Attack on Jewish girl stokes tensions over anti-Semitism in France

The alleged rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl by boys last weekend who hurled anti-Semitic abuse at the girl has reignited simmering tensions in France over attitudes toward Western Europe’s largest Jewish community.

President Emmanuel Macron, a centrist whose decision to call new elections this month shocked even his closest allies, responded by denouncing the “scourge of anti-Semitism” in French schools. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal called on politicians to reject “the trivialization” of hatred against Jews – a thinly veiled attack on Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the fervently pro-Palestinian leader of the left who had described anti-Semitism in France as “residual” on June 2.

In the first three months of this year, there were more than 360 anti-Semitic incidents in France, an average of four per day. This is a 300 percent increase compared to the same period last year, the government said. In the latest incident, which shocked the country, the three boys are said to have dragged the girl into an abandoned building, where she was repeatedly raped and insulted.

The three boys, aged 12 and 13, one of whom already knew the girl, are being investigated for rape, death threats and insults, “which were aggravated by their connection to the victim’s religion,” the public prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Wednesday. Two of them have been taken into custody, it said.

The position of Jews in French society has become a major issue in the election campaign, as Marine Le Pen’s once anti-Semitic Rassemblement National party, whose rapidly growing popularity is based on its anti-immigration stance, has become the staunchest supporters of Israel and French Jews since the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel on October 7.

Mélenchon’s party France Unbowed, on the other hand, vehemently condemns the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip as “genocide”.

This denunciation often seemed to degenerate into outright anti-Semitism, as when Mélenchon accused the Jewish president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, of “camping in Tel Aviv to encourage the massacre” and Élisabeth Borne, the former French prime minister and daughter of a Holocaust survivor, of representing “a foreign point of view.”

Mr Mélenchon said on Wednesday he was “horrified by this rape in Courbevoie”, the northwestern Paris suburb where the prosecutor said it took place.

The confrontation between a suddenly pro-Israel Rassemblement National, whose anti-Semitic founder Jean-Marie Le Pen called the Holocaust “a detail” of history, and a far left that Macron last week called “guilty of anti-Semitism,” has left French Jews and others faced with an agonizing choice.

Given its history of anti-Semitism and xenophobic determination to seek a ban on the public wearing of Muslim headscarves if elected, can they really bring themselves to vote for Le Pen’s party out of dislike for Mélenchon’s “Unyielding France”?

In many constituencies, the second round of voting on July 7 is likely to result in a stalemate between the two extreme parties. Many former centrist voters have had enough of Macron and do not want to vote for him again.

Serge Klarsfeld, the well-known Nazi hunter and prominent French Jew, said this week that if he had to choose between the two, he would have made up his mind. “The Rassemblement National supports the Jews, supports the State of Israel, and given my activities over the past 60 years, it is quite normal that between an anti-Semitic and a pro-Jewish party, I would choose the pro-Jewish one,” he said in an interview with the LCI television channel.

Others did not find this “normal”. In 2022, Mr Klarsfeld co-signed an article in the newspaper Libération entitled “No to Le Pen, daughter of racism and anti-Semitism”. This is a measure of the path the Rassemblement National has travelled in two years, as the party is on the verge of a possible victory that could earn it the post of prime minister.

An article by academic Michèle Cohen-Halimi, writer Francis Cohen and film director Leopold von Verschuer in the daily newspaper Le Monde on Thursday was headlined: “Serge Klarsfeld interrupts history to turn it on its head.” His “unexpected legitimization of the Rassemblement National” was a betrayal of the victims of National Socialism, whose terrible fates his research had brought to light.

Alain Finkielkraut, one of France’s most important intellectuals and a member of the illustrious Académie Française, described his personal “nightmare” in the weekly newspaper Le Point, in which he was faced with an almost impossible decision.

He argued that France Unbowed’s campaign is based on “hatred of Israel” and quoted Aymeric Caron, a member of parliament who belongs to the New Popular Front coalition formed by left-wing parties, who claimed that Jews are inhuman.

On May 27, Mr Caron said on the social platform X: “It is obvious that Gaza has shown that we do not belong to the same human species.” He was referring to supporters of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.

Finkielkraut wrote that voting for the Rassemblement National to form a bulwark against anti-Semitism had long been unimaginable for him. “I’m not there yet, but perhaps I will be forced to do so at some point if there is no alternative. That would be a nightmare. The current situation is a heartbreaking moment for French Jews.”

The Rassemblement National took part in a large demonstration against anti-Semitism in Paris in November. Macron was not there. Neither was Mélenchon, who said: “The friends of unconditional support for the massacre have their rendezvous here.”

The erosion of the centre in French politics, represented by Mr Macron, whose Renaissance party was crushed by the Rassemblement National in the European elections on June 9, is continuing. It seems quite plausible that the Rassemblement National and the New Popular Front will emerge as the two largest forces in Parliament on July 7.

France’s major Jewish organizations, which represent many of the estimated 450,000 Jews in France, have refused to support the abrupt pro-Jewish stance of Ms. Le Pen and her young protégé, Jordan Bardella.

“There are alternatives to this opposition between an anti-Semitic left and a nationalist, populist extreme right,” Yonathan Arfi, president of CRIF, an umbrella organization of French Jews, told radio station France Inter on Thursday.

“We know from Jewish history what populism can cost. We know that it has never been a bulwark against anti-Semitism, whatever the leaders of the Rassemblement National say today,” Mr Arfi added.

Raphaël Glucksmann, a moderate socialist who ran a successful campaign in the European elections and subsequently joined the New Popular Front, making him the enrage of many of his supporters who detest Mélenchon, said of the latest attack: “Expressions of bewilderment, compassion and disgust are not enough.”

He added that “the explosion of anti-Semitic words, actions and violence since October 7 must be a collective wake-up call.”

The Rassemblement National’s purge of its anti-Semitism appears to be still in full swing. The party was forced this week to withdraw its support for Joseph Martin, who was previously its candidate in a Brittany constituency, after Libération revealed that he had made a statement on social media in 2018 saying: “Gas brought justice to the victims of the Holocaust.”

Aurelien Breeden contributed to the reporting.