France in shock after synagogue attack
France is reeling today after Normandy police shot dead a man suspected of attempting to burn down a synagogue in the north-western city of Rouen.
After travelling to Rouen to inspect the fire-damaged synagogue, Paris’s Interior Minister, Gerald Darmanin, insisted his country is “determined to continue protecting all the Jews of France, wherever they are, who must practice their religion without fear”.
French police arrived at the scene early this morning after smoke was seen rising from the building in the historic city centre. The suspect is thought to have climbed onto a large waste bin and thrown a petrol bomb into the synagogue. He was still on the roof of the building when police arrived. According to prosecutors. he then jumped to the ground and ran at one of the officers with his knife raised, at which point they shot him dead.
There appear to be no casualties other than the armed man, although the damage inside the synagogue has been described as significant, with walls and furniture left blackened by the fire.
The suspected arsonist was a 29-year-old Algerian national who, according to local media reports, was in the process of appealing against an expulsion order from French authorities. Darmanin said today that he wasn’t flagged as a suspected extremist.
The violent incident comes on the same week that a Paris Holocaust memorial, honouring the men and women who helped to rescue Jews in France during the country’s Nazi occupation, was defaced with red paint.
Both incidents point to a worrying wider trend. Since Hamas’s attack on southern Israel last October, and Israel’s resulting bombardment of Gaza, France has experienced a record spike in anti-Semitism.
Authorities registered 366 antisemitic attacks in the first three months of 2024, a 300 per cent increase over the same period last year, while the number of anti-Semitic acts recorded in 2023 was quadruple the figure for the year before. Nearly 60 per cent of these acts involved either physical violence, threatening words or menacing gestures.
France is not alone in experiencing an uptick in anti-Semitism. Spikes have been recorded too in the UK and Germany. But in a country which is home to Europe’s largest Jewish community – of around 440,000 – and the continent’s largest Muslim population – of roughly 6 million – the tensions are exacerbated.
After Hamas’s October 7 massacre, French President Emmanuel Macron made a powerful TV address, appealing for unity and warning of the risk to civil peace in France.
“Let us not add national fractures to international fractures, and let us not tolerate any form of hatred,” the President said, urging citizens to refrain from “embarking on ideological adventures here out of imitation or projection.”
Macron was afraid that an enflamed Middle East would pose a major threat to France’s already fragile internal security and national unity. And his fears were well-founded.
Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life