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The attempted attack on a synagogue in southern France on Saturday, August 24, marks a turning point in the long series of anti-Semitic acts recorded in France since the attack − accompanied by massacres and numerous acts of violence − by Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, followed by the Israeli army's destruction of the Gaza Strip in retaliation. These anti-Semitic acts have increased not only in number but also in severity. For the first time, it appears that the intention of El Hussein K., the 33-year-old Algerian suspected of this attack, was to kill Jews.
The number of anti-Semitic acts has increased significantly since October 7: In 2023, 1,676 such acts were recorded, four times as many as in 2022, and 887 in the first half of this year, compared with 304 in the same period in 2023. The increase is not just in numbers, it is also marked by an increase in the violence of these acts. They recently went from tagging the walls of synagogues and businesses run by members of the Jewish community, to physical assaults, such as the one suffered by 62-year-old Marco S. outside a synagogue in Paris' 20th arrondissement. On May 17, an arson attack was committed on a synagogue in Normandy and on Saturday, an attack was planned against the Grand-Motte synagogue, in southern France.
According to outgoing Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, the alleged perpetrator of Saturday's attack was seeking to set fire to the seaside town's synagogue, where five worshippers, including the rabbi, were present. The attacker, wearing a Palestinian flag around his waist and a keffiyeh on his head, also planned to attack those who tried to escape the flames with an axe, which was found nearby, and a pistol. As seen on a CCTV image, he was wearing the pistol on his belt and used it against the police officers who came to arrest him.
The French National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor's Office has taken up this case, the first involving anti-Semitic violence since October 7, 2023. This incident represents a significant increase in violence since the arson attack against the Rouen synagogue in Normandy, which was empty at the time. The perpetrator was an undocumented Algerian national who was shot dead by law enforcement officers when he advanced toward them with a knife and an iron bar.
'Not just another anti-Semitic act'
Between these two events, a tragedy was narrowly averted. During the police custody hearings of Dereck R., reported by Le Parisien, it was revealed that this radicalized former common law prisoner had nearly killed a cab driver with a butcher's leaf near Le Mans, western France, in July. He had intended to massacre Jews "for what they have done to our brothers and sisters..."
For Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), the failed attack at La Grande-Motte was "not just arson, but a planned attack. It's not just another anti-Semitic act. Since October 7, I feel a particular emotion linked to the fact that we've passed a stage in terms of seriousness compared to what we've experienced in recent months. This time, the aim was to kill."
The president of the Israelite Consistory, Elie Korchia, blames the radical-left party La France Insoumise (LFI), without naming it, for contributing to a poisonous climate: "This anti-Semitic climate under the guise of anti-Zionism has only grown. We can criticize the state of Israel, but since October 7, part of the political class has campaigned in the European elections and then in the legislative elections on a hatred of Israel, when that wasn't the issue at all, turning Jews, yesterday's victims of the Shoah, into the new Nazis, and completely obscuring the terrorist pogrom of October 7."
"I don't believe in the sincerity of Jean-Luc Mélenchon [the leader of the LFI] when he condemns this anti-Semitic act," echoed Yonathan Arfi, on French radio channel RMC on Monday. "He's a pyromaniac firefighter. He has contributed to this poisonous climate which puts Jews in danger. And then he comes to pity the fate, not of the Jews who are collectively designated, but simply of the believers, the faithful," he continued.
On Saturday, Mélenchon has posted on X: "Arson attack on La Grande-Motte synagogue. Intolerable crime. Thoughts to the faithful and believers thus attacked. Secularism and freedom of conscience are the offspring of freedom of worship. We never forget that."
"It's not secularism that was attacked at La Grande-Motte on Saturday morning," retorted the CRIF president. It was Jews who were targeted personally, in the name of their supposed convictions in relation to a conflict 4,000 kilometers away."
On the LFI side, Paris MP Danièle Obono denied any form of anti-Semitism: there is "no ambiguity" within the party, she asserted on Franceinfo broadcaster, denouncing in passing a "crude and dangerous political instrumentalization" on the part of her political opponents.