“Who are these Jews? We will trample them!" That chant was reported during a blockade of a high school in Carpentras, France, on October 1, 2026. According to reports, masked youths waved a Palestinian flag beside a burning trash bin, and a video also captured the chant, “We burned Israel." This is what hatred of Jews looks like when it seeps into a protest presented as a campaign for better learning conditions. French Jews need to hear that threat clearly. So does Israel’s government.
France is entering another week of protests and violence under the sanitized label of “student protests," as though the demonstrators were studious French teenagers demanding better conditions in their classrooms.
Ahead of Monday, October 5, the education minister announced that classes would be fully or partly suspended at 400 to 500 high schools, some of which had been set on fire or vandalized, and reported injuries to approximately 78 education staff and 600 members of the security forces. Another day of protests is planned for Tuesday. Authorities have banned gatherings near more than 100 educational institutions in the Paris region and the Oise department.
Behind these figures are horrifying acts. In La Ciotat, a teacher was sprayed with gasoline and beaten. In Belfort, a police officer was chased and kicked. In Tours, a young man lost the sight in one eye after being injured in clashes. Thousands have been arrested. Schools, which should be places of learning and safety, have become scenes of fire and violence.
These events appear to go beyond protests over social conditions or damage to education. They resemble a full blown "Intifada" involving Islamist elements drawn from the millions of people granted asylum in European Union countries during the great wave of migration that began in 2015. At least half of those granted asylum came from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Within this environment, Islamist networks are also operating, seeking to bring society under their religious worldview and to expand their influence under the cover of social and educational grievances.
Fears that the riots will spread and Jews will be targeted are grounded in an existing reality. In France, the Jewish community’s security organization recorded 1,320 antisemitic incidents in 2025. Physical assaults increased compared with the previous year. Jews were already facing threats before the current wave of riots. The erosion of deterrence on the streets could make their situation worse.
The Islamist threat is also documented in court rulings. In March 2024, the Paris Administrative Court found that Imam Mahjoub Mahjoubi had portrayed Jews as “the historic enemies of Muslims, who must be fought," and had incited hatred and violence. In Britain, two Islamic State supporters were convicted of plotting an attack intended to kill hundreds at a march against antisemitism and in a Jewish area of Manchester. In February of this year, they were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Europe’s leaders recognize the danger. As early as October 2020, President Emmanuel Macron described an Islamist effort to establish a parallel order whose “ultimate goal is to take complete control." In May 2025, France’s then interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, warned of actors seeking to transform society into an Islamist state governed by Sharia law.
On September 21, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that “Jewish life in Germany is no longer safe." He called the situation “a disgrace for Germany" and pledged to combat antisemitism. His remarks came against a backdrop of overt antisemitism and political controversy in Berlin. The very fact that a German chancellor has said these words should reverberate in every Jewish home in Europe.
In light of the grave events targeting Jews in France and across Europe, I call on the Jews of France in particular, and on the Jews of Britain and the rest of Europe: Make aliyah now!
Start preparing your documents, exploring employment opportunities and planning your move. Your home, your business and your professional standing are clearly precious and important. Your family’s lives and your children’s future are more precious still. The time to make that decision is while you can still act by choice, before circumstances force your hand.
Israel, too, faces security threats and social and economic challenges. Here, however, the Jewish people have a sovereign state whose responsibility for their protection and future is fundamental to its very existence. Tragically, throughout the state’s history, circumstances have repeatedly forced us to prove this commitment. Remember that here there are Jews prepared, quite literally, to give their lives for any other Jew.
As chairman of Ofek Israeli, I am committed to turning this call into a practical path forward. Ofek Israeli works to encourage aliyah in partnership with the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration and Israel’s national institutions. The employment conferences we are planning in Paris, Marseille and Lyon next week, in London the following week, and subsequently elsewhere around the world are designed to help prospective immigrants explore career opportunities and plan their lives in Israel.
At the same time, the State of Israel has an obligation to put in place a comprehensive absorption plan covering housing, employment, recognition of professional qualifications, including in medicine and engineering, Hebrew language programs and schooling. Every immigrant family must have guidance and a designated point of contact who takes responsibility for helping them. The government, employers and local authorities must prepare together, with clear targets, timetables and adequate funding, for a mass aliyah of Jews, particularly from Europe.
To Europe’s Jews, I say: “Come home. The sooner, the better." To Israel’s government, I say: “Prepare to ensure that the many immigrants expected to arrive are fully and successfully integrated into Israeli life."
The writer, Dr. Izhak Lax, is an attorney and chairman of Ofek Israeli.