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Explaining the Discrepancy of Antisemitic Acts and Attitudes in 21st Century France

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Abstract

This paper assesses antisemitism in France and provides an overview of antisemitic acts and attitudes presented in survey results over the past decades. A clear rise in both the number of antisemitic incidents and the level of violence can be traced since 2000. Attitude surveys, on the other hand, do not show such a clear rise of antisemitic attitudes. There are two plausible explanations for this seeming discrepancy. The first is that antisemitic stereotypes may have changed over the years and that therefore no comparable survey data exist. Anti-Zionist forms of antisemitism, which are rarely surveyed, are likely to have become more widespread, whereas older biases contesting the Frenchness of French Jews have waned. The second is that perpetrators of antisemitic acts are a small minority of people who hardly influence the results of representative surveys. Particularly high levels of classic antisemitic attitudes can be found among Muslims and among sympathizers of the far right, and, to a lesser extent among the far left. Antisemitism seems to have radicalized within small groups of French society, including the use of extreme violence against Jews. Fringe groups of radicalized French Islamists pose an additional security threat to French Jews in particular and to society in general.

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Fig. 1

Source CNCDH and SPJC, author’s compilation

Fig. 2

Source CNCDH 1992, author’s compilation

Fig. 3

Source CNCDH, author’s illustration

Fig. 4

Source CNCDH, author’s illustration

Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Source Mayer et al. (2015b)

Fig. 7

Source Fondapol/Ifop 2014, author’s compilation

Fig. 8

Source Fondapol/Ifop 2014, author’s compilation

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Notes

  1. The mastermind of this series of bombings, Fouad Ali Saleh, was born in Paris to Tunisian parents and converted to Shi’ism. He has not been shy in expressing his Islamist beliefs, including genocidal hatred of Jews, Christians, and the Occident in general (Lacoste, 2002). The main targets were shops and trains in Paris.

  2. Compare annual reports compiled by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, http://hatecrime.osce.org/what-hate-crime/antisemitism.

  3. In a survey commissioned by the European Union, 79% of French Jews who said that they felt discriminated against during the past year because they are Jewish did not report the most serious incidents to any authority or organization (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) 2013, 57).

  4. The agency cooperates with the security service of the Jewish community (SPCJ) in the registration of antisemitic incidents. The report on antisemitic incidents of 2015 states: “The census lists antisemitic acts that were reported to the police or filed as complaints, and then transmitted to SPCJ. It is strengthened and cross-checked with descriptions from various police precincts in France, and centralized by the Ministry of the Interior. This methodological rigor excludes a number of acts that were reported to SPCJ but not to the police, and are thus absent from official statistics. Furthermore, Antisemitic content that circulates on the Internet is not systematically listed” (Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive (SPCJ, Jewish Community Security Service) 2016, 13).

  5. This does not include the unusually high number of 392 antisemitic incidents in 1990, which was largely due to the defamation of the Jewish cemetery in Carpentas by neo-Nazis (CNCDH, Commission Nationale Consultative des droits de l’Homme, 1992, 24).

  6. Interestingly, after the antisemitic terror in Toulouse, authorities in Britain also noticed a peak in antisemitic incidents in the UK. Statistics from the UK confirm the thesis that trigger events such as violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the attacks of 9/11, and the Iraq war in 2003 encourage antisemites to act upon their antisemitic sentiments (Community Security Trust, 2013, 10).

  7. For a detailed discussion on Arab and Muslim identities in France, see Jikeli (2012).

  8. However, the overall figures indicate that the rise in antisemitism since 2000 cannot be blamed solely on Muslim or Arab perpetrators. The percentage of Arab-Muslim perpetrators was just under 30% from 1994 to 1997, similar to the period from 2002 to 2006. The number of antisemitic incidents by other perpetrators, namely the extreme right, has also soared.

  9. The estimation, based on a 2008/ 2009 representative survey of French individuals aged 18 to 60, was 4% to 4.3% Muslims at the time (Simon and Tiberj, 2013, 6).

  10. The perpetrators of threats, including graffiti, often remain unknown, but according to figures from the French CNCDH for the year 2009, 13% of antisemitic threats in France were related to neo-Nazi ideology and 5% were committed by people of Arab or Muslim background (CNCDH, 2010, 45). On a European level, Werner Bergmann and Julianne Wetzel observed already in 2003 that different forms of antisemitic actions can be assigned to different groups of perpetrators (Bergmann and Wetzel, 2003, 25–26). The share of “Islamists” sending antisemitic letters and emails to the Israeli Embassy in Germany and to the Central Council of Jews in Germany in the last decade is only 3%. The vast majority comes from the center of society (Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz, 2013, 21).

  11. The survey questionnaires were different but the differences regarding the item “The Jews have too much power in France” were minimal. I used the survey results presented by Mayer et al. (2015a) and added the results of the 1990 Ipsos MORI survey.

  12. Instead of the item, “Les Français juifs sont des Français comme les autres,” (French Jews are French, like any others), the 2000 survey used the item, “Les Juifs sont des Français comme les autres” (The Jews are French, like any others).

  13. Ipsos MORI representative survey with one thousand participants (15 years old and older), conducted January 6–9, 1995.

  14. For 1991 figures, see Ipsos MORI representative survey with 1,002 participants (18 years old and older), surveyed from August 5 to August 10, 1991. For all other figures, see Mayer et al., (2015a), 238.

  15. Pierre-André Taguieff, the most prominent and most prolific scholar in France arguing that hatred of Jews has changed profoundly, prefers the term “Judeophobia” to “antisemitism” (Taguieff, 2004; Taguieff, 2008).

  16. The representativeness and comparability of the Muslim sample has been contested, mainly because this sample of 575 individuals (16 years old or older) was surveyed in face-to-face interviews in different regions of France, while the other (1,005) interviewees filled out an online questionnaire. However, both samples were stratified by age, region, agglomeration category, gender, and profession to ensure a representative sample. While the margin of error might be higher than usual (the margin of error is 3.2% for a sample of one thousand interviewees and 4.1% for a sample of 575 interviewees in France), it is hard to argue that the Muslim sample is not representative at all.

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  1. Justin M. Druck Family Scholar, Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program, Indiana University, Global and International Studies Bldg. 4-E Rm. 4019, 355 N. Jordan Ave, Bloomington, IN, 47405-1105, USA

    Günther Jikeli

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Jikeli, G. Explaining the Discrepancy of Antisemitic Acts and Attitudes in 21st Century France. Cont Jewry 37, 257–273 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-017-9221-x

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