Jewish neighborhoods in France, home to the single largest Muslim population in Western Europe, have grown quiet since the Hamas terror raid on Israel on October 7th, with small business owners reporting their trading has been cut in half as Jews minimize their contact with an often hostile outside world.
“People are afraid, in a state of shock, they’ve lost their love for life,” one kosher pizzeria manager told the press. “My business is down 50 percent, there’s no bustle in the street, nobody taking a stroll,” he added.
France has logged over 500 anti-Semitic incidents in the last three weeks – more than in all 2022 – from calls to genocide graffitied on walls up to violent assaults. Synagogues, Jewish community centers, and schools have had armed police and even soldiers posted to them amid a heightened terror threat, adding to a sense of a community under siege.
French Jews are not the only people at risk from Islamists, however, with the general population also being targeted in multiple terrorist attacks over the years, some involving mass casualties. The most recent, which happened following the Hamas attack in Israel, saw a teacher named as Dominique Bernard stabbed to death by a Chechen refugee.
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