- Since October 7, more than 800 anti-Semitic markers have been registered in France
Shocking video shows the moment commuters on the Paris metro began shouting an anti-Semitic chant, shouting: ‘f*** the Jews… long live Palestine… we are Nazis and proud’.
The 16-second clip captures the amazement of a commuter filming as a group goes back and forth with the chant.
It comes as French prosecutors open an investigation into a spate of cases of Stars of David being affixed to buildings in the capital and its suburbs.
Some 857 markers have been registered since Hamas launched its incursion into Israel, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Tuesday.
France has seen more anti-Semitic attacks, ranging from graffiti to physical abuse and death threats, in the past three weeks than in the past year.
Pictured: the shock when some commuters on the Paris metro chanted ‘we are Nazis and proud’
France has seen a spike in anti-Semitism, according to the interior minister
The video shared on TikTok captures the reaction of a commuter on the Paris metro as he hears what appears to be a group chant and anti-Semitic chants.
The group takes turns repeating the lines ‘f*** the Jews and f*** your mother.
‘Long live Palestine, yes yes.
‘F*** the Jews and the grandmothers.’
The person filming is especially shocked when the group continues, “We are Nazis and proud” before the clip cuts off.
In recent weeks, a number of horrific reports have detailed the extent of anti-Semitism in France following Hamas’s invasion of Israel from Gaza in October.
Outside a stadium in Carcassonne, in the southwest, one graffiti spot read: “Killing Jews is a duty.”
About 60 Stars of David were painted on walls in Paris’ 14th arrondissement on Monday evening, prompting the mayor to say in a statement that the acts “recall the events of the 1930s… which led to the extermination of millions of Jews.” .
Human Rights Watch warns that European countries’ response to hostilities in the Southern Levant since October 7 is “having damaging consequences for human rights in Europe.”
“Authorities in European countries have a responsibility to ensure that everyone is safe and protected from violence and discrimination,” said Benjamin Ward, deputy director for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch.
“It is also important that authorities protect people’s rights to peaceful protest and expression and ensure that governments’ security responses to violence do not harm rights.”
France is home to a large Jewish community of about 500,000 people – the largest outside Israel and the United States.
Many live with Muslim communities and have emigrated to France since the 1950s and 1960s.
France was the first European country to emancipate its Jewish population during the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century.
Human Rights Watch acknowledges reports of increasing Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in Europe
A man walks past Stars of David tagged on a wall in Paris on Tuesday, October 31, 2023. Paris police chief Laurent Nunez described the graffiti as anti-Semitic and said police were investigating
French media reported cases of Stars of David being defaced on houses in France
Under the reign of Emperor Napoleon, reforms were extended, granting legal equality to Jews, ending their restriction to ghettos, opening their slavery in Malta and France to the Jewish diaspora of Europe.
Towards the end of the century, however, anti-Semitism emerged, culminating in the infamous Dreyfus affair, one of the most notable examples of anti-Semitism and miscarriage of justice in the French-speaking world.
French collaborators also worked with the Nazis under the Vichy regime from 1940 onwards.
Jews were expelled from certain regions, excluded from work, held in special camps and in some cases lost their French nationality.