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French President Emmanuel Macron announced measures, including legislation to combat hate speech online, adding that the scourge of anti-Semitism has increased in recent years.
"Our country, and indeed all of Europe and most Western democracies, seems to be coping with a resurgence of invisible anti-Semitism since the Second World War," Macron said Wednesday.
France, home to the largest Jewish community in Europe, is moved by a series of attacks that have made headlines in the press.
New legislation will be introduced in May to force social media companies to remove hate speech posted online and use all available means to identify perpetrators "as quickly as possible".
Zionism has emerged as a modern colonizing-nationalist movement which, in the form in which the Israeli state has exercised it, is incompatible with universal human rights and international law
Dr. Denijal Jegic, researcher at the Muftah
Addressing the annual dinner of the Council of Representatives of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), the French leader is committed to recognizing anti-Zionism as a modern form of anti-Semitism.
"Behind the denial of the existence of Israel lies the hatred of the Jews," said Macron.
The French president added that anti-Semitism is based on "radical Islamism" as a rampant ideology in poor, multiethnic French neighborhoods.
"Incompatible with universal human rights"
"Macron's comments imply a false and dangerous equation between Zionism and Judaism," said Dr. Denijal Jegic, a researcher at Muftah, a publication focused on the Middle East.
"Zionism has emerged as a modern colonizing-nationalist movement which, in the forms in which the Israeli state has exercised it, is incompatible with universal human rights and international law" , did he declare.
On Tuesday, Macron visited a Jewish cemetery in Alsace where 80 tombstones were vandalized and painted with swastikas, symbol of Nazi Germany, while thousands of people across the country were demonstrating against anti-Semitism.
The episode is one of the many that have rocked France in recent weeks. A torrent of hate speech was directed against the Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut during a march organized Saturday by protesters wearing a yellow vest.
Insults included words like "Zionist!" and "Go back to Tel Aviv!" and "We are France!"
The number of antisemitic attacks in France has recently increased by 74% in 2018, reaching 541.
"Definition of anti-Semitism"
The government will adopt the definition of anti-Semitism established by an international organization, developed by the International Alliance for the Remembrance of the Holocaust (IHRA), announced the French president.
The definition states that anti-Semitism may take the form of "depriving the Jewish people of their right to self-determination, for example by baderting that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist enterprise ".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, welcomed the adoption by France of the international definition of anti-Semitism, during a telephone interview with the French leader before the speech, announced Netanyahu's office.
However, since the intergovernmental organization approved the text in 2016, some critics of Israel have expressed their concerns because it could be used to suppress Palestinian human rights activists.
The IHRA code has also been challenged by groups such as the ACLU and Jewish Voice for Peace.
Twitter criticized
Macron said that a similar bill already in force in Germany was effective and pragmatic.
German law states that hate speech must be removed from websites within 24 hours of being reported and that in some cases it may result in fines of several million euros.
The French president has denounced Twitter for waiting days, sometimes weeks, to eliminate hateful content.
He also said he had asked the Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner, to dissolve groups or badociations inciting hatred or violence.
SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies
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