A man wearing a sports jersey with the words “Anti-Jew” written in French was photographed this week riding the Paris metro, prompting an investigation by law enforcement and outcry from Jewish leaders who lamented what they described as public indifference to surging antisemitism in France.

The photo was taken on line 13 at the Saint-François-Xavier station on Monday and later shared on X/Twitter by Sandrine Sebbane, an editor at RCJ radio station.

Photographie prise le 21/10 vers 17 h15-30 dans le métro parisien ligne 13, station Saint-François Xavier, direction Saint-Denis. @RATPgroup @vpecresse @othmannasrou @JeanCASTEX pic.twitter.com/6L2fQ30DQP

— Sandrine Sebbane (@s_sebbane) October 22, 2024

“I was alerted today about a photo of an individual wearing a shirt with a sinister ‘Anti-Jew’ slogan on a metro train,” tweeted Valérie Pécresse, president of the Île-de-France region. “We are currently proceeding with the RATP Group [France’s state-owned public transport operator] teams to check and identify this individual and to initiate the necessary criminal proceedings. Antisemitism has no place in our country.”

RATP said that a complaint would be filed with the French authorities, adding that the Paris transport authority “condemns racism and antisemitism in the strongest possible terms and is making itself available to law enforcement to help identify and arrest any person responsible for this type of act.”

Laurent Nuñez, prefect of the Paris Police, similarly condemned the antisemitic clothing and said an investigation had been opened.

“As soon as I was informed of these facts of an antisemitic nature, I immediately instructed my services to contact the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office, who opened an investigation for incitement to racial hatred,” Nuñez posted on X/Twitter. “The regional transport security of the police headquarters is responsible for investigations in order to identify and arrest the perpetrator. Zero tolerance for hate mongers.”

The incident on the metro has also alarmed French Jewish leaders, who decried that antisemitism has seemingly become normalized in France.

“Before, antisemites had shameful antisemitism. Today, they wear it with pride,” tweeted Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). “Previously, antisemitism aroused indignation among passengers. Today, [it’s met] with indifference. When values ​​are reversed, the whole Republic is in danger.”

France has experienced a record surge of antisemitism in the wake of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel last year. Antisemitic outrages rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported — greater than the total number of incidents in France for the previous three years combined.

This year, anti-Jewish hate crimes in France have continued to skyrocket.

Last week, a visibly Jewish teenager was assaulted by two youths as he was leaving a metro station in the northwest suburbs of Paris.

Days earlier, on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 atrocities, three men brutally attacked a Jewish woman at the entrance to her home in Paris. The victim stated that the assailants threatened her with a box knife, made antisemitic threats, and mentioned the events of Oct. 7.

Last month, a kosher restaurant in Villeurbanne, near Lyon in eastern France, was defaced with red paint and tagged with the message “Free Gaza.”

The incident came days after French police arrested a 33-year-old Algerian man suspected of trying to set a synagogue ablaze in the southern French city of la Grande-Motte.

Two months earlier, an elderly Jewish woman was attacked in a Paris suburb by two assailants who punched her in the face, pushed her to the ground, and kicked her while hurling antisemitic slurs, including “dirty Jew, this is what you deserve.”

In another egregious attack that has garnered international headlines, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a different Paris suburb on June 15. The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack. In response to the incident, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “scourge of antisemitism” plaguing his country.

Around the same time in June, an Israeli family visiting Paris was denied service at a hotel after an attendant noticed their Israeli passports.

In May, French police shot dead a knife-wielding Algerian man who set fire to a synagogue and threatened law enforcement in the city of Rouen.

One month earlier, a Jewish woman was beaten and raped in a suburb of Paris as “vengeance for Palestine.”

Such incidents are part of an explosion of antisemitic outrages across France that has continued since last Oct. 7.

In August, then-French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin warned that incidents targeting the country’s Jewish community spiked by about 200 percent since Jan. 1.

“Two-thirds of anti-religious acts … are against Jews,” he added, according to French broadcaster BFM TV.

Darmanin’s comments followed him stating weeks earlier that antisemitic acts in France have tripled over the last year. In the first half of 2024, 887 such incidents were recorded, almost triple the 304 recorded in the same period last year, he said.

Amid the wave of attacks, France held snap parliamentary elections in July which brought an anti-Israel leftist coalition to power, leading French Jews to express deep apprehension about their future status in the country.

“It seems France has no future for Jews,” Rabbi Moshe Sebbag of Paris’ Grand Synagogue told the Times of Israel following the ascension of the New Popular Front (NFP), a coalition of far-left parties. “We fear for the future of our children.”

The largest member of the NFP is the far-left La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”) party, whose leader, Jean-Luc Melenchon, has been lambasted by French Jews as a threat to their community as well as those who support Israel.

Despite widespread concern among French Jews, senior officials including Macron have repeatedly said they are committing to combating antisemitism and supporting the country’s Jewish community.

The post Man Wears ‘Anti-Jew’ Jersey on Paris Metro as French Jews Decry Public Indifference to Surging Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.