Gérald Darmanin asked all prefects for “extreme vigilance” for the Jewish festival of Hanouka, which begins Thursday, recalling the “very high level of the terrorist threat” in France, in a telegram dated Sunday and including AFP had a copy. “The very high level of the terrorist threat which continues to weigh on our country, as well as the persistence of tensions at the international level, in particular in the context of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, require the maintenance of extreme vigilance,” wrote the Minister of the Interior.
“Please apply this instruction ad litteram”
Starting Thursday, people of the Jewish faith will celebrate Hanukkah, the festival of lights, for eight days until December 15. Gérald Darmanin asked that “vigilance reinforced by a static presence visible at the times of arrival and departure of the faithful, during gatherings and services” be ensured. The telegram is annotated with a word written in his hand: “Please apply this instruction ad litteram”.
Saturday evening, a radical Islamist killed a young 23-year-old German-Filipino tourist with a knife and hammer and injured two people near the Eiffel Tower. Armand Rajabpour-Miyandoab, a 26-year-old Franco-Iranian, had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in a video published on his X account, which included “numerous publications on Hamas, Gaza and more generally Palestine”, according to the anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-François Ricard.
According to Israel, 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed during the attack on its soil by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, during which around 240 people were kidnapped. In retaliation, Israel is carrying out intense bombings on Gaza, a small Palestinian territory controlled by Hamas since 2007. According to a new report on Sunday from Hamas, these bombings left 15,523 people dead – 70% of them women and children – and 41,316 injured. In France, since October 7, more than 1,500 anti-Semitic acts and remarks had been recorded in mid-November, with nearly 600 arrests according to the Ministry of the Interior.