Manuel Valls. Photo: Pablo Tupin-Noriega / Wikimedia Commons.

Manuel Valls

Prime Minister of France

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, one of Europe’s most vocal advocates for the Jewish community, has made it clear that the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiments spreading in French society have all the necessary elements to be considered anti-semitism.

He said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that this new Jew-hatred has “all the components of anti-Semitism the old ones had,” including a “plot”-based view of imagined Jewish conspiracies.

Valls’ ongoing commitment to French Jewry is of particular import in the wake of terror attacks in Paris, Copenhagen and elsewhere, which he has characterized as primarily aimed at Jews. His publicly stated conviction that a France without Jews will no longer be France remains a welcome antidote to the sometimes-hesitant words of other European politicians.

The premier’s comments are not merely rhetoric; he is responsible for France’s hardline security response to the Paris terrorist attacks and has said his nation’s war on terror would last for the foreseeable future.