“Rest assured I will let nothing pass in terms of antisemitism,” France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, said at the European Center for Judaism in Paris on Sunday.
Nuñez was at the center to attend the election of the president of the Central Consistory, the representative institution of the Jewish community of France.
It marked the first such visit for Nuñez, who assumed the role just weeks ago after the departure of Bruno Retailleau. The interior minister in France is also in charge of religious affairs.
“I want to assure you of my total commitment to responding to your fears of antisemitism, we share them,” he told the leaders of 260 synagogues present at the event. “I will let nothing go in matters of antisemitism, in whatever guise it takes,” he added.
He pointed out that 60% of anti-religious acts in France are antisemitic, with the figure rising to 80% in the Paris region.
He also said there is a “very strong link between what happened in our country 10 years ago and the Hamas attacks,” referring to the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, the anniversary of which took place last week.
Nuñez received praise from Elie Korchia, who was reelected as president of the Central Consistory. Korchia concurred with the minister on his Bataclan statements, noting: “There is no difference between the ideology that killed at the Bataclan and the one that killed in Israel.”
“It is important for us to have, in the continuity of your predecessors, an interior minister who is extremely attentive to the Jewish community of France,” Korchia told Nuñez.
Who is Elie Korchia?
Born in 1971, Elie Korchia is an attorney at the Paris Bar. He served as the lawyer for Myriam and Samuel Sandler during the trials of the Toulouse and Montauban terrorist attacks (2012), as well as for Zarie Sibony and Andréa Chamak during the two trials of the January 2015 attacks.
He served as president of the Jewish community of Puteaux for nearly 10 years before becoming, in 2009, president of the Council of Jewish Communities of Hauts-de-Seine. He was then elected to the Paris Consistory in 2006 and served as secretary-rapporteur of the Central Consistory from 2010 to 2021.
The chief rabbi of France, Haim Korsia, and the General Assembly of the Central Consistory congratulated Korchia on his reelection. The ceremony also marked the first meeting of all the hundreds of Jewish leaders since the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023.
