Following last week’s terrorist violence in Paris which saw four Jewish men killed in an attack on a kosher supermarket, many French Jews appear to be considering their future, with Israel an increasingly popular destination.
Friday’s attack was not the first deadly shooting targeting French Jews in recent years. In March 2012, three children and a teacher were murdered by a gunman at a Jewish school in Toulouse. Meanwhile, recorded attacks on Jews in France reached record levels last year. Growing communal fears appear to have encouraged French Jews to move to Israel. According to the Jewish Agency, the body responsible for overseeing Jewish immigration to Israel, 7,000 French Jews moved to Israel in 2014, compared to just 2,000 in 2012. Officials predict at least 10,000 will make the move in 2015.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the Atlantic in a weekend interview, “If 100,000 Jew leave, France will no longer be France.” French leaders are reportedly irked by calls for Jewish citizens of France to leave for Israel.
Nonetheless, visiting Paris to attend the huge solidarity rally yesterday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told French Jews, “If you seek security and a safe future for your children—there is no other alternative” but to live in Israel. Economy Minister Naftali Bennett visited the supermarket where Friday’s attack took place and commented, “We must ensure that 2015 not turn into 1938. I told the Jews that we are waiting for them in the State of Israel.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday was more circumspect, saying that French Jews have a right to “secure and peaceful lives” anywhere, but could “join their brothers and sisters in their historic homeland of Israel.”
Writing in Maariv, Ben Caspit says it is a contradiction to claim that Jews will be safer in Israel, commenting, “Netanyahu wastes most of his time and energy recounting to [Israel’s] citizens, on a daily basis, the list of existential threats that face us.”
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