Alfred Dreyfus. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

France’s National Defense and Armed Forces Committee has unanimously voted to posthumously promote Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general, in a symbolic act of justice more than a century after the Jewish army captain was wrongly convicted of espionage.

On Wednesday, the French Embassy in Israel announced the committee’s approval of Dreyfus’s posthumous promotion — a proposal put forward by former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.

“The French Nation is just and does not forget,” the embassy said in a statement. “This rights an injustice, honors a warrior, and clarifies that antisemitism, from history to today, will never have a place in the Republic.”

“האומה הצרפתית הינה חדורת צדק ואינה שוכחת, והיא מעלה לדרגת תת אלוף את אלפרד דרייפוס לאחר מותו”.

הצעת חוק שהתקבלה הבוקר פה אחד בוועדת הביטחון והצבא של האסיפה הלאומית, ופותחת את הדרך לאישור במליאה ב-2 ביוני הקרוב.

לתקן עוולה. לחלוק כבוד ללוחם. להדגיש שלאנטישמיות – של אתמול כמו של… pic.twitter.com/5GBFhxsLlk

— La France en Israël (@franceenisrael) May 28, 2025

With the approval of lawmakers on the committee, the bill is set to be adopted by the full National Assembly in its plenary session on June 2.

When introducing the legislation earlier this month, Attal said the law would “constitute an act of reparation, a recognition of [Dreyfus’s] merits, and a tribute to his republican commitment,” in an effort to rectify the wrongful conviction, which unfolded amid widespread antisemitism across the country at the time.

“Five years of exile and humiliation irreparably harmed his military career,” Attal said. “It is undeniable that, had it not been for this injustice, Alfred Dreyfus would have naturally ascended to the highest ranks.”

According to the French diplomat, the proposed legislation would also signal that the fight against antisemitism remains urgent, as France has seen a rise in antisemitic hate crimes following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.

Antisemitism in France continued to surge to alarming levels across the country last year, with 1,570 incidents recorded, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) – the main representative body of French Jews.

In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.

France is home to the world’s largest Jewish population after Israel and the United States, as well as the largest Muslim community in the European Union.

In 1894, Dreyfus, a 36-year-old army captain from the Alsace region in northeastern France, was accused of leaking secret information to a German military official and was put on trial amid a fierce antisemitic media campaign.

Despite a lack of evidence, Dreyfus was convicted of treason based on a handwriting comparison with a document found in a German official’s wastepaper basket in Paris, sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana, and stripped of his military rank.

Years later, French Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, then head of military intelligence, secretly reopened the case and uncovered that the handwriting on the incriminating document belonged to another officer. But when he brought this evidence to the army’s general staff, Picquart was dismissed from his post and imprisoned for a year.

In 1899, Dreyfus was brought back to France for a second trial, where he was again found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison, before ultimately receiving a pardon — though the charges against him were not formally overturned.

It was seven years later, in 1906, when Dreyfus was officially exonerated after the French High Court of Appeal overturned the original verdict and reinstated him with the rank of major.

He lived until 1935, dying at the age of 76.