Terror Fears Caused Thousands of French Jews to Emigrate to Israel in 2016

The Jewish Agency for Israel (JAI) released the figures days after the second anniversary of the attacks on the office of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket Porte de Vincennes in Paris, where four shoppers were shot dead. Daniel Benhaim, head of Israel-funded Agency's French office, said insecurity in the wake of such attacks had served as a "catalyst" for Jews already thinking of leaving.  

JAI statistics for the ten years following 2016 indicate 2016's exodus actually represents a fall on 2015, when it reached a record level of 7,900, and 2014, when figures raced to 7,231.

In all, 40,000 French Jews have emigrated since 2006. Around 25 percent of those who emigrate eventually return to their country of origin afterwards however, JAI calculates.

Avi Mayer, spokesperson for JAI, told Sputnik that French Jews were not merely drawn to Israel by fears of terrorism, but also the country's "strong and vibrant economy."

"Increasing numbers of French Jews have come in recent years due to such factors, and we look forward to welcoming any Jew who wishes to make Israel his or her home," Avi Mayer told Sputnik.

France's Jewish community, the largest in Europe at 500,000, has been repeatedly rocked since 2000 by anti-Semitic attacks, including the kidnap, torture and murder of a young man in the Paris suburbs in 2006, and a shooting in a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012.

Worries were expressed in 2015 by Brussels' chief rabbi that Jews "had no future" in Europe following the Hebdo attacks, saying communities lived in fear of attacks and increasingly restricted their worship to private places.

On January 15, a Israeli-Palestinian peace summit is scheduled in Paris. However, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has attacked France's role in organizing the conference, dubbing it "a modern version of the Dreyfus trial" and telling France's Jews "that is not your country, that is not your land" and demanding they "come to Israel."

Israeli hostility to the talks stems from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fears that the foreign ministers' meeting during the summit will allow US, French and other officials to come to a new set of decisions on the peace process, which could then be brought before the UN Security Council for a vote before US President Barack Obama's term ends on January 20. Israel missed the first French peace summit in June 2016 and has suggested it would likely miss the second in January.

In the Dreyfus affair, French Jewish military officer Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason in a series of trials that relied on falsified information and pervasive anti-Semitism.

Lieberman said the summit differed from the Dreyfus affair in one key respect only, namely that "last time" there was only one Jew on the stand, while now "all of the people of Israel and the entire state of Israel" are.