Paris — A delegation headed by Israeli diplomats met this week with French authorities in the framework of the annual bilateral dialogue for combating antisemitism. The dialogue was suspended during the last two years of the coronavirus pandemic. This week, it was renewed in its largest-ever composition.

About 50 people participated at the Sept. 12-13 conference, including senior officials of the French foreign, justice, interior and culture ministries; their Israeli counterparts; Israeli and Jewish researchers; members of the civil society and representatives of the French Jewish community, including a senior official of the CRIF (the umbrella organization for French Jewry).

Battling antisemitism has been an important topic for Israeli diplomats for many years. Still, since Yair Lapid was nominated foreign minister in the summer of 2021, and more so since Lapid started serving as prime minister in the transition period until the November elections, the issue has been high on the diplomatic priority list. Minister plenipotentiary at the Israeli Embassy in France Ronit Ben Dor explains that last year, combatting antisemitism was formally recognized as one of the top 10 priorities of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

As the son of a Holocaust survivor, Lapid has been fighting for years, and in different arenas, against Holocaust negation and against the phenomenon of antisemitism. In fact, on June 2021, shortly after his nomination as foreign minister, he generated a diplomatic crisis with Warsaw over its decision to put in place a law limiting restitution rights of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Lapid summoned Polish Ambassador Marek Magierowski to express its disapproval over the law approved by the parliament in Warsaw, publicly condemning the Polish government.