Tackling anti-Semitism: Government launches national meetings to ‘restore the meaning of words’

35% of young people aged 18 to 24 have a “feeling that attacks on Jews are justified because of their support for Israel,” 21% of the entire French population. The resurgence of anti-Semitic acts following the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7 and the intransigent response of the Jewish state in the Gaza Strip have shown in the worst possible way how anti-Semitic sentiments and speech have become commonplace in France. Faced with this alarming reality, the government is launching “anti-Semitism conferences” this Monday.

“Through these meetings, I decided to create a space for dialogue” to “give a voice to all those who suffer from the concrete consequences of associations, positions and attempts at recovery,” confirmed the Minister for Combating Discrimination Aurora Berger, starting a round table in Paris, which included Leaders of several associations (Crif, UEJF, SOS Racisme, etc.) and representatives of major religions were invited.

“Let’s be clear: everyone is free to criticize the Israeli government and the policies it pursues. This has nothing to do with hatred of Israel and calls for the destruction of Israel,” Aurora Berger said a little earlier on France Info. And remind that “we are not responsible for the situation in Gaza because we are Jews.” Through these meetings it is about “jointly establishing, without a spirit of disagreement”, “a common minimum on which it will never be possible to reach a compromise” in order to “rediscover the meaning of words and the path of reason”, she added. during the round table.

Krif dinner

The number of anti-Semitic acts recorded in France nearly quadrupled last year, from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 last year, according to the Interior Ministry. Reports of anti-Semitic online content on the Pharos platform also increased significantly, from 175,924 to 211,543 last year. According to an Ifop poll conducted by the French branch of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), published in our newspaper on Sunday, 94% of French Jews believe that anti-Semitism has increased over the past ten years. points for one year. “The usual hatred, fueled by extremes, is poured out on social networks, but also on our streets, in our schools, in our universities,” lamented Aurore Berger, who announced the meetings in March.

According to Yonatan Arfi, president of the Crif (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France), which is organizing its annual dinner this Monday evening, “these meetings respond to the imperative that public power sets civil society in motion.” “The more time passes, the more the coming generations become susceptible to prejudice and anti-Semitic sentiments,” he worried in TF 1.

Contrary to the original plan, no political leaders will attend the meeting “to avoid the issue becoming a political issue before the European elections,” the ministry explains. Politicians will be invited to a second meeting after June 9. In this way, the organizers hope to be “politically dispassionate about the topic”, which risks becoming a pretext “for political positions” in the run-up to the European elections. In the same spirit, the work on the “manifesto” following the conference was entrusted not to the politician, but to the academician Marie-Anne Matar-Bonucci, professor of modern history at Paris 8, who will have “carte blanche” to determine the content and collect donations,” assured Aurora Berger.