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French President Emmanuel Macron pledged an “uncompromising” fight against the antisemitism that has erupted across France since the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel in a speech to Jewish leaders on Monday evening.
Macron was speaking during a ceremony at the Élysée Palace marking the 80th anniversary of the founding of Crif, the umbrella organization representing the Jewish community in France. As well as Crif’s top leadership, several members of the French cabinet were also present, including Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin.
Acknowledging Crif’s creation in Jan. 1944 as the Nazi occupation of France was faltering, Macron paid tribute to “Jews from all walks of life who came together to awaken a glimmer of hope.” However, he added that Monday’s ceremony conjured “mixed feelings” because of its proximity to the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel, which the president described as “the worst antisemitic massacre of our century.”
Addressing the rise of antisemitism in France, where antisemitic outrages rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported, Macron declared: “Every time the slightest trace of antisemitism reappears, we will be as uncompromising as we have always been.”
Macron summarized the dilemma facing French Jews by saying, “The question that many ask, and I hear it: will they be able to be French and Jewish, believers or not, be called Sarah or Ilan, be active in a student association, display a mezuzah without being referred to an identity, summoned to explain yourself or even to step aside or run away? Will they be able to study in places of education that have sometimes become places of antisemitic impulses and imprecations? Will they be able to live in a country of memory and hope where the memory of the Shoah is carried and transmitted? Will they be able to live equal and fraternal?”
Macron also addressed the recent controversy at the elite Sciences Po university in Paris, where Jewish students claimed they were prevented from entering a lecture hall by pro-Hamas demonstrators. He said that an investigation into the incident had been opened and that “the government will ensure that the republican order is respected.” Last week, Crif issued a call for a parliamentary commission to examine rising antisemitism in French universities.
Crif President Yonathan Arfi — who presented Macron with a vintage poster from the 1890s proclaiming the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus, the French army officer falsely convicted of espionage in a landmark case that sparked antisemitic violence across France — sounded a slight note of discord in his response to the president. Referring to Macron’s recent remarks urging more international support for Ukraine as it battles the ongoing Russian invasion, Arfi asked whether Israel deserved “the same solidarity.”
Replying, Macron distinguished between solidarity with Israel and unconditional agreement with the current government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Defending and loving Israel, wanting its security, does not mean subscribing to all the choices of a democratic government of the moment,” he declared, adding a call for “a political solution without which there will never be peace and security for Israel.”
