sinclair.
“Since Oct. 8, 2023, we have witnessed a relativism of the massacres of Oct. 7, 2023, and a condemnation of Zionism. In short, if the Jews hadn’t been there, all this wouldn’t have happened,” the letter continues, noting that “according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, a third of the antisemitic acts recorded in 2024 were motivated by the Palestinian cause.’’
Originally published by the European Jewish Press.