Last year saw a rise in anti-Semitic acts of 58% on 2011 in France, according to new figures released this week by the Service for the Protection of the Jewish Community (SPCJ), with 614 incidents recorded compared to the previous year’s figure of 389. A quarter of all physical attacks, which themselves experienced an 82% spike, were committed using firearms in a worrying trend which also saw physical attacks reported double those of the previous year.

The SPCJ concluded that 2012 marked “a year of unprecedented violence against French Jews”, with 96 recorded violent acts compared to the previous high of 83 in 2008, which coincided with Israel’s last incursion into the Gaza Strip. 2009 also a peak in incidents coinciding with the Second Lebanon War.

Amongst the highest-profile of these incidents, the French Jewish community was subjected to two attacks in less than 6 months, including that perpetrated by radical Islamist Mohammed Merah on the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse which resulted in the deaths of four Jews – three children and a schoolteacher, as well as that on a Jewish delicatessen in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles.

The SPCJ report furthermore concluded that “far from raising awareness, the attacks in Toulouse and Sarcelles prompted a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic acts with many anti-Semitic acts in the wake of the Toulouse shooting bearing reference to identification with Merah and his actions”.

March 2012, when Merah committed his shooting spree in and around Toulouse saw the highest reported number of incidents of the year, with a total of 169 recorded anti-Semitic acts, compared to just 59 in 2011.

Drawing from official figures from the Ministry for the Interior, the report also revealed that 55% of all racist attacks in France last year were of an anti-Semitic nature – as of a total of 175 racist physical incidents reported, 96 bore anti-Jewish characteristics, compared to 70 racist and xenophobic and 9 anti-Muslim acts, constituting an 8 times greater increase in anti-Semitic acts than racist or xenophobic.

Responding to the latest figures, Richard Prasquier, President of the French Jewish umbrella organisation the CRIF warned that for some people “especially children, waking into a store, a school or a subway can be a source of anxiety and sustained psychological trauma”, in a statement insisting that the worrying rise in anti-Semitism “must be at the heart of national political debate”.

Drawing inevitable parallels between levels of anti-Semitic acts and the situation in Israel, Prasquier regretted “the way this conflict is represented by the almost systematic stigmatisation of Israel, which we refuse the same security rights as other States”.

“The stigma which comes in collusion with propaganda of extreme viodlence from Islamist circles, helping to raise hatred against the Jews, resorts to the old safety net of easily recyclable anti-Semitism,” he added.

(Source: EJP)