Bishops seek dialogue as French anti-Semitism rises

The Oct. 7 killing of about 1,200 people in Israel by armed Hamas militants represented the biggest killing of Jews since the Holocaust. It also started the war that has killed nearly 16,000 Palestinians, according to Hamas-run health ministry, followed by massive pro-Palestinian protests around the globe. What it also did was spark unprecedented instances of anti-Semitism.

France is home to the largest Jewish and Muslim communities in Europe and has become the centre of religious discord.

Little more than a month after the attack in Israel, the French Interior Ministry said 1,247 anti-Semitic incidents had been reported since Oct. 7, nearly three times the total for all of 2022. These incidents included the star of David, a symbol of Judaism, being marked on Jewish people’s homes — which reminded the older French generation about the horrors of German occupation when Jewish houses were similarly marked to point out whom to later exterminate.

More than 180,000 people across France, including 100,000 in Paris, marched peacefully on Nov. 12 to protest against rising anti-Semitism. The march in the capital was attended by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and representatives of several parties from left to far-right, but the representatives of the Muslim faith did not take part, according to news reports.

President Emmanuel Macron also did not attend, but expressed his support for the protest and called on citizens to rise up against “the unbearable resurgence of unbridled anti-Semitism.”

“A France where our Jewish citizens are afraid is not France. A France where French people are afraid because of their religion or their origin is not France,” he wrote in a letter published Nov. 11 in the daily Le Parisien.

The day after the marches, Macron received religious leaders at the Elysée Palace to discuss the problem. The meeting involved the president of the French bishops’ conference, Archbishop Éric de Moulins Beaufort of Reims. Macron asked them to work to “defend universalism and republican values” by “multiplying educational actions” in favour of peace, particularly among young people. The meeting was also attended by the rector of Paris’ Grand Mosque, Chems-Eddine Hafiz; Grand Rabbi of France Haim Korsia; and Christian Krieger, the president of the Protestant Federation of France.

“Some anti-Semitism persists in France, but it must be presented with nuances,” Fr. Thomas Hallsten, an American priest, told OSV News. He worked for Yad Vashem — The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, specializing in researching the actions taken by French Catholic religious communities in favour of the Jews during the Holocaust.

“The generations whose grandparents lived through the German occupation during the Second World War know perfectly well what happened to the Jews,” the priest said. “This is a powerful safeguard against anti-Semitism.”

“In recent years, animosity toward Jews has become more pronounced among the younger generations of Arab-Muslim immigrants,” Jesuit Father Marc Rastoin told OSV News. Rastoin is a researcher specializing in Judaism in Paris at the Centre Sèvres, a Jesuit institute for higher education and research.

“In the Arab world, it is very difficult to distinguish between Israeli politics and the Jewish religion,” he added. “Young French Muslims easily identify with the population of Gaza and the Palestinians as a whole.”

In this context, the Catholic Church is trying to play a conciliatory role. Several of its representatives took part in the marches against anti-Semitism, while trying to be balanced in its analysis of the conflict.

“International Jewish organizations have worked for years to make people forget the difference between anti-Semitism and disagreement with Israel’s policies,” said Rastoin. “We must make the twofold effort to refuse the equation between the Palestinians of Gaza and Hamas, and the equation between Israelis and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Many Jews, both inside and outside Israel, opposed his policy of refusing dialogue and negotiation.

“As Christians, we have a deep spiritual relationship and empathy with the Jewish people,” Rastoin pointed out. “But as Christians and human beings, how can we not be touched by all the civilian victims in Gaza, many of them children?”

Rastoin deplored, however, the fact that some people use the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza.

“We can consider that Israel is going too far in its response and deplore war crimes,” he said. “But when we know the reality of the programmed extermination of Jews during the Holocaust in Europe, it is not decent to use this term.”