Being Jewish in France Was Harder Thirty Years Ago, New Survey Shows
Image by Getty Images
A majority of respondents in a French survey on racism said that being Jewish is easier today in France than it was 30 years ago but being Muslim has become more difficult.
In the survey of 1,003 French adults published Monday, 70 percent of respondents said that being Jewish is easier today in France than in 1983 and 61 percent said that being Muslim is more difficult.
Racist attacks on French Jews increased by 58 percent in 2012 from the previous year to 614, according to the community’s security’s service, SPCJ. Of that figure, 96 attacks were physical assaults.
Approximately 14 percent of the total attacks happened during the 10 days that followed the slaying of four Jews at a Toulouse Jewish school by a Muslim extremist on March 19, 2012.
Some 500,000 Jews live in France.
Hate crimes against Muslims — who number at least 2.1 million in France, according to INED, the country’s national institute of demographic studies — increased by 30 percent in 2012 to a total of 201, according to a report by France’s national consultative commission on human rights, or CNCDH. The commission documented 53 physical “actions” against Muslims in 2012.
Seventy percent of respondents said anti-racism bodies and agencies were “not effective” and 86 percent said they were “not interested” in their activities, said the France-based International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, or LICRA, which commissioned the survey carried out by the OpinionWay polling firm.
Still, approximately 75 percent of respondents said that racism was “dangerous.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!
