All French people have been urged to wear a kippah on Friday as a gesture of solidarity with the country’s increasingly besieged Jewish community.
Twitter has been flooded with messages containing the hashtag ‘#TousAvecUneKippa’ (everyone with a kippa), after Zvi Ammar, the leader of Marseille’s Jewish community, urged male Jews to stop wearing the kippah “until better days”, because of fears for their safety.
“Unfortunately for us, we are targeted,” he told AFP. “As soon as we are identified as Jewish we can be assaulted and even risk death.”
The call came after a Jewish teacher was attacked with a machete in broad daylight and French Jewish politician Alain Ghozland, 73, was stabbed to death in his home.
As Breitbart London has reported, France’s Jewish population is estimated at between 500,000 and 600,000 people, the largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world. It is facing difficult times with anti-Semitic attacks rising across the country.
As recently as Wednesday France’s chief rabbi was among Jewish leaders who rejected a call for men and boys to stop wearing traditional kippahs, after a string of anti-Semitic attacks in the southern city of Marseille.
France’s chief rabbi Haim Korsia joined him saying: “We should not give an inch, we should continue wearing the kippa.”
Roger Cukierman, the head of the country’s umbrella grouping of Jewish organisations, CRIF, agreed, saying the call reflected “a defeatist attitude”.
Twitter users posted their backing, featuring well known figures wearing a kippa, including David Beckham, Michael Jackson and even a cropped image of the Mona Lisa, with a kippah.
An unprecedented number of French Jews immigrated to Israel in 2015. An estimated 8,000 left for Israel in 2015, 1,000 more than the 7,000 French Jews who left the country for the Jewish state in 2014. French anti-Semitism and associated acts of violence are together predominantly cited as the major reason for these citizens leaving their homeland.
French President Francois Hollande is aware of the exodus and has called the idea French Jews would hide their religion out of fear “intolerable”.
Mr Hollande told the BBC: “It is intolerable that in our country citizens should feel so upset and under assault because of their religious choice that they would conclude that they have to hide.”
Follow Simon Kent on Twitter: Follow @SunSimonKent or e-mail to: skent@breitbart.com
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