9 in 10 French Jewish students report suffering campus anti-Semitism, poll finds

Only 8 percent of victims reported the incidents to faculty, many over fear of reprisal.

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(JTA) — Nearly 90 percent of French Jewish students said they have experienced anti-Semitic abuse on campus, a poll found.

Nearly 20 percent of the 405 respondents in the Ifop survey said they have suffered an anti-Semitic physical assault at least once on campus. Of those, more than half reported suffering violence more than once.

More than half of the students who reported experiencing anti-Semitic incidents on campus said they did nothing about it. Only 8 percent complained to faculty. Nearly 20 percent said they did not report the incident or incidents for fear of reprisals, according to the report.

The results of the survey taken this month were published Tuesday by l’Express.

In October, the French media reported that students at Paris 13 University listed and ranked Jewish classmates according to their level of affiliation as part of a string of jokes online and on campus featuring anti-Semitic hate speech. Their initial target was a 19-year-old Jewish medical student.

The Ifopsurvey, which was commissioned by the Union of Jewish Students in France, or UEJF, came on the heels of an earlier Ifop poll conducted last month about anti-Semitism. That survey of 1,008 French adults showed a decrease in the prevalence of anti-Semitic sentiment compared to a similar poll with other respondents in 2016.

In the February poll, 27 percent of respondents said Jews were richer than the average French person compared to 31 percent in 2016. Whereas 32 percent said in 2016 that Jews abuse the Holocaust to promote their interests, only 20 percent said so last month.

 

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