France has recorded more than 1,000 antisemitic acts since 7 October

  • last year

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Transcript
00:00 This French Jewish woman has been left shaken and disturbed.
00:03 On Sunday, she opened her pizzeria in Villers-Bains and discovered stars of David on the door
00:09 and back wall of her restaurant.
00:12 We discovered them here.
00:13 The three other stars are different colours and are each marked with the word 'death'.
00:18 She was shocked and disgusted and filed a complaint, but soon realised that she had
00:23 to be extra careful.
00:26 When young people come to eat here, I tell them to take off their yarmulke when they
00:30 leave.
00:31 I don't want to have the responsibility of something happening that evening.
00:34 That's it.
00:35 We have to be vigilant.
00:37 Vigilance has multiplied tenfold in front of all the Jewish schools in France.
00:42 These two men have taken it on themselves to watch over the institutions.
00:46 Parents and teachers call them the 'protective fathers'.
00:50 They've been trained by the SPCJ, the Jewish Community Protection Service.
00:55 They've agreed to talk, but only under anonymity.
00:59 We look out for suspicious people, check for abandoned parcels and I alert my colleagues
01:03 if there's any reason we need to lock the school gates in the evening.
01:07 The volunteers then share their information with both the police and the army.
01:13 We've had people passing by filming us, filming the school, questioning some of the arrangements
01:16 we put in place.
01:18 People have been staring at us and verbally provoking us.
01:22 This man is one of those in need of protection.
01:25 He has two children who study at a Jewish school, while his wife works there too as
01:28 a teacher.
01:29 What we fear is a massacre.
01:32 It's the same as what happened in the kibbutz in Israel.
01:37 If someone comes in for Kalashnikov and that person comes in and kills everyone.
01:43 As cases of anti-Semitism rise, many French Jews are now keeping a low profile, fearful
01:49 of being scapegoated for the conflict in the Middle East.

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