Published
Video length: 2 min
Many French people of Jewish faith are seeing increasingly open hostility towards them and fear physical violence. Some are choosing discretion, and are talking about a dangerous confusion between their Jewishness and the attacks carried out by Israel.
As she left a kosher grocery store in Paris, a Jewish mother discreetly slipped her purchases into her stroller, out of sight. “I always hide my bags where it says ‘kosher’. I either turn the plastic bag inside out or try to hide it.”says this young woman, who prefers to remain anonymous. Three months ago, she was attacked in a taxi.
“He heard me on the phone say something like ‘Shabbat’ or something that made it clear that I was Jewish. And right away, he started driving very fast. He got very angry in the car and I asked to stop the race right away. He called me ‘dirty Jew’ and I got out right away.”she confides. She was eight months pregnant. Since then, she has used a pseudonym on private transport platforms. In this district of eastern Paris, where a large Jewish community lives, a shopkeeper speaks of the community’s fear. “When they come, they ask me not to sit on the terrace, because they are afraid.” In Villeurbanne (Rhône), a man deplores the confusion made with the war led by Israel in Gaza.