Guest of Europe 1 Matin Weekend, the Israeli ambassador to France, affirmed that “hatred of the Jew is still there”. As we commemorate 80 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, Joshua Zarka deplores the lack of education on this issue. Education which is, according to him, at the heart of the duty of remembrance.
80 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, “hatred of the Jew is still there”. This is the observation made by Joshua Zarka, Israeli ambassador to France, speaking on Europe 1 weekend morning. While the truce between Hamas terrorists and Tel Aviv hangs by a thread, European countries are recording a sharp increase in anti-Semitic acts.
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“Instrumentalized” hatred
And France is not spared: at the beginning of January, the minister responsible for equality between women and men and in charge of the fight against discrimination, Aurore Bergé, spoke on Europe 1 of a “spectacular increase in the number of anti-Semitic acts” in 2024. An increase which began with the attack by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023.
“What is quite incredible is that on October 7, the day when the most ferocious, the most terrible, the most inhumane attack took place against the Jewish people since the Holocaust and against Israel since its creation, people were celebrating in the streets, not for the Palestinian cause, but because Jews were being killed,” assures the ambassador.
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“It's something that we still see today. You know, the hatred of the Jew is still there and it's exploited, used by certain political parties across Europe. And it's something horrible that 'we must fight.'
The fight through “education”
But how can we combat such a phenomenon and, moreover, maintain the duty of memory? “Through education,” judges Joshua Zarka. “In Israel, it’s very clear. We do it on a regular basis, there are courses for it. […] I know that in certain schools in France, some teachers fear talking about the Shoah and it is very serious: we see the results in anti-Semitism.”
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The ambassador deplores “that a large part of the children of France do not know what the Holocaust is, do not know what happened 80 years ago”, and judges that the question of the Holocaust at school must be “essential”. According to an OpinionWay survey published in January 2024 carried out on 986 young people aged 16 to 24, 18% of those questioned say they have never heard of the Shoah, and nearly 17% say they have only a vague knowledge of it.
