Amid concerns that France’s Jewish community is being targeted by terrorists plotting a major attack, leaders of French Jewry visited Israel on Sunday and met with Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar.
The delegation from CRIF, the umbrella group of French-Jewish communities, met with Sa’r in Jerusalem, where CRIF President Yonathan Arfi and the group’s CEO, Robert Ejnes, among other representatives, discussed French-Israeli cooperation and the rise of antisemitism in the European nation, Sa’ar said in a statement.
“I updated them that Israel had offered assistance to France as the country battles the serious wildfires. This is an important humanitarian issue,” Sa’ar said about the flames that have caused the evacuation of more than 250,000 people and the destruction of hundreds of homes.
“We spoke about the ongoing and deeply concerning rise in antisemitism in France and around the world,” Sa’ar added.
On July 11, a vehicle containing weapons was found parked between two synagogues in Sarcelles, near Paris. Prosecutors indicted six men in connection with an alleged plot to use the weapons in a terrorist attack.
During the meeting between Sa’ar and the CRIF representatives, “we heard news of yet another attack on Jewish businesses in Canada,” Sa’ar said.
Two Jewish-owned bagel shops were damaged Sunday in incidents that are under investigation by the Toronto Police Service’s Hate Crime Unit, it said on X. Two locations of Kiva’s, a bakery specializing in bagels, were attacked in the morning, with one shop’s window damaged by gunfire, police wrote in a post on X. A window at the other location was damaged.
“I noted that it was crucial that all governments addressed this terrible phenomenon with firmly in both deeds and words. There is no coincidence that countries which take a one-sided anti-Israel approach to the conflict witness higher levels of antisemitic attacks against their own Jewish communities,” Sa’ar said.
France and Canada recognized a Palestinian state last year in what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called a reward for terrorism. French President Emmanuel Macron has imposed an arms embargo on Israel, which he suggested was engaged in “barbarity” in Gaza. Canada in 2024 stopped issuing permits for arms deals with Israel.
