Mass migration of French Jews to Israel

CNN reported on the widespread immigration of French Jews to Israel, quoting Yoav Krief, a French Jew, who wrote that January 9, 2015, was the date he decided it was time to move to Israel.

That Friday, just 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 a friend of Cruyff.

"I wasn't feeling well at all," Cruyff told CNN. "I talked to my mom and we thought we should all go to Israel."

Karif, who had just finished high school, moved to Israel with his family six months later. The current process is the largest migration of Jews from Western Europe to Israel since the country's founding.

According to the Jewish Agency, which coordinates Jewish immigration to Israel, about eight thousand French Jews immigrated to Israel in the year after the Charlie Hebdo attack.

The number of French Jews immigrating to Israel has doubled twice in the past five years.

In 2013, about 3,300 French Jews moved to Israel. Just two years earlier, the number had risen to 1,900.

The second-largest number of Jewish citizens from Western Europe is from Britain, but its numbers are smaller than those from France. According to the Jewish Agency, 774 Jews went to Israel in 2015, which is less than a tenth of the number of French Jews who went to Israel.

Many French Jews have settled in Ashdod, a city in southern Israel known for its Francophone character. French cafes abound, and French and Hebrew are the two main languages ​​spoken by residents.

"It's great for me here, much better than France," Charlie Dahan, a French musician who immigrated to Israel from that country two years ago, tells CNN.

He sits in the Café Lyon, a French hangout. “This is the first time in my life that I feel at peace,” he says. “France was good, but with the recent problems, being a Jew in France has become very difficult.”

The Jewish Agency says violence is part of the reason for Jewish immigration to France.

"Major attacks like the attack on the 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," Jewish Agency spokesman Avi Meir told CNN. "But the French Jewish community has long lived with a deep sense of insecurity."

Israeli Jewish leaders have always said that this country will always be the home of the world's Jews.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls recently expressed concern about the mass exodus of Jews from France, saying it would make the situation worse.

He told CNN that "without Jews, France would no longer be France. This is the oldest community in France. They have been citizens of this country since the French Revolution."

A 2013 European Union survey on anti-Semitic sentiment found that 74 percent of French Jews refrain from publicly declaring their Jewishness—at least sometimes—and more than a quarter of French Jews always say they are Jewish.