faced with anti-Semitic acts, “we will not let anything pass” in schools, warns Gabriel Attal

“We won’t let anything go.” The Minister of Education assured that the State would be firm in the face of anti-Semitic attacks, acts or words within educational establishments, Wednesday October 11, during a visit to a Jewish school in Sarcelles (Val-d’Oise ). “The priority today, for National Education, is in particular to ensure security and serenity in our schools”declared Gabriel Attal alongside Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.

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The minister mentioned “alerts that have come back to us in recent hours and days, with students of Jewish faith who may have been the subject of assault in their establishment” and “calls which were relayed by groups to come and tow or demonstrate in front of schools”. “From this point of view, we will be totally intractable”, he insisted. Gabriel Attal added that he had requested Tuesday that the public prosecutor “be informed of an attack of which a high school student was the victim in Ile-de-France”whose t-shirt was torn off by a friend.

Around “500 places protected by police”

The Minister of the Interior, for his part, specified that “more than 20 arrests” had taken place since Saturday, linked to anti-Semitic acts, which he puts at around fifty, including “some very serious”. Some “500 places – schools, synagogues, places where French people of Jewish faith are used to going, living within our Republic – are now protected by 10,000 police officers and gendarmes”underlined Gérald Darmanin.

“I believe that it is very important that all French people of the Jewish faith know that they are protected, whatever the corner of the national territory”, he added. The day before, the Minister of the Interior had cited examples of anti-Semitic acts by “people who go in front of synagogues, many, shouting threats”of the “drones that enter schoolyards with a camera” or “slogans, tags, threatening letters”.