[3][4][5] At the beginning of the 21st century, antisemitism in France rose sharply during the unrest of the Second Intifada in Israel and the Palestinian territories, as it did in other European nations.
[7][8][9] In the early 2000s, a critical debate on the nature of antisemitism in France accompanied denunciation of it in relation to the situation in the Middle East and to Islam.
[12] In accordance with this, a survey conducted in 2024 found that one in five young French people thinks it would be a good thing that Jews leave the country.
Jews left North Africa as relations in the area became more strained during the Six-Day War of 1967 between Israel, Egypt and other Arab forces.
[14] In the mid-1990s historians renewed a critical study of National Socialism, collaboration, and the responsibility of the Vichy Regime for deportation of Jews during the Holocaust.
[6] British historian Maud S. Mandel bases her inquiry Jews and Muslims in France: A History of a Conflict (2014) on historic relations among the peoples of North Africa.
[15] She attributes the roots of Muslim antisemitism among second-generation immigrants in France to earlier inter-communal relations among the peoples in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco; the course of decolonization in North Africa; and events in the continuing Arab–Israeli conflict.
[19] Many working-class Arabs and Sephardic Jews also settled in cities in southern France, which had long been linked by trade and culture to North Africa.
Antisemitic threats are defined as covering speech acts, threatening gestures and insults, graffiti (inscriptions), pamphlets and emails.
Its data was relied on in the FRA (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights) report of antisemitism incidents in France from 2001 to 2011, which was issued in June 2012.
[22] In 2024, a report was written by the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France (CRIF) detailing the number and types of antisemitic incidents that occurred in 2023.
[24][25] On January 21, 2006, Ilan Halimi, a young French Jewish man of Moroccan descent was kidnapped by a group called the Gang of Barbarians, led by Youssouf Fofana.
Their lawyer said three men of north African origin, Abdou Salam Koita, Ladje Haidara and Houssame Hatri,[28] had burst into the flat, telling the boyfriend: "You Jews, you have money."
[30][31] During the January 2015 Île-de-France attacks, the Porte de Vincennes siege involved a gunman taking hostages at a Kosher supermarket.
An excellent student from a stable, pious home, he is said by French authorities to have self-radicalized by spending long hours reading Islamist websites.
[19] On August 18, 2016, a "confirmed anti-semite"[39][40] shouted "allahu akbar"[41] (Takbir), as he attacked a 62-year-old Jew wearing a kippah on avenue des Vosges in Strasbourg.
"[43] On April 4, 2017, retired kindergarten professor, Dr. Sarah Halimi, an Orthodox Jew, was murdered and subsequently thrown off her Paris balcony by Mali-born Kobili Traoré, who shouted "allahu akbar" as he beat her to death.
[44][45] In March 2018, an elderly woman, Mireille Knoll, was brutally murdered in her apartment in a subsidized housing project in Paris in a killing that was immediately declared and officially recognized as an act of Jew hatred.
[47] On 16 February 2019, a group of individuals involved in a yellow-vests march confronted 69-year-old Jewish philosopher and academic Alain Finkielkraut with verbal antisemitic abuse.
President Emmanuel Macron visited the site to show solidarity with the whole of France, vowing that the perpetrators would be punished using current laws.
[49][50] Concerns have been raised in France about whether the gilets jaunes movement is providing a new kind of forum for extremist views, since Alain Finkielkraut was verbally abused on 16 February 2019.
[56][57] In June 2024, French police launched an investigation into the gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in Courbevoie, in what is being treated as an antisemitic crime.
One suspect, an ex-boyfriend of the victim, allegedly sought vengeance after learning of her Jewish identity, with investigators finding antisemitic content on his phone, including images of a burned Israeli flag.
Responses appeared to relate to events in the world, especially the rise in Arab-Israeli tensions in Israel and the Palestinian territories during the Second Intifada, which started in 2000.
Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, said, "These findings are especially disturbing because they show that the old, classical form of antisemitism, which we had hoped was long gone in Europe, continues to be resilient".
According to the survey, respondents believed that violence directed against French Jews was based more on anti-Jewish feelings than anti-Israel sentiment.
At the same time, more people today believe that violence directed against European Jews is fueled by anti-Jewish attitudes as opposed to anti-Israel sentiment.
[68] The French Jewish establishment has traditionally worked with the government and various community groups on legal routes and education to combat and reduce antisemitism.
CRIF, an umbrella body of French Jewish communities, has used outreach and education to lessen tensions among various ethnic groups and to combat antisemitism.
[69] The authorities are prosecuting persons both for violent acts and for violating laws related to Holocaust denial and reducing antisemitism.