Why are French Jews returning to Israel in such numbers?
A rise in antisemitism has undoubtedly played a part, but many are leaving for other reasons, such as the moribund economy
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At the Jerusalem funeral of the four French Jews murdered in the HyperCacher supermarket, Claude Bloch was standing near the back listening to the French ecology minister, Ségolène Royal, deliver her eulogy on behalf of the French government.
A businessman, Bloch emigrated from France to Israel a quarter of a century ago but maintains strong links with his native country. He came, he explained, out of a sense of both solidarity and concern. “I go to France often and I’m worried,” he said, citing what he says is the unchecked rise of antisemitism in France, and Paris’s support for the recent Palestinian statehood bid at the UN security council.
“It is very complicated for Jews in France at the moment. There’s no protection. Jews are leaving France because of the French government’s ambiguous position towards them.”
Last year, according to figures from the Jewish Agency, a record number of French Jews emigrated to Israel – 6,600, from a total population of half a million in France, more than double the previous year’s total.
This year, according to some estimates, that number could reach 10,000. Daniel Benhaim, the Jewish Agency’s director, said that since the attacks in Paris, many more Jews were making inquiries than usual. “Normally in a week we receive 150 inquiries,” he said. “Now we’re getting 2,000.”
It is an issue that has been given added impetus in the immediate aftermath of the HyperCacher killings, as senior Israeli politicians have told French Jews they would be welcomed in Israel with open arms.
That message, delivered most prominently by the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and echoed by foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman and former finance minister Yair Lapid, has been criticised by some in Israel, who argue that such moves threaten to weaken the Jewish community in France, Europe’s largest.
Some leaders of the French Jewish community who met Netanyahu at a closed-door meeting in a Paris hotel last week are reported to have gone further. In anonymous remarks reported by the Times of Israel,one attendee described Netanyahu’s call on Jews to relocate as “extremely smug” and “patronising”.
Despite the framing of the exodus as a response to fear and antisemitism, many in Israel, including some recent immigrants from France interviewed by the Guardian, believe the reality is more complicated.
Experts point out that there have been periodic peaks in immigration from France to Israel before: in 1948, after the foundation of the state of Israel; in 1967, following the six-day war; and during the second intifada, when some French Jews reported an upsurge in hostility in France.
Some experts say the recent surge of French Jews arriving in Israel has been driven, in addition to concern over antisemitism, by other motives, not least France’s moribund economy, which saw 250,000 French citizens of all backgrounds leave France last year.
Dov Maimon of the Jewish People Policy Institute, which is helping the Israeli government draw up its plan in the event of a sizeable influx of French Jews, is careful how he categorises the threat of antisemitism in France. “If you strip out antisemitism on the far right and far left and among French Muslims, only about 20% of French society would subscribe to antisemitic ideas. There is no state antisemitism. But there have been 8,000 antisemitic incidents recorded in France since 2000. You can see there is a danger.
“For French Jews of north African descent – with their history and recent past – it’s hard for them not to say that we’ve seen this movie before.”
His own maximalist projection – that a third of French Jews could ultimately leave France in the medium term – is based in part on the bleakest assessment of France’s economic, political and social trajectory in the coming years compared with that of Israel. He bases that number on the percentage of French Jews who are most observant and most identifiably Jewish in their dress and habits. Not everyone, however, agrees that a migration on such a scale is inevitable.
“The immigration for French Jews had been growing even before this attack,” says Esther Schely-Newman, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who is studying French Jewish immigration to Israel. “I would say the issue of antisemitism as a motive for coming waxes and wanes. It is an important part of the decision-making, but you don’t makealiyah [literally, “ascension” – immigration to Israel] on the spot.
“It is not a new phenomenon, but you can expect an increase in numbers right now because the safety of Jews in France feels shattered for now.”
Interviews with recent arrivals, she says, tell a more complex story than a disillusionment with France, not least the substantial number whose parents or grandparents had themselves moved to France from north African Jewish communities, and who make up the majority of France’s Jewish community.
“Many French Jews who came from north Africa see Israel as the final place. They saw France as a place they were for a while before finally coming home. I don’t want to say they are not loyal French citizens, but there is a feeling being here that they are able to act and live like Jews, unlike in France, where they have rights as individuals but not as a group.”
Among those recently choosing to emigrate to Israel, two groups have dominated: young single people under 35 and pensioners over 66. Schely-Newman’s argument appears borne out in part by recent immigrants to Israel who spoke to the Guardian and echoed the comments of Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, speaking at last Tuesday’s funeral, when he said that the decision to come to Israel should be made out of desire – “not out of fear”.
Gary Soleiman, 24, moved to Israel from Paris six years ago. His family still lives in France and his mother shops at the HyperCacher supermarket that was attacked. While conceding that Jews have also been killed in attacks in Israel, he, like many, points out that what is different is the sense of solidarity in Israel.
“Making aliyah should not be because people want to leave France, but because they want to come to Israel. There has been an increase in antisemitic crimes in France,” he says. But he is concerned that the message of recent days should not be interpreted as “France is not a place for Jews”.
“I think the French government should increase security for Jews in France. What is necessary is that it is possible to live in France as a Jew, not be afraid to go in the street with a kippa [skullcap] on your head.”
In some respects, the debate among Israelis, not least French-speaking Israelis, is unsurprising, reflecting the long and sometimes heated historic conversation within Zionism about the relationship with the Jewish diaspora.
Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth last week, Yossi Shain, an academic who has written on diaspora politics, underlined another dilemma confronting some French Jews. “The more secular French Jews are caught in a big trap. Many of them still believe in the Republic’s universal values, including the secularism doctrine. They feel that France, rather than Israel, is their national home.”
For the wealthiest, a small minority, there is another option – the ability to keep a foot in both camps. These are members of a phenomenon known in Israel as the “Boeing aliyah” – with a family member able to maintain a job in France, either by commuting or remote working, who can keep homes and family in both countries.
Shain’s view was echoed by David Gombin, another mourner at the funeral – a young journalist who had come out of solidarity with a colleague whose father was killed in the attack. “It is a pity,” said Gombin, who moved to Israel from near Marseilles. “I don’t want to think about a France without Jews.
“When I speak to the rest of my family still in France, they don’t want to come. They don’t speak Hebrew and they have good jobs. And here,” he says, referring to the threat of violence in Israel that also claims Jewish lives, “the situation is not all rosy.”
Additional reporting by Anne Penketh
