The host Arthur has been living under police protection for a year, following death threats…
Everyone knows the smiling, schoolboy, even hilarious host of Friday evenings on TF1. But the last few months have been particularly trying for Arthur, the well-known host and producer in the French audiovisual landscape. Since the deadly attacks of October 7, 2023 which struck Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and resulting in 251 hostages, around sixty of whom are still believed to be in the hands of Hamas, then the contested response of the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, the television man lives under constant threat, requiring increased police protection on a daily basis.
This exceptional situation has a considerable impact on his daily life, as he confided to BFMTV this week on the occasion of the first anniversary of the attacks. Of Jewish faith, Arthur, who was used to moving freely and interacting with his audience, finds himself forced to follow a very strict security protocol. Each of his movements is carefully planned and supervised by a team of professionals responsible for ensuring his safety. A heavy reality that disrupts his daily life and that of his loved ones.
“I still work just as much. I’m still an animator-producer, but let’s say that I have lost a little of my activity since I am accompanied, protected 24 hours a day. Where, at one time, I could go down for a coffee, like that, without warning his friends, now it’s a whole organization”, he explained, adding that he has to go to the police station every week to transmit on a USB key the insults and death threats he receives regularly now.
In this context, the host, who had denounced those who “find extenuating circumstances for terrorists”, also confided that he had experienced disappointments regarding some of his friends. While he hoped to be able to count on the kindness and compassion of those dear to him, he would quickly have become disillusioned. “I lost people for whom I had a lot of affection, but I met wonderful people,” he tempers, before adding, severely: “Empathy cannot be invented. not and I have friends – who I considered friends – who sorely missed it.”
According to Arthur, some were conspicuous by their absence, their silence or their indifference in the face of distress. A revealer of the trauma and the state of current society: “For me it is a day without end and I think it will take generations for us to recover from this pogrom, generations for us to recover from anti-Jewish hatred throughout the world No one could have imagined that this dormant anti-Semitism would arise with such force, and from everywhere.