After levels not witnessed since the Second World War, France soul searches over attacks on its Jewish community and seeks to punish the perpetrators. Foreign Editor David Pratt examines what might lie behind the upsurge in hate.

President Emmanuel Macron has called it“the antithesis of all that is France”.

But just as the French leader this week called for a “great national debate,” of countrywide meetings and discussions on the growing threat of anti-Semitism, scenes reminiscent of the 1930s or 1940s stained the country.

Earlier this week in the small Alsace region town of Quatzenheim, some 80 graves were desecrated in a Jewish cemetery with Nazi swastikas and other graffiti.

In other separate incidents in recent weeks, swastikas were also scrawled on Paris postboxes containing portraits of late Holocaust survivor Simone Veil and the word “Juden” (German for Jews) was sprayed on the window of a bagel bakery in the capital.

“Anti-Semitism is spreading like poison,” warned Christophe Castaner, the French interior minister. “It’s rotting minds, it’s killing,” he told crowds at a gathering in memory of Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man who was tortured to death near Paris in 2006. Trees forming part of his memorial were hacked down last week.

Elsewhere a protester was caught on video hurling abuse at the prominent philosopher Alain Finkielkraut and telling him that “France belongs to us” at recent gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protests in Paris.

Mr Finkielkraut himself had initially supported the yellow vest movement, before criticising the violence carried out against police forces by a fringe of suspected far-right and far-left demonstrators who have now infiltrated the movement and increasingly made their presence felt.

Overall France is facing a toxic spread of anti-Semitic acts. After falling for two successive years the number of incidents the country surged by 74 percent from 311 in 2017 to 541 in 2018.

Now across a nation that is home to Europe’s largest Jewish community, people are asking the same question; why has it happened at this moment and what lies behind the upsurge of anti-Semitism?

Anti-Semitism certainly has deep roots in France, reaching back beyond Vichy France to the publication of Edouard Drumont’s “La France Juive”, a popular anti-Semitic text, in 1886. But even the more recent steep rise in hatred is also nothing new say some within France’s Jewish community

“Anti-Semitism hasn't been on the rise for the past few months or years, it’s been on the rise for the past decade or so,” Laurent Kaobe, 50, told the French edition of the online newspaper The Local, speaking in a Jewish supermarket in the 19th arrondissement of Paris where many working class Jewish families live.

“You see things getting worse for Jews in France whenever people's lives get harder in general. Suddenly the insults in the streets start and your neighbours won't speak to you anymore," said Mr Kaobe.

“I'm not saying it’s like during the war with the Nazis but it's more serious than it was 20 years ago and it's pushing a lot of people to leave France,” he added.

Some citizens within the country point to the recent rise in the yellow vest protests that started against economic grievances as being the platform through which some anti-Semitic acts are being carried out. While any overarching link to the yellow vest movement is unclear, there’s no doubt that last weekend, marchers were caught on video yelling “dirty Zionist shit” and “go back to Tel Aviv” at philosopher Alain Finkielkraut.

Many in the Jewish Community say the 'yellow vest' protesters are not universally anti-Semitic, but that the movement had brought out the hatred in certain people.

“Anti-Semitism is not the motive for the gilets jaunes movement but it has become part of it,” one woman told The Local in Paris. "The extreme left and right elements have taken over the 'yellow vest' movement," she said.

One Jewish man, who asked not to be named told The Local: "There is no reason why you have to be anti-Semitic to fight for the rights of workers but this is not the real ideology of the movement. The extreme right and extreme left are there to break and destabilise society."

Speaking to reporters, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said that the yellow vest crisis had allowed some barriers to be broken but that the movement in itself wasn't anti-Semitic and the problem was much wider than that.

“We need to look at the problem face on: anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in French society. We would like to think the opposite, but it's a fact,” he said.

President Macron meanwhile has said that in response to the upsurge, the government is to adopt the intergovernmental organisation International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism and propose a law to stop hate speech being circulated online.

"Anti-Zionism is one of the modern forms of anti-Semitism," said Mr Macron.

The IHRA definition does not use the phrase "anti-Zionism" but does say denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination "e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour," is anti-Semitic.

Germany and Britain adopted the definition in texts in 2016, though the European Union in 2018 adopted a softer tone, calling the IHRA definition a “guidance tool” amid concern from some member states that it could make criticism of Israeli policy, particularly with regards to Palestinians, difficult.

Speaking at the annual dinner of the Jewish organisation Conseil Representatif des Institutions Juives de France (Crif), Mr Macron also mentioned anti-Semitism based on “radical Islamism” as a rampant ideology in France’s multi-ethnic poor neighbourhoods.

Jewish leaders meanwhile have expressed growing alarm over anti-Semitism driven by fringe Islamist preachers, alongside that more commonly associated with Nazi ideology and the far right and a rise in anti-Zionism on the hard-left.

Visiting the Jewish cemetery in the town of Quatzenheim where graves were desecrated Mr Macros condemned the attack.

“We will take actions, we will use laws and we will punish,” Macron told local communities leaders at the cemetery.

“Those who did this are not worthy of the republic ... France will punish them. I don't want what happened here to give ideas to others.”

Mr Macron said he had ordered the interior ministry to dismantle three neo-Nazi groups, Bastion Social, Blood and Honour Hexagone and Combat 18, which he said fuelled hate and promoted violence.

In protest at the current mood, a march against anti-Semitism this week drew a cross-party collection of politicians and some 20,000 people in Paris.

For the moment France continues to soul search over the spread of a poisonous hatred not seen on such a level since the Second World War.