A new campaign that calls on French Jews to make aliyah has launched this week, with the goal of having at least 30,000 Jews visit Israel this year.
The initiative, called "Reconnec-Sion" (a play on the words reconnect and Zion), wants to present an alternative to the daily anti-Semitism in France, which has been on the rise.
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It is led by Miriam Peretz and Yehuda Ben-Yishai, who are bereaved parents who lost their loved ones to terrorism.
The initiative is called "I seek my brethren" in Hebrew, a reference to the famous phrase from Genesis in which Joseph goes on a search for his siblings.
France has about 500,000 Jews, and the vast majority of them are believed to be non-practicing or uninvolved in the Jewish community.
A recent American Jewish Committee survey revealed that more than two thirds of Jews in France (67%) say the degree of anti-Semitism in the country is high, a new survey shows.
The survey was an attempt to gauge the perceptions of anti-Semitism in France, as well as the overall perceived sentiment.
In the survey, 70% of French Jews said that were victims of at least one anti-Semitic attack, whereas 64% said they experienced anti-Semitic verbal abuse at least on one occasion.
Moreover, according to the survey, 23% of French Jews have been targeted by violence at least once. Ten percent of Jews said they were attacked more than once.
The campaign is the brainchild of the Israel Experience, one of the country's leading incoming tourism company specializing in educational programs to strengthen Jewish identity, Israeli public diplomacy and the fight against anti-Semitism. The Israel Experience is a subsidiary of the Jewish Agency.
Amos Hermon, CEO of the Israel Experience, told Israel Hayom: "We see the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe as a whole and France in particular and alongside it the detachment of many Jews from their identities. We hope this campaign will allow more Jews to know Israel through their feet and reconnect to their identity. "
