As often happens, war between Israel and Palestinian jihadists has sparked violence on the streets of France. But unlike in previous instances the terror hasn’t been directed solely or even primarily at Jews. Yaron Gamburg explains the situation, its connection to Paris’s clumsy handling of the Israel-Hamas war, and the state of Franco-Israeli relations:
Since October 2023, France has confronted a new wave of violence attributed to Islamic radicalization in the country. On October 13, a young Chechen Muslim murdered a literature teacher in the northern French city of Arras, three years after a similar attack shook the country. On December 2, a young man of Iranian descent murdered a tourist in central Paris, avenging the death of Muslims “from Gaza to Afghanistan.”
France was particularly outraged by a violent incident on November 18 in the town of Crépol in southern France, an outlying agricultural area that is less exposed to the Islamization threat. During a party of young people, about ten Muslim youths from a nearby town raided the party, shouted that they would “kill all whites,” brutally attacked the participants, and murdered a sixteen-year-old boy. Apart from the event’s racist and brutal nature, the public was outraged over the government’s response. Law-enforcement authorities delayed announcing the suspects’ names to avoid exposing their Muslim heritage, and the government even attempted to bar demonstrations in solidarity with the victim.
Israel’s strategy in managing its relations with France should consider these trends. . . . It is essential to support the French government’s efforts to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, which are currently associated with the alliance between the extreme left and radical Islam.
Read more on Institute for National Security Studies: https://www.inss.org.il/publication/france-islamic-radicalization/