Episode 3: We Can't Embrace Extremism

In April 2026, ICCT Senior Fellow Kacper Rekawek spoke with Jean-Yves Camus, a leading expert on the French far-right, a member of the French Jewish community himself, and a former European Jewish Congress staffer, about the threat landscape facing Europe's largest Jewish population.

Camus dismantles a common assumption: the extreme-right, he argues, has not been the primary source of anti-Jewish violence in France. That distinction belongs to Islamist militancy, a trend traceable to the Second Intifada and one that has surged dramatically - from roughly 900 incidents in the three months after October 7th, 2023, to 1,300 recorded in 2025 alone.

The politics, meanwhile, have scrambled in ways few would have predicted. The far-right now courts French Jews with declarations of solidarity with Israel, while parts of the far-left, and elements of the mainstream left, increasingly excuse or embrace anti-Semitic militancy. Some French Jews, Camus notes, have responded by drifting toward the Rassemblement National. He pushes back hard against this instinct: a community that makes up less than 1% of France's population, he warns, cannot afford to gamble on any political extreme in a decade this volatile.

A clear-eyed look at how threat, politics, and identity are colliding for the French Jewish community.

Photo Credits: Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash