A sacred Holocaust memorial honoring Jewish resistance fighters murdered by the Nazis was vandalized this weekend with anti-Israel graffiti in eastern France.

The crude message “Nique Israël” (“F—k Israel”) was found Saturday scrawled across the monument that marks the site in Bron where German forces executed prisoners from Montluc prison in August 1944, just days before liberation.

“The act of vandalism committed on the monument in homage to the dead of Montluc, victims of Nazi barbarity in Bron, is despicable,” the governor of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes wrote on X. “The police made the findings and opened an investigation under the direction of the judicial authority.”

Ever since Hamas’s devastating massacre against Israel last year, France has seen a surge of violent antisemitic attacks, including the assault of a Jewish teenager near a Paris metro station, a brutal attack on a Jewish woman in her home, and the defacement of a kosher restaurant near Lyon with “Free Gaza” graffiti.

A July 2024 study by the European Union’s Agency for Fundamental Rights says European Jews feel more unsafe than ever, especially in France, home to approximately 500,000 Jews. According to the agency, nearly 1,700 incidents have been reported post-Oct. 7, with 887 of them recorded in the first half of 2024 alone. The surge has particularly rattled France’s Jewish community following July’s election of an anti-Israel leftist coalition to parliament.

“Whether it’s within civil society, on social media, or politics, we see the conflation of the conflict in the Middle East with regular Jewish citizens,” says Robert Ejnès, the council’s executive director.

“Every time there’s an escalation of the conflict, we see a new wave of antisemitic acts in France. We need more sanctions to punish these acts, but also more education if we want to improve things in the future,” he says.”