French Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti. Photo: Reuters/Xose Bouzas

France’s Minister of Justice has urged the swift prosecution of offenders charged with antisemitic acts, as the country’s Interior Minister reported more than 100 outrages targeting French Jews since the massacre perpetrated last weekend by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel.

In a television interview on Thursday, Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti said he had issued a circular calling for “strict and rapid prosecution.”

“I’m asking the public prosecutor’s offices to be strict and swift,” Dupond-Moretti said. “Antisemitism is not an opinion, it’s an offense. Apology for terrorism is an offense punishable by 5 years’ imprisonment, and 7 years when it received a certain level of exposure.”

He continued: “We cannot see antisemitism grow in this country with impunity.”

The list of individuals and organizations potentially facing prosecution for antisemitic statements or acts includes the far left New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), which issued a statement in the wake of the atrocities in Israel declaring “its support for the Palestinians and the means of struggle that they choose to resist.”

Claiming that Israel’s strategy of containment in Gaza had failed, the NPA statement added, “this time the offensive is on the side of the resistance,” and ended with the cry of “Intifada!” — the word used by Palestinians to describe mass violent uprisings against Israel.

Also in the frame is the country’s main far left party, La France Insoumise (LFI — ‘France Rising’). A statement from the party, which occupies 74 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, pointedly refused to label Hamas as a terrorist organization while accusing Israel of committing “war crimes.”

Prior to Dupond-Moretti’s comments, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told reporters that “more than 100” antisemitic offenses had been registered since the Hamas infiltration of Israel on Oct. 7.

“These are essentially tags, swastikas, ‘death to the Jews,’ calls for an intifada against Israel,” Darmanin noted. Separately, he said, more than 2,000 complaints about antisemitic activity online had been registered with Pharos, the Interior Ministry’s official portal for reporting illegal or offensive content on the internet.

Darmanin added that “even more serious acts” had been reported, including “people who were arrested with knives at the entrance to a school or a synagogue; a drone that we saw flying inside a courtyard a Jewish cultural center.”

According to broadcaster RTL, the more serious offenses witnessed in recent days included the appearance of a Syrian man who approached the entrance of a Jewish school in the 19th arrondissement of Paris screaming “Allahu Akhbar!” In another incident, a man was arrested carrying a knife outside another Jewish school, while in a third, a Jewish man walking home from synagogue was pelted with glass bottles by four men who shouted, “Death to the Jews.”

Meanwhile, the homes of two Jewish parliamentarians — National Assembly speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet and MP Meyer Habib — are being guarded by police after both received death threats. Braun-Pivet has been especially vocal since the Hamas onslaught, arranging for the National Assembly building to be lit up in the colors of the Israeli flag and imposing a ban on the attendance of Maryam Abu Daqqa, a supporter of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), at a documentary screening to be held at the parliament in November.