President Emmanuel Macron hosted religious leaders for talks on combatting anti-Semitism in France, AFP reports.

France’s chief rabbi Haim Korsia, Catholic bishops’ conference head Eric de Moulins-Beaufort and rector of the Paris Grand Mosque Chems-Eddine Hafiz were all present. Leaders from other faiths including the Orthodox church, Buddhism and Protestantism were also in attendance.

Macron said that “a France where our Jewish fellow citizens are afraid is not France”, calling on people to rally around the country’s “values” and “universalism”.

The French leader’s office said yesterday that he had spoken with Israeli President Isaac Herzog by phone in an apparent bid to calm the waters.