A total of 1,518 anti-Semitic acts and remarks have been recorded in France since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and nearly 600 arrests, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Europe 1 on Tuesday, November 14. figure is more than three times higher than the number of anti-Semitic acts or remarks recorded (436) over the whole of 2022. “These are mainly tags, insults, but there are also assaults and injuries,” he said. he detailed.
These acts gave rise to “571 arrests”, the minister’s entourage told AFP. “There are additional anti-Muslim acts, but it is not on the scale of what we know about anti-Semitism,” Darmanin added. There are “mosques which receive letters of death threats, threats of attack, very numerous anti-Islam remarks, including on television sets”, he said again, claiming to understand the Arcom or “justice”.
Questioned earlier on RMC, an imam of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Abdelali Mamoun, asked “where are” the approximately 1,500 “anti-Semitic acts that there are in France?” “I would like us to reveal them so that we can show solidarity” with the Jews of France, he continued. “I am not saying that the figures are false but they are not revealed, not apparent,” regretted this imam of the Grand Mosque of Paris. If he assured that he had no doubts about the official data, he called for not being “satisfied” with “the figures which are disseminated”.
“Shocking insinuations”
Gérald Darmanin denounced “very shocking insinuations” on the X network (formerly Twitter). In response, he gave details of the anti-religious acts recorded by the Ministry of the Interior since the start of the year. Since the start of 2023, there have been “1,762 anti-Semitic incidents, 564 anti-Christian incidents and 131 anti-Muslim incidents”.
In detail, the nature of anti-Semitic acts is distributed as follows: 50% of the acts “are tags, posters, banners (“including deaths to Jews” or “swastikas”)”, 22% are threats and insults, 10% of acts of apology for terrorism, 8% of attacks on property, 6% of suspicious behavior, 2% of assault and battery and 2% of attacks on community places.
The most affected departments are Paris (11%), Rhône and Hauts-de-Seine (5% each), then Bouches-du-Rhône, Alpes-Maritimes and Seine-Saint-Denis (4% each). ). Abdelali Mamoun’s comments provoked a reaction from the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Chems-eddine Hafiz, who “refused” these words.
Strong condemnation from the Ministry of the Interior
“Imam Abdelali Mamoun is not the spokesperson for the Grand Mosque of Paris and […] speaks in the media in a personal capacity. His comments do not follow any directive from the institution,” the rector underlined in a press release. “The Great Mosque of Paris does not deny, does not minimize or relativize all of the anti-Semitic acts that have occurred in France in recent weeks, and has complete confidence in the figures released by the Ministry of the Interior and Overseas Territories,” he added.
The institution “strongly deplores the increase in anti-Semitic acts and totally condemns it,” according to its rector. “I thank the Grand Mosque of Paris for the clarifications given and for opposing the minimization of anti-Semitic acts affecting France,” said Gérald Darmanin on the X network.
Chems-eddine Hafiz specifies that he spoke with the imam and that the latter told him of “his regret at having been very confused, when he did not intend to call into question the alarming figures of anti-Semitic acts in France”. A total of 330 investigations have been opened for anti-Semitic acts and advocacy of terrorism since October 7, we learned Monday from the Chancellery.