France to ban all ‘pro-Palestinian demonstrations’ amid rising anti-Semitic threat

France has banned all pro-Palestinian demonstrations and deployed 10,000 police officers to better protect Jewish communities amid rising tensions and intensified threats against Jews.

“Pro-Palestinian demonstrations must be banned because they are likely to cause public disorder”, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told prefects on Thursday in a telegram quoted by AFP.

“The organisation of these banned demonstrations must result in arrests”, the minister continued.

Foreign nationals who commit offences in connection with these bans “must have their residence permits systematically withdrawn, and their deportation implemented without delay”, the minister added.

Since Hamas launched a devastating attack on Israel last weekend, France has stepped up security at Jewish community sites, with 10,000 members of the security forces now responsible for protecting sites deemed sensitive, including religious schools and synagogues.

The threats appear to have increased in recent days, according to figures on anti-Semitic acts reported by the authorities, which for the time being do not include “serious incidents”, Darmanin told France Inter on Thursday.

Still, “more than 100 anti-Semitic acts” had been recorded in France since 7 October, he said. By comparison, the average recorded by French intelligence services for 2022 was 436.

These anti-Semitic acts include tags, swastikas and anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli comments.

The most serious cases involved individuals arrested “with edged weapons at the entrance to a [Jewish] school or synagogue” and “a drone equipped with a camera that flew into the courtyard of a Jewish cultural site”.

The authorities have also noticed an increase in online hate. The Pharos platform, which allows illegal online content to be reported to the authorities, recorded “more than 2,000 reports” of anti-Semitic content in five days. This figure is equivalent to more than half of the reports received throughout 2022.

(Davide Basso | Euractiv.fr)