Anti-Semitism remains ‘more pronounced on the right than on the left’, says report

According to the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, the anti-Semitism observed among people on the left is “without comparison with that observed on the extreme right and among those close to the National Rally.”

This theme animates the debates before the legislative elections. Anti-Semitism is at the heart of this electoral campaign while La France insoumise is accused of relaying it, even fueling it, and finds itself thrown back to back with the far right on the subject. In this context, and that of a clear increase in acts of violence against the Jewish community, the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) affirms in its report, published Thursday June 27, that this violence “fuel the idea that anti-Semitism, in its most brutal forms, is back”.

“The year 2023 was marked by a very high number of anti-Semitic acts” And “in clear resurgence” after the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, underlines Jean-Marie Burguburu, president of the CNCDH. The Ministry of the Interior recorded 1,676 anti-Semitic acts in 2023, “four times more than in 2022”, and in the first quarter of 2024, the increase reached 300%. For the researchers cited by the CNCDH, “there is anti-Semitism on the left, particularly on the left of the left, among those close to rebels and environmentalists in particular”but at one level “without comparison with that observed on the extreme right and among those close to the National Rally”estimates the text.

The barometer was carried out in November-December 2023, but “his observation remains valid, because it is part of long series, which have existed since the 1990s”explains Magali Lafourcade, general secretary of the CNCDH, to AFP.

“To say that anti-Semitism has migrated to the far left is completely false.”

Magali Lafourcade, general secretary of the CNCDH

to AFP

In the report, the researchers attempt, on the basis of an in-depth barometer, to draw up an inventory between “old and new anti-Semitism”. They thus observed “old stereotypes, specific to Jews, and a reflection of their long history, which resist, even progress” : belief in excessive power, supposed relationship with money, suspicion of dual allegiance to Israel and France…

This “old anti-Semitism” stay “more marked on the right than on the left” and he “continues to break records on the right and more particularly on the far right”, adds the text. In the wake of the war between Israel and Hamas, the debate “has focused on the emergence of a ‘new anti-Semitism’, no longer attributed to the far right, but to radical Islamism and more broadly to Muslims”notes the text.

The CNCDH, which called on June 12 to block the extreme right, analyzes that the “old” anti-Semitism is based on ancestral prejudices, when the “new” anti-Semitism is structured “by perceptions of Israel and its responsibilities in perpetuating the conflict”, adds the report. In this degraded climate, “the good news is that there have never been so many French people who believe that a more vigorous fight against anti-Semitism is necessary”concludes Magali Lafourcade.