François Hollande, the French president, said on Monday that Jews were welcome in Europe and France, in an apparent retort to Israel's prime minister, who urged Jews to move to Israel after attacks on a synagogue in Copenhagen, reports The Telegraph.
Jews "have their place in Europe and in particular in France", Mr Hollande said, in reference also to the defacing of several hundred tombs at a Jewish cemetery in the east of the country over the weekend.
Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, also called upon French Jews to remain in France, and promised the "strongest possible" legal response after Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, called anew upon European Jews to emigrate to Israel after the Copenhagen attacks.
"My message to French Jews is as follows: France is as hurt as you are and France does not want you to leave," he said.
"I regret Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks.... The place for French Jews is France."
Separately, French police opened an inquiry on Sunday after more than 200 tombs were damaged in a Jewish cemetery near the northeastern city of Strasbourg.
On Sunday, Mr Netanyahu told the Israeli cabinet: "Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews and this wave of terrorist attacks – including murderous anti-Semitic attacks – is expected to continue."
"Jews deserve protection in every country but we say to Jews: Israel is your home. We are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from Europe. I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they are: 'Israel is the home of every Jew.' ... Israel is waiting for you with open arms."
Mr Netanyahu was speaking as Israel's cabinet met to approve a £30 million scheme to absorb Jewish immigrants from France, Belgium and Ukraine.
Mr Netanyahu issued a similar plea last month following the deaths of 17 people at the hands of Islamist extremists in a spate of attacks in Paris – including an assault on a kosher supermarket in which four hostages, all of them Jewish, were shot dead.