The president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif), Yonathan Arfi, estimated in Le Monde this Saturday, October 5, that the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 2023 was a “revealer of French crises and fractures” on anti-Semitism.
The Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 2023 “is also a French shock”, “revealing French crises and fractures” on anti-Semitism, said this Saturday, October 5, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France ( Crif) Yonathan Arfi.
“With October 7, a new threshold has been crossed. Because it is also a French shock”, underlined Yonathan Arfi in an interview with the newspaper Le Monde published on Saturday, before the first anniversary of the unprecedented attack by the Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil which in turn unleashed a devastating war in Gaza.
“It is a catalyst and a revealer of French crises and fractures. For a year, we have not been living a period of revolution, but of revelation and clarification of each other’s positions on the subject of anti-Semitism,” he adds.
An “anti-Semitic earthquake”
For the president of Crif, “well beyond a geopolitical conflict, October 7 is first and foremost the epicenter of a powerful anti-Semitic earthquake, the aftershocks of which are felt throughout the world.”
“If anti-Semitism in France flares up when there is a spark in the Middle East, I fear, on the other hand, that it will not calm down, even if the conflict were to calm down,” he believes, judging that “for the first time since the Second World War, anti-Semitism is now fueled at all levels of society”.
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For Yonathan Arfi, “since October 7, the Jewish world has suffered the blows of LFI, which has hysterized the public debate around the question of Gaza” and “Jean-Luc Mélenchon has given political backing to the anti-Semitism in our country.
“He is primarily responsible for its outbreak in France,” he accuses. “How can the socialist left, whose fight against anti-Semitism has been part of the backbone since the Dreyfus affair, still consider him acceptable?”
Crif is organizing a ceremony on Monday evening to honor the victims and support the Hamas hostages, just one year after the tragedy, in which Prime Minister Michel Barnier will participate.
