(RepublicanDaily.org) – Avigdor Lieberman, the former Defense Minister for Israel, is exhorting French Jews to abandon the country after the recent election of far-left candidates to the country’s parliament. He says there is “no time” to lose.
The Israeli-Hamas war that began on October 7, 2023 after Hamas invaded Israel and slaughtered more than 1,000 young people at a music festival has ripped the left apart across the Western world. There is a significant faction of the left that is opposed to Israel, and what seems to be latent antisemitism has come out into the open in Western countries. Leftists who might otherwise see Jews as an oppressed minority are openly calling them “colonizers” and accusing Israel of committing “genocide” against the Palestinians.
While right-wing politicians had been expected to make electoral gains in France, President Emmanuel Macron created the New Popular Front, bringing together leftists after to keep the right wing out of power. Jews in France are feeling nervous about their position as many left-leaning citizens and politicians seem increasingly hostile to Jews. There are nearly 500,000 Jewish people in France.
Lieberman said that after the “victory of the radical left,” he’s urging French Jews to leave the country and go to Israel. Lieberman leads the Yisrael Beytenu Party, and he has sharply criticized politician Jean-Luc Melenchon for what Lieberman sees as Melenchon’s oppositional statements “against Jews and the state of Israel.”
He said Melenchon’s party, the leftist France Unbowed Party, is straightforwardly antisemitic and hates Israel. Melenchon backs the idea of a Palestinian state, and the great majority of French Jews believe he is responsible for much of the rising antisemitism in the country.
Other prominent French Jews have also urged younger Jews to go to Israel in light of the recent elections. Rabbi Moshe Sebbag, of the Synagogue de la Victoire, said there is no future in France for Jews in a statement to the Times of Israel.
Government figures show that there have been 360 attacks on French Jews so far in 2024, three times higher than the amount from last year.
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