Police recorded “1,000 anti-Semitic reports in 48 hours,” Gérald Darmanin says.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne promised “the utmost firmness to all those who would use this conflict as a pretext for anti-Semitism. We are with you. To attack you is to attack the whole Republic.”

Some fifty “anti-Semitic acts”, some of them “particularly serious”, have been recorded in France since Saturday’s terror attacks on Israel by Hamas, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Tuesday.

“People going in front of synagogues, many of them, shouting threats. There have been 16 arrests in the last two days. Drones flying into schoolyards with cameras. But also slogans, tags, threatening letters”, listed Mr. Darmanin on a tv program, adding that police services had noted “1,000 anti-Semitic reports in 48 hours”.

Speaking on this topic at the National Assembly, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne promised “the utmost firmness to all those who would use this conflict as a pretext for anti-Semitism”. “We will not tolerate any anti-Semitic act or comment in France”, she said, following the unprecedented attacks on Israel by the Palestinian Islamist terror organization Hamas.

She pledged France’s support for the Jewish community, which has been celebrating several holidays since the start of the Jewish New Year in mid-September: “We are with you. To attack you is to attack the whole Republic.”

Already on Sunday, the Interior Minister, at the demand of the President and the Prime Minister, said he put means in place to protect all the sites of the Jewish community.

”Unfortunately we are always expecting attacks against the Jewish community every time that such events take place in Israel,” French MP Rémy Rebeyrotte, Secretary of the National Assembly of France,  told European Jewish Press in Zagreb where he is attending a conference on antisemitism organized by European Jewish Association alongside other European political leaders.

”This is scandalous that the Jewish community is targeted while the large majority of French people  stands with Israel and condemns the barbarian acts,” he added.

”These antisemitic incidents find their political translation with Mr Melenchon (leader of the extreme-left party La France Insoumise). But also among in the extreme right which has a strategy of masked respectability,,” he said. ”I am not surprised.”

In Belgium too, police controls have been reinforced around synagogues and Jewish schools in Antwerp and Brussels. According to Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden, additional measures might be taken if necessary.