Paris counted the views on Israeli posts about the unrest. Combat Antisemitism Movement wants to know whether anyone examined the accounts blaming Jews for it.

The French Foreign Ministry counted the views on posts by Israelis commenting on the riots in France. Now the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) is asking whether the ministry ever looked at the hundreds of accounts accusing Jews of starting them.

CAM has challenged both the French government and the Reuters news agency over a Reuters report on an assessment by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to that assessment, social media accounts linked to Israel and to the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement pushed “hostile narratives” about the recent anti-government riots in France. The ministry found that 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. MAGA-linked posts received more than 49 million.

CAM CEO Sacha Roytman Dratwa and Executive Director of European Affairs Shannon Seban sent letters to French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot and to Reuters CEO Steve Hasker and Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni. They 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 that CAM’s Antisemitism Research Center (ARC) tracked 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 on the reach of such antisemitic content monitored 2,806 posts across X, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, which together generated 1.18 billion views over a 75-day period.

In their letter to Barrot, Roytman Dratwa and Seban wrote:

“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. 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.”

They asked Barrot to publish the criteria his analysts used, identify the posts they judged deceptive, and tell the French public whether the ministry examined the accounts that blamed Jews and the Mossad for the riots.

“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 their letter to Hasker and Galloni, Roytman Dratwa and Seban wrote:

“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 Dratwa 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?”