France Is Burning. And I No Longer Recognize My Country.

I was born in Paris. I grew up in the country of liberté, égalité, fraternité. The country that gave the world the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The country of Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Simone Veil. The country where ideas were supposed to be confronted with other ideas, not with Molotov cocktails.

And yesterday, I watched my France burn.

I watched the images of October 17 with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and something much more difficult to describe. Grief. Because there is something profoundly painful about watching the country that shaped you become almost unrecognizable.

Stores looted. Cars burning. Police officers attacked. Public buildings set ablaze. In Limoges, the town hall, a symbol of the French Republic, engulfed in flames. In Marseille, dozens of stores looted, the city hall stormed, streets transformed into scenes of chaos. Across the country, violence erupted alongside demonstrations that had mobilized hundreds of thousands of people.

According to preliminary government figures, approximately 1,200 people were arrested and 150 members of the security forces were injured.

I kept looking at those images and asking myself the same question. What on earth has happened to my France?

France has always been a country of protest. We invented the barricades. We practically perfected the national strike. We have an extraordinary ability to take to the streets, sometimes for excellent reasons, sometimes for questionable ones, and occasionally simply because we are French. I say that with affection. Protest is part of our national identity.

But what happened on October 17 went far beyond ordinary demonstrations. Yes, hundreds of thousands of French citizens marched to express legitimate grievances about living costs, public services, and education. Many did so peacefully. But alongside them, groups of rioters turned streets into battlegrounds.

And I refuse to call the burning of a town hall, the looting of businesses, or attacks on police officers a legitimate form of political expression. It is not. There is a difference between fighting for your rights and destroying the very institutions meant to protect them.

I watched what looked, in certain streets, less like a student protest than scenes of urban insurrection. And perhaps that is what frightens me most. Not simply the violence itself, but the intellectual gymnastics we sometimes perform to explain it away. We have become extraordinarily sophisticated at finding justifications for things we should simply condemn.

France has every right to be angry. It does not have the right to burn itself down.

There is something else I cannot ignore. The Jews of France are afraid. My own family is afraid. And I am not talking about an abstract fear, something discussed at conferences or measured in surveys. I am talking about people I love. People who still live in the country where I was born, who increasingly wonder what kind of future awaits them there.

I know what that fear sounds like. I hear it in conversations with my family. In the things they tell me, and sometimes in the things they no longer need to say.

And then I look at Marseille. Stores smashed. Businesses looted. Entire shopping streets devastated. Shopkeepers standing helplessly before what remains of years of work. I have seen the reports of businesses attacked across the city. And as the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors, I cannot look at shattered storefronts without feeling the weight of history.

My mind inevitably goes to November 1938. Kristallnacht. The Night of Broken Glass.

I know exactly what that comparison means, and I do not make it lightly. October 17 was not Kristallnacht. The Nazi pogrom was a coordinated campaign of antisemitic terror, directed against Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues. We do not yet have evidence that the stores looted in Marseille were systematically targeted because their owners were Jewish. If any were, that must be investigated and condemned without hesitation.

But the images awaken something that is difficult to explain to those who have never inherited this history. Because for families like mine, broken glass is never just broken glass. It carries memories.

And here is what troubles me most: A country does not have to become openly hostile to its Jews for its Jews to begin feeling that they no longer belong.

Sometimes, the damage begins with uncertainty. With wondering whether it is safe to wear a Star of David. Whether your children should openly identify as Jewish. Whether the authorities will protect you if something happens.

France is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the world. Its Jewish citizens are not guests. They are part of the country’s history, culture, intellectual life, and national identity. And yet, for families like mine, the question of belonging has become painfully complicated.

I do not want to exaggerate. I do not want to turn every act of violence into an antisemitic attack. But neither will I pretend that the anxiety felt by so many French Jews is imaginary.

The country of human rights must also be a country where Jewish families can live without fear. That should not be a controversial demand. It should be the bare minimum.

As a journalist, I have spent more than two decades watching political movements, interviewing people, and trying to understand the distance between what individuals claim to defend and what they actually do. And I have become increasingly troubled by our willingness to romanticize violence when it comes wrapped in the language of justice.

Some people seem to believe that the more destructive a protest becomes, the more authentic its anger must be. I believe the opposite.

When a shopkeeper watches years of work disappear behind shattered glass, what social injustice has been corrected? When a police officer is attacked for wearing a uniform, what freedom has been advanced? When a town hall burns, who exactly has been liberated?

The answer is no one.

And this is not a question of left or right. I am equally disturbed by violence committed in the name of nationalism, revolution, religion, or any other ideology. There is no political cause noble enough to justify terrorizing innocent people.

The moment violence becomes an acceptable political language, democracy begins to lose its own.

There is another phrase that has troubled me deeply in recent years. “Globalize the intifada.”

Its meaning is fiercely disputed. Some use it to call for international solidarity with Palestinians. Others hear in it the language of violent confrontation, particularly given the history of attacks against Israeli civilians during past intifadas. For many Jews, those words carry an unmistakable sense of menace.

I have heard them repeated in demonstrations far from the Middle East, sometimes by people who seem remarkably indifferent to the historical weight of the language they are using. And I keep wondering: what exactly are we asking to globalize? Solidarity? Justice? Or confrontation?

Words matter. As a journalist, I have always believed that. And as someone who has spent years interviewing Holocaust survivors, I know that language can prepare the ground for actions long before those actions take place.

I am not suggesting that the riots of October 17 were caused by that slogan. The demonstrations involved domestic grievances, and the responsibility for the violence must be established through evidence. But I am asking a broader question.

When we normalize the language of confrontation, should we really be surprised when confrontation becomes part of our political culture?

I believe that question deserves an answer.

In September 2025, President Emmanuel Macron formally recognized the State of Palestine. It was a significant diplomatic decision, presented as a contribution to peace and the two-state solution. People can legitimately disagree about its timing, its symbolism, and its likely consequences.

But I find myself asking a different question. What has France done to restore confidence and security within its own borders?

Recognizing a Palestinian state was never going to solve France’s economic problems, its educational difficulties, or its deepening political divisions. Nor would it be reasonable to claim that recognition caused the violence of October 17. But the contrast is striking.

France continues to present itself as a country capable of delivering moral lessons to the world. Meanwhile, its own citizens are watching public buildings burn, businesses destroyed, and police officers attacked.

What does it mean to champion peace abroad while struggling to preserve civic peace at home?

I am not asking France to abandon its international responsibilities. I am asking its leaders to remember that they also have responsibilities to the people living within its borders. To the teachers. To the shopkeepers. To the families. To the police officers. To the citizens who wake up after a night of violence and must somehow rebuild what others have destroyed.

Diplomacy matters. But so does the ability of a Republic to protect its own citizens.

I have lived in the United States for twenty years. But France has never stopped being home. It is the language in which I think when I am emotional. It is the country of my childhood, my education, my first career in journalism. It is the country whose culture I have defended even when its politics have exasperated me. And it is the country I want my children to know and love.

But today, I look at the images of burning streets and wonder what kind of France we are leaving them. A country where disagreement is increasingly experienced as hatred? Where institutions are treated as enemies? Where violence becomes a substitute for argument? Where Jewish families wonder whether they still have a future?

I do not believe France is beyond repair. I refuse to believe that.

The peaceful demonstrators who marched on October 17 are also France. The firefighters who fought the flames are France. The police officers who protected people are France. The shopkeepers who will reopen their businesses despite the destruction are France. The Jewish families who refuse to surrender their place in French society are France. And they deserve better.

Because the answer to a fractured society cannot be to fracture it further. France does not need another romantic celebration of revolution. It needs the much less glamorous courage of rebuilding trust. Of defending institutions while demanding that they work better. Of protecting the right to protest while refusing to excuse destruction. Of remembering that freedom is not the absence of limits, but the possibility of living together despite our disagreements.

I still believe in the France that raised me. The France of human rights. The France of intellectual courage. The France that taught me that words matter. And perhaps that is why watching it burn hurts so much.

Because you can leave your country. You can build another life thousands of miles away. But you never stop loving the place that made you who you are.

And right now, my France is hurting. So am I.