In an interview with Europe 1 on Sunday January 5, the Minister for the Fight against Discrimination stated that as of “November 30, there were nearly 1,500 incidents of anti-Semitism”, of which 63% represented personal attacks.
The number of acts of anti-Semitism recorded in France in 2024 should approach that recorded the previous year, which marked a very sharp increase, said this Sunday, January 5, the Minister for the Fight against Discrimination Aurore Bergé. “The increase in acts of anti-Semitism is quite spectacular […]today the figures that I have as of November 30, we were at nearly 1,500 acts of anti-Semitism”, she declared in an interview with Europe 1, the Echoes and CNews, specifying that the overall figures for 2024 will be published by the Ministry of the Interior.
According to Aurore Bergé, “Most of these facts are not just insults, they are acts of direct attack on people, either because they are Jewish or because we think that they are. ». According to its services, personal attacks represent 63% of the incidents recorded. In 2023, according to data from the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France communicated in January, the number of anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the country had quadrupled over one year, with 1,676 cases.
“Because now, the simple fact of defending clear, republican positions, of recalling that October 7 was first and foremost terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas, of quite simply supporting the hostage families […] makes you a potential target for anti-Semitic attacks,” said the minister. Aurore Bergé confirmed the relaunch of the meetings to combat anti-Semitism, which had been launched in May last year, with a first meeting set, according to her ministry, at “Next February 13, which marks the anniversary of the death of Ilan Halimi. in 2006.
“Feeling of loneliness”
She considered that the “priority project” was that of “university”. Evoking “absolutely intolerable and unbearable facts”, “insults”, “attempts at intimidation”, reported “almost on a daily basis in universities or in major schools”, she stated: “I hear they can be counted.” Speaking of students “prevented from going to class” or “who will hear absolutely unbearable slogans chanted right next to them”, a you “feeling of absolute loneliness”, she pointed a “lack of courage from other students”. If these acts can be counted in the statistics of the Ministry of the Interior, a senatorial report published in June 2024 judged that it was “vastly undervalued”.
Saying to deplore that after “terrible attacks on October 7, instead of having a wave of support, we have a wave of anti-Semitism”, she estimated “that today we put a target on the back of every French Jew, because we consider that they would be co-responsible for the humanitarian situation in Gaza”.
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