Mick Hartley

Very depressing:

Nine out of ten Jewish students say they have suffered antisemitism at French universities or elite colleges, according to a new survey.

The discrimination was usually in the form of insults or jokes but sometimes included physical assault.

Some 77 per cent of Jewish students and 28 per cent of students from all backgrounds think antisemitism is “widespread” in universities, according to the study published in Le Parisien newspaper yesterday.

The poll by the French Institute of Public Opinion, carried out for the country’s Union of Jewish Students, showed that 7 per cent of Jewish students had been assaulted in antisemitic attacks. A former student at the prestigious Institute of Political Studies told Le Parisien that fellow students had repeatedly harassed him and chanted Nazi slogans. “One said he wished my grandparents had died in the camps,” he said.

He said he got into a fight with a student who spat in his face and told him he disliked Jews. At a social event where guests had their hands marked with a cross to show they had paid, a swastika was drawn on his hand.

The institute is one France’s grandes écoles, the elite colleges whose graduates generally secure influential posts in business, government, the civil service or the media.

“We used to think education was a protection against antisemitism, but not any more,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, told The Times. “At universities today, there’s antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric from the far left, and the far right is also present. This creates a hostile environment for Jewish students.”

The difference now is that antisemitism is more from the left than – as used to be the case – from the right.

Some Jewish students have reported hostility from Muslims angry over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but most say that is not the main problem.

“Hostility towards Jews doesn’t come from any one community or especially from Muslims,” said Philippe Schmidt of the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism. “Far-left propaganda is a bigger issue,” he said.