As home to an estimated 500,000 Jews, the third-largest Jewish population of any nation after Israel and the United States, France has always had a combination of a protective policy by officials of all mainstream parties and a vicious strain of anti-Semitism that rears its ugly head with frightening frequency.

Last week, the government said that anti-Semitic incidents in France rose 74 percent last year over 2017. Quoting French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, a column by Matthew Dalton in last Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal is headlined “Anti-Semitic acts ‘spreading like a poison’ in France.” 

In the column, Dalton writes: “A spate of anti-Semitic incidents has accompanied France’s Yellow Vest movement in recent weeks, raising concerns that the movement is stirring up hatred in the nation that is home to Europe’s largest Jewish population.”

Alarm bells went off when French writer Alain Finkielkraut was targeted by a group of Yellow Vest-clad protesters as he was walking with his mother on the streets of Paris.

Video of the incident went viral and prompted strong condemnation from French President Emmanuel Macron and leaders of 14 of the 16 major political parties in France. 

“The anti-Semitic insults targeting him are the complete negation of who we are as a nation,” Macron said in a tweet. “We will not tolerate them.”

Yellow Vest leaders have denied they are anti-Semitic, and some of their followers have denounced the Finkielkraut incident and anti-Semitism in general. But the degree and severity of this incident and others should prompt grave concern.

A vandal sprayed “Juden” on a Bagelstein, part of a French chain of bagel restaurants. A Nazi swastika was spray painted on a portrait of Simone Veil, the French Auschwitz survivor who later became president of the European Parliament.  About 100 gravestones were branded with swastikas in a town in eastern France.

Macron’s strong condemnation of the anti-Semitic incidents is indeed welcome, and all of his predecessors since Nazi Germany was defeated have been equally vocal in their support of the French Jewish community. Despite this official support, hundreds of French Jews have left their native country to seek new lives in the State of Israel.

With the exception of the horrific period of Nazi occupation of France during World War II, French Jews have enjoyed civil and legal rights since the French Revolution, when they were included under the banner of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.”  

When the revolution consumed itself in the Reign of Terror, France turned to Napoleon Bonaparte, the military genius who was able to establish stability during his rule.  Napoleon was largely protective of the French Jewish population and continued to grant Jews their full rights of citizenship. 

But toward the end of the 19th century, the infamous trial of French Army Capt. Alfred Dreyfus unleashed virulent anti-Semitism. Dreyfus was later proved innocent, but the anti-Semitism stirred by the case helped convince a Jewish journalist named Theodor Herzl that the only way Jews could escape anti-Semitism was to have an independent state of their own.

During the Holocaust, when Nazi Germany occupied much of France, more than 77,000 French Jews were rounded up and perished in the death camps, especially at Auschwitz.

France is the place where brave Resistance fighters, including many courageous Jews, fought against the Nazi occupiers with any means they deemed necessary. Sadly, French citizens also collaborated with the Nazis, turning Jews over to the Gestapo from the time of the German invasion in 1940 until the Allies regained control.

Both the brave Resistance and the cowardly collaborators are part of the history of France. So, unfortunately, is anti-Semitism.

We hope the Paris prosecutor’s office will be vigorous in its investigation of the attack on Finkielkraut and will work with responsible French leaders to help rid their nation of the stubborn scourge of Jew-hatred.