French-Israelis Invite Jews to Flee France for Safety in Israel After Leftist Election Wins

A demonstrator wearing an Israeli flag joins thousands other people for a march against an
AP Photo/Christophe Ena
John Hayward

French-Israelis are telling French Jews to migrate to Israel after the tumultuous elections this weekend, which put a coalition of far-Left antisemitic parties and Muslims in control of France.

French-Israelis are bluntly arguing that Jews are safer in Israel during a war than they will be if they remain in France for much longer.

The National on Sunday talked to some French Jews who flew home to France to cast their ballots in the snap election called by President Emmanuel Macron. Some thought this election could be a last-ditch effort to hold the antisemitic open-borders Left at bay – a forlorn hope, as things turned out – while others said it was time for Jews to get out of France:

Dan said he would be voting for the far right, something that would have been unthinkable not so long ago, having been established by openly antisemitic politicians.

Despite the far right’s history, Dan was certain about his choice. “There is an urgent need to stop the far left, which has allied itself with radical Muslims – if we don’t stop it France will become even more dangerous for Jews,” he said.

Other Israelis have given up on France entirely and are calling for all French Jews to migrate to Israel, despite the country being in the middle of a war with Hamas in Gaza and possibly facing another more devastating one with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Israeli politician Sharren Haskel, who grew up in France, has become a leading voice in urging her fellow French Jews to seek safety in Israel. Haskel said last week that the October 7 atrocity should have been a “wake-up call for every French citizen,” because it unleashed a long-simmering fusion of left-wing antisemitism and radical Islamism across the Western world.

“Antisemitism in France has been on the rise for a long time. Since October 7, it has become intolerable and the government in France is ignoring and allowing the spread of blood libels against Israel. As a result the Jewish community is suffering from violence, rape, murder,” Haskel said after her grandmother in France was assaulted by two Arab men.

“She was on her way for a blood test when two Muslim men attacked her from behind, pulled her to the ground, kicked her and broke her teeth. They then spat on her, called her a dirty Jew and ran away,” Haskel told The National on Sunday.

“This is an international issue; Jews have to hide their identity so that they are not attacked,” she said.

“I call on all western Jews to come to Israel, from France to the U.S. They should come to their cultural, ancestral and historic homeland. We will not be at the mercy of any hostile people or government. The world has become a dangerous place for Jews, who can no longer worship freely, walk freely and whose businesses are being attacked across the globe,” she warned.

The same call was issued by Avigdor Liberman, former deputy prime minister of Israel and head of the conservative Yisrael Beytenu party.

“I call on the French Jews to leave France and immigrate to the State of Israel. No time,” Liberman said on Sunday.

Other French Jews told The National that anti-Semitism went into overdrive in France after the October 7 attacks, fueled by what they saw as slanted French media coverage of Israel’s military operation against the Hamas terrorists in Gaza. They felt the current crisis was different than previous outbreaks of virulent antisemitism, and doubted the situation would improve much after the end of the Gaza war.

“It seems France has no future for Jews,” Rabbi Moshe Sebbag of the Synagogue de la Victoire told the Times of Israel (TOI) as the election results rolled in on Sunday. Sebbag was among the French Jewish leaders who suggested it was time to think about relocating to Israel.

Others noted that far-left France Unbowed party leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, the new kingmaker in French politics, has referred to Jews as an “arrogant minority” and praised anti-Israel protesters.

Looming large in the fears of French Jews is a horrific gang rape in June in which a 12-year-old girl was assaulted by an antisemitic gang that seemed to be deliberately emulating the Hamas atrocities of October 7. The gang reportedly decided to attack her when they learned she was hiding her Jewish identity to avoid schoolyard accusations of being “anti-Palestinian.”

“There is a mimicry between the acts perpetrated by Hamas terrorists in the kibbutz and what our daughter suffered downstairs from us in Courbevoie,” the girl’s parents said in their first statement after the attack.

The victim’s parents were also critical of Melenchon for minimizing the rise of antisemitism in France, pointing out that their daughter “lived it in her flesh at school” even before she was assaulted.

Haskel said on Sunday that parents worried about the future of their children in the new France should be planning their move to Israel.

“Many French Jews will be waiting until the end of the war before moving to Israel, but they still understand that such a move is necessary for them to raise children safely, to not be afraid of their identity and to be able to be who they were born to be,” she said, promising that Israel is ready to handle a wave of Jews fleeing Europe.

French Jews were conflicted during the election because many of them disliked Marine Le Pen and her right-wing party. Left-wing media said Jews would be foolish to allow Le Pen to trick them into thinking she was their friend. Some of the Jews jetting home for the election told The National they were queasy about voting for the Right, no matter how hellish their future under the Left-Islamist alliance might look.

“All the Jews I know agree they will of course never vote for France Unbowed, and they will never vote for Marine Le Pen,” famed writer Bernard-Henri Levy said before the election.

French Jewish voters, and those who profess to be their friends, might have cogitated more heavily on the thought that Le Pen winning by a whisker would have produced a government at war with France’s media and political establishments, kept in check by fierce opposition and constant reminders that they won no great “mandate” with a narrow victory. Such a government might have made efforts to keep Jewish voters on their side.

On the other hand, the hard-Left/Islamist alliance threatened to burn cities down if they lost – and when they won, they burned cities down anyway, as a flex of their power and an explicit terrorist warning to all who might oppose them. There is no sense whatsoever from Melenchon and his allies that they feel a sense of duty to anyone who did not support them, or that they have a limited mandate that must be exercised with due respect for the opposition, or that they feel any gratitude toward Jewish voters who picked “none of the above” instead of voting for the Right.

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