The Minister of interior Gérald Darmanin, welcomed the decline of 25% in antisemitic acts recorded in France during the first half of 2022 compared to the first half of last year.
Coming to inaugurate a synagogue in Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine), the Minister of the Interior affirmed that there had been “227 antisemitic acts” committed in the first six months of the current year, i.e. “for the first time, a drop of 25%” compared to the same period of the previous year (298 antisemitic acts). He specified that, of this total, “50% (were) physical acts of an antisemitic nature”.
Gérald Darmanin considered that there was “no distinction between antisemitic acts and hatred of Israel”. “We have to say it and say it again,” insisted the minister, who was warmly applauded. “The same people who denounce Israel and the same people who denounce the faults, and I put quotes, of the Jews are the same people who denounce the police. Sometimes the extremes come together,” said Gérald Darmanin.
The Minister of the Interior also emphasized” the great fear of Jews in France, who see physically, not simply culturally, the fear of the other (…) because we have allowed too much to happen “. In charge of worship, Gérald Darmanin also argued that “French secularism (was) not the negation of religions” and “it is not neutrality in the public space”. “We can always wear kippas in the streets of France,” he added, promising that no “republican law would prohibit it”. ” There is no secularism without freedom of worship and no freedom of worship without a place of worship “, continued the minister, but” if freedom of worship is quasi-absolute, it is not absolute to the point of annihilating the worship of others”.
