France has recorded more than a thousand antisemitic acts since the deadly October 7 attack by Hamas terrorists on Israel, the country’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said on Sunday, as quoted by the AFP news agency.
“The number of antisemitic acts has exploded,” Darmanin was quoted as having told France 2 television, adding that 486 people had been arrested for such offenses, including 102 foreigners.
France’s Jewish population, estimated at over 500,000, is the largest in Europe and the third-biggest in the world, after Israel and the US.
Paris police chief Laurent Nunez said on Sunday that there had been 257 antisemitic acts in the Paris region alone, and 90 arrests.
There was no typical profile for those arrested, he added. They ranged from “young kids who say very serious things” to people involved in the pro-Palestinian Arab cause who had gone too far.
The comments come a day after a Jewish woman was stabbed in her home in Lyon, France.
According to reports, the woman heard the doorbell home ringing, and answered it. A male who was dressed all in black, with his face hidden, stabbed the woman twice in her stomach and then fled the scene.
Paris prosecutors are already investigating the daubing of dozens of Stars of David on buildings around the city and its suburbs last week. The Union of Jewish Students of France said they were designed to mirror the way Jews were forced to wear stars by the Nazi regime.
The developments in France came as the European Commission condemned the jump in antisemitism across the EU since the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East, saying “European Jews today are again living in fear”.
“The spike of antisemitic incidents across Europe has reached extraordinary levels in the last few days, reminiscent of some of the darkest times in history,” the commission said in a statement quoted by AFP.
“We condemn these despicable acts in the strongest possible terms. They go against everything that Europe stands for.”