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France has criticized a pro-Russian website that accused it of using online bots to highlight a series of incidents in which more than 200 Stars of David were spray-painted on buildings in Paris.
Prosecutors are investigating a possible Russian connection to the graffiti that was initially widely reported in French media as possibly an anti-Semitic act in response to the war between Israel and Hamas.
Police arrested a man and a woman, born in Moldova, who painted a blue Star of David, a symbol of Israel and the Jewish faith, on a building in Paris.
Prosecutors said they found a conversation in Russian on their phone with a third person, instructing them to do so in exchange for a payment.
Researchers then identified a second pair of Moldovans who painted similar Stars of David, accompanied by a photographer, while also communicating with the same person.
“It cannot be ruled out that the painting of Stars of David in the Paris region was carried out at the express request of a person abroad,” prosecutors said on Tuesday.
On Thursday, the French Foreign Ministry said its teams specialized in rooting out disinformation online had discovered a network of some 1,095 bots on social media platform were painted.
The ministry said a pro-Russian website called Reliable Recent News, also known as RRN, was responsible for the bots and amplifying the graffiti online, adding that it had published photos of the Stars of David 48 hours before the news broadcasts.
“This new operation of Russian digital interference against France testifies to the persistence of an opportunistic and irresponsible strategy aimed at exploiting international crises to sow confusion and create tensions in the public debate in France and Europe,” the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said in June that it uncovered a disinformation campaign involving RRN, adding that this was part of a “doppelgänger operation” discovered last year by EU DisinfoLab, a non-governmental organization.
That operation aimed to undermine European support for the Ukrainian war effort against Russia, a ministry report said, including by creating fake versions of stories from French news channels such as Le Parisien and Le Figaro and amplifying them with bots on social networks. media.
RRN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The appearance of Stars of David graffiti on buildings in Paris last week shocked France, which has been on edge since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
The French government has recorded an alarming rise in anti-Semitic incidents, with 1,159 reported, more than double the 2022 total, and 400 arrests made.
Israel-Hamas War: 2-minute briefing
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Flare-ups in the Middle East have often led to a rise in anti-Semitism in France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities.
France has also been on high alert for terror attacks since a knife-wielding attacker killed a teacher claiming allegiance to the Islamic State shortly after the Hamas attack on Israel.
President Emmanuel Macron has called for national unity. In a speech on Wednesday, he vowed to be relentless in the fight against anti-Semitism, saying that “any attack on a Jew” was akin to “an attack on the republic.”
There have been calls for a national march against anti-Semitism on Sunday, although Macron has not said whether he will attend.
His far-right rival Marine Le Pen has vowed to attend and called on her voters to do the same, as she tries to erase memories of how the political party her father founded was openly anti-Semitic.