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The Combat Antisemitism Antisemitism (CAM) raised questions on Monday about a Reuters news agency report on a French Ministry of Foreign Affairs assessment that social media accounts linked to Israel and the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement pushed “hostile narratives” about the recent anti-government riots in France.
According to the ministry’s findings, the 10 most-viewed X posts on the French unrest from Israeli officials, government accounts, media outlets, and influencers received more than 35 million views from October 16 to 18, while MAGA-linked posts got more than 49 million views.
In letters to French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot and Reuters CEO Steve Hasker and Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni, CAM CEO Sacha Roytman and Executive Director of European Affairs Shannon Seban called on the Foreign Ministry to disclose the evidence behind its assessment and on Reuters to explain why its report omitted a surge of online antisemitism tracked by CAM’s Antisemitism Research Center (ARC) during the same three days.
The ARC found 1,384 posts from 816 unique accounts asserting Jewish and Israeli responsibility for the riots. A separate ARC study revealed the reach of such antisemitic content, monitoring 2,806 posts across X, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok that collectively generated 1.18 billion views in a 75-day period.
Roytman and Seban wrote to Barrot, “Your ministry counted the views on posts by Israelis and Americans commenting on the riots in France. During those same three days, our researchers documented hundreds of accounts blaming Jews for the riots themselves. Did your ministry investigate those accusations? What did it find?”
“Israeli commentators and American conservatives have debated immigration, integration, and radical Islamism in Europe for years,” they added. “It is hardly surprising that they shared footage of unrest in France or interpreted it through the lens of those concerns. Your ministry is entitled to challenge that interpretation. But if your analysts identified factual distortions, which claims were false? If they found evidence of coordination, what was that evidence? Tens of millions of views tell us how widely the commentary circulated. A finding of foreign interference requires evidence about what those accounts actually did.”
“Minister Barrot, we ask you to publish the criteria your analysts used, identify the posts they judged deceptive, and tell the French public whether your ministry examined the accounts that blamed Jews and the Mossad for the riots,” Roytman and Seban said. “Your ministry has told the world how many people saw Israelis talking about France. French Jews deserve to know what their government found when people accused them of setting their own country on fire.”
In the Hasker and Galloni letter, Roytman and Seban pointed out, “Reuters considered tens of millions of views significant enough to report in detail. Why did a documented conspiracy accusing Jews of engineering the violence merit no mention at all? A newsroom investigating how the riots were exploited online had a basic journalistic duty to examine those accusations, test them against the evidence, and give the people being blamed a voice. In our judgment, Reuters fell short of that duty and of its ethical responsibility to the people its coverage left out.”
In a statement on Monday, Roytman said, “What I see here is a familiar conspiracy theory taking shape. Israelis comment on a crisis abroad, and the fact that people listen becomes grounds for suspecting an Israeli influence campaign. The French Foreign Ministry gave that suspicion official weight. Reuters amplified it. What did either show readers beyond the number of views?”
Read more:
‘The Jews Did This to France’: Antisemitic Narratives Spread on X Amid Civil Unrest
Paris Synagogue Vandalized During Nationwide Anti-Government Riots in France
Analysis: Riots Show the Price France Has Paid for Turning Against Israel
