French National Assembly Speaker Again Highlights Record Levels of Antisemitism Amid New Hate Crime Statistics

The speaker of the French National Assembly has warned that the resurgent antisemitism in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel posed a threat to “the foundations of our republic and what we are, as French people.”

In an interview on Sunday with broadcaster France Inter, Yaël Braun-Pivet — who is Jewish — spoke of her alarm at the spread of bigotry targeting Jews and at her own experience of antisemitism in the wake of the Hamas massacre.

Referring to what she called “the liberation of speech,” Braun-Pivet noted that antisemitism was spreading in the mainstream media as well as on social media platforms. Increasingly, she said, antisemitic opinions are being expressed on camera without those articulating it feeling the need to “hide their identity.”

Braun-Pivet revealed that she had filed 23 separate complaints over antisemitic barbs directed at her. “They send me yellow stars, they regret that my family was not completely exterminated in the [concentration] camps,” she said, referring to the six pointed Star of David which the Nazis forced Jews to wear on their outer clothing.

Braun-Pivet’s interview came at the end of a week in which France’s main Jewish organization published disturbing statistics for the current wave of antisemitism.

In a report last Wednesday, the French-Jewish umbrella organization Crif disclosed that 1676 antisemitic incidents had been recorded in 2023 — four times the number registered during the previous year and an unprecedented record,

While in past years the majority of the incidents involved vandalism of property, in 2023, 58 percent of the incidents recorded were directed against people, with 13 percent occurring in schools.

The Oct. 7 atrocities had “acted like a catalyst for hatred by activating latent antisemitism,” Crif president Yonathan Arfi told the AFP news agency.

The assault “could have had an effect of compassion, like a vaccination,” Arfi added. “The opposite has been the case.”

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