Paris. It started with teachers and fuel prices. It ended with a Palestinian flag on one of Paris’s most famous monuments, “Free Gaza” sprayed across shop shutters, and a historic French town hall in flames.
On October 17, hundreds of thousands of people marched across France in a protest movement that began over crumbling schools and the rising cost of living. By nightfall, violent groups had burned the city hall in Limoges, broken into Marseille’s city hall, torched Lyon’s tourist office, and looted banks and boutiques in Paris. Police arrested at least 1,200 people, and 150 officers were injured.
Just eleven days earlier, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left party La France Insoumise (LFI) and a candidate for president, had praised the protesting students as a “disciplined” youth “risen for its future” and called their movement “restrained.”
From schools to the streets
The movement began in September, when students at high schools in Paris’s working-class northern suburbs walked out over teacher shortages and run-down school buildings. The protests spread across France as unions and other groups joined in, adding demands over inflation, fuel prices, and public spending.
French officials saw trouble coming. At a government crisis meeting on October 1, French intelligence agencies assessed that the high school protest wave was “an operation organised by LFI and its proxies on the far left,” according to a readout shared by a source close to Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. LFI denies the charge.
On October 6, Lecornu told the National Assembly that LFI had been “sowing chaos” since the high school protests began. That same day, Mélenchon offered his praise.
“Free Gaza” at a march about fuel prices
None of the protesters’ demands mentioned Israel or Gaza. Yet on October 17, protesters climbed the statue at Paris’s Place de la République holding a French flag and a Palestinian flag. A photographer for Agence France-Presse (AFP), France’s national news agency, captured “Free Gaza” sprayed on a shop shutter on the Boulevard des Capucines.
The slogans make more sense when you look at the party French intelligence tied to the protests. LFI made Gaza the main theme of its 2024 European Parliament campaign and placed Rima Hassan, a Syrian-born French-Palestinian activist, on its candidate list. Supporters cheered her like a rock star, even though she had described Hamas’s October 7 attack as a “legitimate action.” Voters elected her to the European Parliament. That same year, French police questioned Hassan on suspicion of “advocacy for terrorism.”
The government points to the far left
After the riots, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, who oversees France’s police, said the vandalism came “at the very clear instigation of the hard left.” Lecornu warned that some groups wanted to use the violence as a “warm-up” for next year’s presidential election.
President Emmanuel Macron vowed that France would stand united “against the sowers of chaos, who only seek to undermine our institutions and prevent those who peacefully express their demands from doing so.”
Urban warfare expert John Spencer put it bluntly. The protests, he wrote, “started with issues but then are quickly hijacked by ultra-left radicals.”
Fear in the Jewish community
On the French news channel CNews, veteran journalist Paul Amar said rioters came prepared with the addresses of town halls and of Jewish shop owners. He said that on one street in Marseille, France’s second-largest city, every Jewish-owned business was set on fire, while Muslim-run businesses were left untouched. French authorities have not yet confirmed his account.
For French Jews, the pattern is painfully familiar. In July 2014, during the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, a banned pro-Palestinian march in Sarcelles, a Paris suburb with a large Jewish community, turned into a riot. Rioters set fire to a kosher grocery and looted shops. France’s interior minister at the time, Bernard Cazeneuve, said it was unacceptable to target synagogues or shops “simply because they are managed by Jews.” In the first three months of that year, more Jews left France for Israel than at any time since 1948.
The students of France marched for better teachers and safer schools. The far left turned their march into a cause for Palestine. And once again, French Jews know the truth: they are a target, and they are not safe.
Sources: https://www.timesofisrael.com/mass-protests-in-france-spiral-into-worst-riots-in-years-1200-arrested-150-cops-injured/, https://www.sudradio.fr/societe/mouvement-des-lyceens-lecornu-defend-lordre-et-cible-a-nouveau-lfi, https://theprint.in/world/crisis-meeting-told-frances-hardleft-party-behind-school-protests-says-source/3059678/, https://www.ceskenoviny.cz/index_view.php?id=2883497, https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/police-fire-tear-gas-scuffle-with-protesters-in-paris-as-violent-rallies-engulf-france/, https://www.europe1.fr/politique/elections-europeennes-la-france-insoumise-mise-sur-les-conflits-a-gaza-et-en-ukraine-pour-le-lancement-de-sa-campagne-4236201, https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/europe/artc-french-police-to-question-far-left-politician-over-oct-7-statements, https://www.france24.com/en/france/20261017-live-france-s-yellow-vests-throw-their-weight-behind-mounting-student-protests, https://x.com/SpencerGuard, https://x.com/visegrad24/status/2111787520900112759, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0721/Government-condemns-violence-at-French-anti-Israeli-protests
