Mass Migration of French Jews to Israel
The CNN news network reported on the widespread migration of French Jews to Israel, and citing Yoav Carif, a French Jew, wrote that January 9, 2015 was the date he decided it was time to go to Israel.
That Friday, exactly two days after the deadly attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, four Jews were killed in a kosher supermarket in Paris. One of them was Carif’s friend.
Carif told CNN: “I was not doing well at all. I talked to my mother and we thought that all of us should go to Israel.”
Carif, who had just finished high school, moved with his family to Israel six months after that time. The current process represents the largest migration of Jews from Western Europe to Israel since the establishment of the country.
According to the Jewish Agency, which coordinates Jewish migration to Israel, approximately eight thousand French Jews migrated to Israel in one year following the Charlie Hebdo attack.
The number of French Jews migrating to Israel over the past five years has doubled.
In 2013, approximately 3,300 French Jews went to Israel. Only two years before that, this number was 1,900 people.
The second largest figure for migration of Jewish citizens from Western European countries belongs to Britain, but that number is smaller compared to France. According to the Jewish Agency, 774 Jews went to Israel in 2015, which equals less than one-tenth of the number of French Jews who have migrated to Israel.
Many French Jews have settled in Ashdod, a city in southern Israel that is known for its French population. There are many French cafes and French and Hebrew are the two main languages of the residents.
Charlie Dahan, a French musician who migrated to Israel two years earlier, told CNN: “It’s excellent here, much better than France.”
He is sitting in Cafe Leon, a place where French people gather. He says: “This is the first time in my life that I feel at peace. France was good too, but with recent problems, being Jewish in France has become very difficult.”
The Jewish Agency says that violence is part of the reason for French Jews’ migration.
Avi Mayer, spokesperson for the Jewish Agency, told CNN: “Major attacks such as the attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012, the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014, and the kosher supermarket in Paris and the synagogue in Copenhagen last year are certainly clear examples of violence against French and European Jews. However, the French Jewish community has long lived with a deep sense of insecurity.”
Israeli Jewish leaders have always said that this country is always the home of Jews worldwide.
Manuel Valls, Prime Minister of France, recently expressed concern about the mass migration of Jews from France, saying that this makes the situation worse.
He told CNN that “without Jews, France is no longer France. This is France’s oldest community. They have been citizens of this country since the French Revolution.”
A European Union study on anti-Semitism in 2013 showed that 74 percent of French Jews avoid openly declaring their Jewish identity—at least sometimes—and more than one-fourth of French Jews always say they are Jewish.
