“Dirty Jew” and “We will do another October 7” are just two examples of the antisemitic verbal abuse comments hurled at Jewish middle and high school students in France, as revealed in a compilation of testimonies published by the Union of High School Students in France (ULJF) this week.
The Union gathered multiple testimonies which laid bare the antisemitism in the French secondary system, choosing to publish ten of them on Sunday. While a lot has been said about antisemitism within French universities, less is said in the media about what school students experience. The students’ names were altered to protect them from further abuse.
In one particularly shocking testimony, a student, Adam, who attends a middle school in Paris, reported being in the changing rooms after sport when other students in his class pointed to the showers and said, "Adam, you're going to die in there like in 1939-1945".
Holocaust references and threats appeared in several of the testimonies: The classmates of one girl, Solal, made Nazi salutes at her in class. When her mother complained to the parent’s representative, they told her the matter did not concern them, as they themselves were not Jewish.
Solal reported being ostracized and isolated from her peers.
Dan, a student at a Parisian secondary school, received messages saying “dirty Jew” and “we will f*** you like Hitler did” in an Instagram group.
He reported that the person who sent the message later waited for him after class with a gang and tried to beat him up. He was able to escape.
Aside from Holocaust-related abuse, the Israel-Hamas War was the incentive for a lot of the antisemitism conveyed in the testimonies.
One student, Simon, said that his History teacher gave a class on the theme of the “genocide in Gaza.” However, according to him, she made no mention of the October 7 massacre, the actions of Hamas, or the Israeli hostages.
She also told the class that the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza were due to a desire for colonialism.
Raphael, a high school student, said that one of his classmates enthusiastically supported the October 7 massacre.
During an event on the theme of countries of origin, another student, David, mentioned Israel in a video. In response, a group of students reportedly threatened him by saying "the Jewish nation doesn't deserve to exist, we need to go f*** it up".
In an online group, one of Nathan’s classmates wrote, "Someone in this group supports the genocide in Palestine".
Another classmate subsequently admitted to Nathan that "the other guys don't like you because you're Jewish".
When giving an oral presentation on the fate of Egyptian Jews during the Suez Crisis for her Baccalaureate, Judith was told "your subject is irrelevant, the Jews got on very well with the Egyptian population.”
Educating against antisemitism
The President of ULJF, Liam Szlafmyc, spoke to The Jerusalem Post about the testimonies, the situation of antisemitism in French education, and what can be done to combat it. The ten testimonies published are just a sample of around 40 collected so far, the rest being more violent than the ones released so far, Szlafmyc said.
“We wanted to show the reality on the ground of the antisemitic aggressions Jewish students face,” he told The Post.
He added that the aim of publishing was to show that the situation is more serious than the data shows.
While the majority of the antisemitism in the testimonies is verbal in nature, the threats are nevertheless violent. Most of the antisemitism, Szlafmyc continued, relates to the war in Gaza and to Israel.
“The reality is, almost every Jewish student in France has experienced antisemitism,” he said.
This ranges from evocations of Nazism and the Holocaust to antisemitism under the guise of anti-Zionism to support for the October 7 massacre, he added.
“Especially on social media platforms, the students don’t realize they are being antisemitic, they think it’s just anti-Zionism.”
Part of the solution for this, he told The Post, is educating students in schools about Jews and Israel, as many of them do not really understand the subjects.
“What we saw is that antisemitism in high school is very often related to Israel, and so what we do is explain to them what Judaism is, what Zionism is, what has happened to the hostages, what Hamas is, and what the Islamic Republic of Iran is.”
While Laicite - the French policy of secularism in schools - can make such conversations difficult, they are rarely impossible, he said.
Another issue is that many students, and indeed French people in general, still see antisemitism as something of the Right when, in reality, it is more prevalent in the French Left.
“Even when it comes to things like the Dreyfus affair, many don’t realize that a lot of the people against Dreyfus were on the Left.”
Szlafmyc added that the French elections have been a reality check of sorts for the Jewish community, who previously always associated antisemitism with Marine Le Pen’s right-wing Rassemblement National but who now understand that more Jew hatred is found with France Insoumise, which is on the Left.
Most of all, it is education, Szlafmyc said, which is the most effective in combating antisemitism.
“Our objective [at ULJF] is to show that we aren’t afraid of antisemites in high school, and we will fight them with dialogue.”