Anti-Semitic acts jumped in 2023, especially after October 7, according to Crif

Never has such a level been reached, according to the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif).

One before and one after October 7, 2023. The number of anti-Semitic acts jumped last year, to 1,676 acts recorded in France, compared to 436 the previous year, according to a report from the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France ( Crif), which highlights a very strong increase after the Hamas attacks against Israel. During the three months that followed, their number “equaled that of the previous three years combined”according to this report.

Never has such a level been reached, Yonathan Arfi, president of Crif, told AFP, recalling that“we had a few dozen acts per year in the 90s, a few hundred over the period 2000-2022”. Crif specifies that the report was carried out “thanks to feedback from police stations and gendarmes, then qualified during monthly discussions with the Ministry of the Interior and the Jewish Community Protection Service (SPCJ)”.

A majority of “threatening words and gestures”

In six out of ten cases (57.8%), anti-Semitic acts were attacks on people (physical violence, threatening words and gestures, etc.) rather than on property, says Crif. In detail, 25% of the acts recorded after October 7 were “the apology of Hamas”, 33% of jihadism and 25% were “calls for murder”adds the report.

But these figures do not reflect “only part” anti-Semitic acts, those which have been the subject of a complaint or a report to the police, recalls Crif. In more than 40% of cases, it involved “threatening words and gestures”. And if they were mainly committed in the private sphere (32%) and on public roads (20.4%), 7.5% were recorded on the internet. Another worrying point for Crif: 12.7% of the acts took place in schools, the majority of which were in college.