France’s Foreign Ministry said Israel-linked social media accounts had promoted “hostile narratives” about riots in France, according to Reuters, prompting demands that Paris substantiate the allegation.
The accusation appeared in an internal report by the French Foreign Ministry, the news agency reported on Tuesday.
The assessment said that social media accounts linked to Israel and to the U.S. MAGA movement pushed “hostile narratives” around the riots, linking them to radical Islamism and migration.
The 10 most-viewed X posts from Israeli officials, government accounts, media outlets and influencers received more than 35 million views from Oct. 16 to 18, the French report said.
The Combat Antisemitism (CAM) organization wrote to French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot and Reuters CEO Steve Hasker and Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni asking them to present the evidence, CAM said.
“If your analysts identified factual distortions, which claims were false? If they found evidence of coordination, what was that evidence?” CAM CEO Sacha Roytman Dratwa and CAM Executive Director of European Affairs Shannon Seban wrote in their letter to Barrot. In their letter to Reuters executives, they asked why Reuters had not reported on the antisemitic conspiracy theories tied to the riots.
“What I see here is a familiar conspiracy theory taking shape. Israelis comment on a crisis abroad, and the fact that people listen becomes grounds for suspecting an Israeli influence campaign,” Roytman Dratwa wrote in a statement on Monday.
