French police clamp down on perpetrators of 'antisemitic acts'
French police have arrested more than 20 people in relation to "antisemitic acts" that were reported since Saturday’s attack by Hamas militants in Israel.
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Speaking from a Jewish school in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles on Wednesday, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said any perpetrators without French nationality would have their residency permits withdrawn.
Some 500 Jewish places including schools and synagogues were now under the protection of 10,000 police officers and gendarmes, Darmanin added.
France has the world’s largest Jewish population after Israel and the US.
“It is important that all French people of Jewish faith know that they are protected,” Darmanin said.
Spate of incidents
Antisemitic incidents have included threats to synagogues and to people frequenting Jewish shops.
Darmanin was accompanied to Sarcelles by Education Minister Gabriel Attal, who warned against calls from far-left groups to target schools of Jewish faith.
“We will be completely uncompromising, we will not let anything go,” Attal said.
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French prosecutors have opened dozens of investigations into online antisemitic hate speech as well as posts glorifying terrorism in connection with the violence.
In Germany, Britain and Spain authorities have also ramped up surveillance around synagogues, Jewish schools and other institutions.
Far-left movements in France have called the assault by Hamas, which killed at least 1,200 people, “heroic”.
Darmanin denounced the refusal by far-left party France Unbowed to declare Hamas a terrorist organisation.
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