A recent survey reveals a worrying explosion of antisemitism among sections of French youth. According to the survey, Jew-hatred is clearly thriving in recent immigrant populations of the Muslim faith, contaminating an entire age group.
The Institut français d’opinion publique (IFOP), one of the main and most reputable French polling organisations, has just published a major survey involving more than 2,000 minors.
Surveys conducted on minors are rare. This one was done at the request of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF)—the official body of the Jewish faith and its followers in France.
The figures, as presented by analyst Marc Vanguard on X, are alarming. In France in 2025, more than half of the pupils surveyed admit to being confronted at school with inter-ethnic tensions, defined in the survey as “religious and identity tensions,” ranging from verbal intimidation to physical violence between pupils.
A closer look at the geographical distribution of the problems allows us to identify their origin and the scale of the phenomenon. Religious and identity-related tensions are very much present throughout France, but they concern three-quarters of pupils attending schools in Réseaux d’Education Prioritaire (REP; priority education networks in the verbiage of the French national education system) in neighbourhoods where the population is predominantly of immigrant origin.
As the questions in the survey become more precise, the implacable reality emerges: an over-representation of Muslim pupils as the perpetrators of these tensions, and an over-representation of Jewish pupils as the victims. While 37% of Muslim secondary school pupils refuse the idea of forming a couple with a Jewish pupil, 45% of the same are quite simply opposed to the idea of having friendly or romantic relationships with Jewish classmates, and this percentage rises to 72% if the Jewish pupils in question show their support for Israel.
The explosion of inter-ethnic violence at school is therefore this time clearly documented and substantiated: it can be explained dramatically—but with few objections—by the massive arrival in France of Muslim populations that are not integrated or only slightly integrated. According to Vanguard, it would be “completely naïve” to ignore this correlation: the proportion of pupils rejecting their Jewish classmates is four times higher among pupils with both parents born outside Europe than among native pupils. These pupils are mainly Muslim, due to the large numbers of people arriving in France from the Maghreb countries (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia), which are former French territories.
This in-depth and innovative survey therefore once again demolishes the myth of enrichment and qualitative improvement of societies thanks to non-European immigration. On the contrary, it is accompanied by a dramatic reinforcement of cultural divisions, all the more powerful as the younger generations of immigrants defend a much more dogmatic version of Islam than those who preceded them.
The evaluation is very worrying. A little research carried out in the major French press organisations shows that the CRIF-commissioned survey received relatively little comment in the official media. The silence of the political class on these findings casts serious doubt on whether the authorities can tackle the problem thoroughly—starting with facing the facts head-on.
