Increase in anti-Semitic acts in France: François Heilbronn calls for “more firmness of justice”

Since October 7 and the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, anti-Semitic acts have increased throughout the world, and particularly in France. The latest examples are the Stars of David tagged on walls in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, or the anti-Semitic tags found on schools in Strasbourg. In total, 857 anti-Semitic acts have been recorded in France in recent weeks. “Shocking” figures, regrets François Heilbronn, vice-president of the Shoah Memorial, associate professor at Sciences Po. Guest of Europe 1 weekend morning, he asks the justice system for more “firmness” to punish this violence against the Jewish community.

Social networks, “dumps for hatred”

For François Heilbronn, this testifies to “latent anti-Semitism” since the 1990s. According to him, social networks, “outlets of hatred” towards the Jewish community, are partly responsible. “The Meta group, with Instagram and Facebook, did a little cleaning up, but Twitter, which became X, did not do it, and TikTok does not do it at all. And TikTok, on the contrary, boosts hateful content against Jews” , analyzes the vice-president of the Shoah Memorial.

“The problem is that the surge on social networks is becoming a truly terrible issue. Now, we have a surge of false information on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, fake news fueled by people who are quite active and quite strong, notably the Iranians, the Qataris, the Chinese, the Russians…”, he explains.

“The violence of false information is sweeping over French Jews”

Because a lot of false information has been reported around the world since the start of the conflict, notably that of the attack on the Gaza hospital. “Hamas has become a specialist in manufacturing false information, particularly on the so-called Israeli attack on the hospital in Gaza which is in fact a jihad attack. They immediately inflated the figure, saying that there were 800 dead and that the hospital was destroyed. In fact, it was a piece of the parking lot destroyed by jihad and there were around fifty dead. So it is the fabrication of false news to inflame the crowds, to call for violence. This violence, unfortunately, by mimicry, is sweeping over French Jews and it is a real source of concern, of worry”, insists François Heilbronn at the microphone of Europe 1.

For the vice-president of the Shoah Memorial, the only solution to make anti-Semitism disappear is “education”, but this must also involve more “firmness from the public authorities, the police, the justice system”, to punish anti-Semitic acts. “We must increase the system both through education, but also strong repression to protect Jewish French citizens who have the right to the protection of their country,” he underlines.

And faced with speeches aimed at minimizing the Hamas attack on October 7 against Israel, François Heilbronn, who visited the kibbutz where the abuses took place, insists: “We must testify, we must not let people say that these crimes did not exist. It was 3,000 terrorists who killed 1,400 civilians. It was 300 times the size of the terrorist teams which attacked the Bataclan”, he concluded at the microphone of Europe 1.