France has seen nearly 1,600 anti-Semitic acts in 2024, a slight dip on the year before but still at levels unseen in recent years as the Israel-Hamas fighting raged in Gaza, AFP reports.

The figure of 1,570 incidents marked a six-percent fall from the 1,676 recorded in 2023 but well above the numbers in the past decade or so.

By comparison, 436 anti-Semitic acts were recorded in 2022 and since 2012 they have fluctuated between 311 and 851 per year.

“For the second consecutive year, we are facing a historic number of anti-Semitic acts,” said the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), an umbrella body of French Jewish groups, in a report based on figures from the Jewish community and the ministry of the interior.

The CRIF has emphasised that anti-Semitic incidents surged in France in 2023 following October 7, 2023.

The figures only cover acts that have been the subject of a complaint, and therefore “this does not cover the entire phenomenon of anti-Semitism in France”, CRIF president Yonathan Arfi told AFP.