SHARE
COPY LINK

ISRAEL

Why 5,000 Jews emigrated from France to Israel last year

Another 5,000 French Jews emigrated to Israel last year, figures showed Monday, continuing a trend that has seen tens of thousands quit the country after a series of attacks targeting the community.

Why 5,000 Jews emigrated from France to Israel last year
A man holds a sign reading "I am Jewish" during a demonstration after the Paris terror attacks two years ago. Photo: AFP
The Jewish Agency of Israel issued the update as France marked two years since attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices and on a Jewish supermarket in Paris, where four shoppers were shot dead.
   
Daniel Benhaim, who heads the Israeli-backed group in France, said that insecurity had been a “catalyst” for many Jews who were already thinking of leaving.
   
The 5,000 departures in 2016 add to the record 7,900 who left in 2015 and 7,231 in 2014. In total, 40,000 French Jews have emigrated since 2006, according to figures seen by AFP.
  
“The aliyah (the act of moving to Israel) of French Jews has been significant over the last decade,” Benhaim told AFP.
  
The French Jewish community is the biggest in Europe and is thought to number around 500,000 people.
   
It was shocked in 2006 by the kidnapping and brutal anti-Semitic killing of a young Jewish man, Ilan Halimi, in the Paris suburbs, which was followed by a shooting in a Jewish school in the southwest city of Toulouse in 2012.
   
A proportion of those who emigrate to Israel are known to return to their country of origin afterwards. Estimates range from 10 to 35 percent.
   
Experts and members of the Jewish community in France say that recent attacks are not the only reason people are leaving, with family, religious and economic reasons also playing a role.
   
France paid homage Monday to some of the victims of three days of violence in Paris in January 2015 that saw two Islamic extremists attack the Charlie Hebdo magazine,  killing 12 people, and the Hyper Cacher supermarket in eastern Paris.
   
Gunman Amedy Coulibaly killed four people after taking shoppers hostage at the Jewish store. He was later shot dead by anti-terror police when they stormed the premises.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

ISRAEL

Former Israeli soldier attacked on Berlin street

A former Israeli soldier was attacked in the German capital Berlin, police said Saturday, with one or several unknown assailants spraying him with an irritant and throwing him to the ground.

Former Israeli soldier attacked on Berlin street
Israeli soldiers on operation near the Gaza Strip. Photo: dpa | Ilia Yefimovich

The 29-year-old was wearing a top with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) logo when the attackers started harassing him on Friday about his religion, the police added, calling it “an anti-Semitic attack”.

Officers are seeking the assailants, who fled immediately after the attack, on suspicion of a politically-motivated crime.

Saturday is the second anniversary of an attack by a far-right gunman on a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle, who killed two in a rampage when he failed to break into the house of worship.

It was one of a string of incidents that led authorities to declare the far right and neo-Nazis Germany’s top security threat.

Also this week, a musician claimed he was turned away from a hotel in eastern city Leipzig for wearing a Star-of-David pendant.

While the allegations prompted a fierce response from a Jewish community unsettled by increasing anti-Semitic crimes, several investigations have been mounted into contradictory accounts of the incident.

In 2019, police recorded 2,032 anti-Semitic crimes, an increase of 13 percent year-on-year.

“The threat is complex and comes from different directions” from jihadists to the far right, the federal government’s commissioner for the fight against anti-Semitism Felix Klein said recently.

SHOW COMMENTS