By the ACHA France Editorial Team Besançon, May 2026 Verified official data
1,570 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in France in 2024. A 12-year-old child raped in Courbevoie. A synagogue set on fire in Rouen. A bomb attack on the synagogue in La Grande-Motte. These are not abstract statistics. They are faces, families, shattered lives. Since October 7, 2023, antisemitism in Europe has crossed a threshold. Experts no longer speak of a temporary crisis. They speak of a structural rupture.
NUMBERS THAT DEFY BELIEF
The Service for the Protection of the Jewish Community (SPCJ), in coordination with the French Ministry of the Interior, recorded 1,570 anti-Semitic incidents in 2024. A figure that would have seemed catastrophic just three years ago—and yet represents a slight decrease from the 1,676 incidents recorded in 2023. To gauge the scale of the change, it is worth noting that in 2022, this number stood at just 436. In two years, it has increased by a factor of 3.6. France has not seen such a concentration of antisemitism since World War II.
The nature of the incidents has also changed. 65.2% involve attacks on individuals—no longer just graffiti or graffiti-like markings, but physical assaults, direct verbal abuse, and harassment.
518 of the incidents recorded explicitly refer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, highlighting the close link between current geopolitical events and domestic antisemitic violence. In June 2024, during the European elections and the dissolution of the National Assembly, 191 reports were recorded for that month alone—the highest monthly figure in decades.
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1 570 |
Anti-Semitic incidents recorded in France in 2024 — a 3.6-fold increase in two years. An all-time high
Source: SPCJ / Ministry of the Interior — 2025 Annual Report on Antisemitism |
ALL OF EUROPE ON EDGE
The European picture confirms and reinforces the French assessment. The J7 Report, published in May 2025 by the Anti-Defamation League on the seven countries with the largest Jewish communities outside of Israel, paints an alarming picture. Between 2021 and 2023, violent antisemitic incidents increased by 185% in France, 75% in Germany, and 82% in the United Kingdom. These figures, already cause for concern prior to October 7, 2023, saw a further surge following the Hamas attack.
In Germany, police recorded 3,200 anti-Semitic crimes between January 1 and October 7, 2024. The civilian reporting office RIAS documented 1,383 anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of 2024 alone—an all-time high compared to previous years, 21 of which targeted Jewish memorial sites. ADL International President Marina Rosenberg stated in May 2025: “The figures we are seeing today point to an existential threat to Jewish communities in Europe.”
At the European Union level, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) confirmed in 2024 that antisemitism persists at high levels both online and offline across all member states. The survey reveals that many European Jews have given up daily activities—such as attending synagogues, wearing a kippah in public, or visibly identifying as Jewish—out of fear for their safety. This normalization of fear constitutes, in itself, a victory for antisemitism.
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+185% |
an increase in violent anti-Semitic incidents in France between 2021 and 2023 — up 75% in Germany, up 82% in the United Kingdom
Source: ADL — J7 Report on Antisemitism in the Seven Major Diaspora Countries, May 2025 |
THE NORMALIZATION OF PREJUDICE: A SILENT DANGER
Beyond the acts themselves, it is the shift in attitudes that is alarming researchers and human rights advocates. An Ipsos poll conducted for the CRIF in 2024 reveals that 46% of French people hold six or more anti-Semitic views—a figure that has risen by nine percentage points since 2020.
79% of French people perceive antisemitism as a widespread phenomenon in society, a figure that has risen by four percentage points. 64% believe there are legitimate reasons to fear living in France if you are Jewish—an increase of fourteen percentage points over the past four years.
These figures are not merely statistical indicators. They reveal a fundamental trend: the gradual normalization of anti-Semitic prejudice in growing segments of French society. Contemporary antisemitism no longer manifests itself solely as a marginal far-right ideology—it cuts across traditional political divides, finds expression in mainstream cultural and media spaces, and adopts the language of progressivism or international solidarity to make itself seem acceptable.
The Ipsos poll reveals a particularly alarming finding: among supporters of La France Insoumise, 55% hold six or more anti-Semitic views, compared with 38% in 2020—a 17-point increase over four years.
This exploitation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to legitimize anti-Semitic prejudices poses a major political and moral challenge for European left-wing parties.
DIGITAL ANTISEMITISM: THE INVISIBLE CATALYST
Social media acts as a catalyst in ways that official statistics struggle to capture. On TikTok, Instagram, Telegram, and X, anti-Semitic content is circulating at a speed and on a scale unprecedented in history.
Recommendation algorithms, which are indifferent to the moral content of the messages they amplify, push this content to millions of users based solely on the level of engagement it generates—outrage, anger, fear.
The CRIF has determined that 518 of the anti-Semitic incidents in 2024 explicitly refer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This figure illustrates the mechanism by which online hate translates into physical violence. A rumor spread on social media in the morning can lead to a physical assault that evening on a street in Marseille or Paris. The boundary between the digital and the real has dissolved.
ACH France Recommendations
→ Adopt and implement without delay the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism in the criminal laws of all EU member states.
→ Significantly increase the human and financial resources allocated to organizations that report and combat antisemitism, both at the national and European levels.
→ Incorporate education on Holocaust remembrance and the fight against antisemitism into all mandatory school curricula, from elementary school through high school, in all EU member states.
→ Require digital platforms to implement specific obligations to detect and promptly remove anti-Semitic content, with public and verifiable performance metrics.
→ Fund interdisciplinary research programs on the links between geopolitical disinformation, social media, and antisemitic violence in the physical world.
REFERENCES AND SOURCES
▸ SPCJ / CRIF — Annual Report on Anti-Semitism in France 2024 (1,570 incidents)
▸ ADL — Week 7 Report on Antisemitism: +185% increase in France, +75% in Germany, +82% in the UK (May 2025)
▸ RIAS Germany — 1,383 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the first half of 2024 (a record)
▸ Ipsos / CRIF — Survey on Antisemitism in France, One Year After October 7, 2023 (2024)
▸ European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) — Jews in Europe: High Levels of Antisemitism (2024)
▸ Euronews — Dramatic rise in anti-Semitism in Europe (May 2025)