French Government Accuses the Kremlin of Causing Antisemitic Graffiti Incident
Pair walking past a building tagged with Stars of David in Paris on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, Pool)
Around 250 blue Stars of David were tagged on buildings in France, in what the Parisian police chief called an “antisemitic” incident. Officials in France claim that a Russian-speaking person living abroad “may have paid for” the graffiti and Russian-controlled social media accounts promoted images of the graffiti.
Since the graffiti began appearing, French police have arrested, questioned, and deported two Moldovan nationals, suspecting the operation has connections with Russia. While the graffiti could be construed as supportive of Israel – after all, the graffiti is of a blue Star of David, evoking images of the Israeli flag – the cultural context in Europe suggests that the graffiti instead is meant to conjure reminders of Nazi-era terror, where Jewish businesses and homes were tagged with the Star of David symbol.
The French Foreign Ministry blames Russia for the chaos, claiming that a network of “bot accounts” operated by the Kremlin on Elon Musk’s platform, X (formerly Twitter). These accounts whipped up “controversy and confusion” about the incident, which spread alarm about “surging antisemitism” in France. Further, the Foreign Ministry claims that the 1,095 bot accounts, affiliated with the Russian-controlled network Recent Reliable News, posted 2,589 individual posts on X surrounding the incident.
They source their intelligence from Viginum, the French state’s digital watchdog formed in the aftermath of Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 campaign hacking. Of note, Vigium data suggests that Recent Reliable News knew of the graffiti in France “48 hours before” other users on X, highlighting an alleged link between the perpetrators of the graffiti and the Kremlin.
Stars of David tagged onto the wall of a building in Paris on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, Pool)
The Foreign Ministry’s statement directly alleged that the “new [Russian] operation of…digital interference” spoke to the Kremlin's persistence in pursuing an “opportunistic and irresponsible strategy” of “exploiting international crises” to sow discord in Europe. In further support of the link, Parisian prosecutor Laure Becceau claimed that the possibility of the graffiti being carried out “at the explicit request of someone living abroad” could not be ruled out.
The controversy comes after last week’s incident in Makhachkala, where a violent mob overtook a Russian airport in a clear antisemitic attack. France houses the largest Jewish and Muslim communities in Europe and has seen a rise in tensions since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which the government has had trouble calming, and their efforts will surely not be helped following the graffiti incident.