By early afternoon on Saturday, there were 21 arrests in Paris and also a few clashes with police in Rouen on the margins of otherwise peaceful demonstrations.
Named after the high-visibility vests French drivers have to keep in their cars and worn by protesters, the demonstrations began in November after public anger against fuel tax rises.
President Emmanuel Macron and his government have been forced back on the defensive after rioters ransacked luxury boutiques and torched cafes and a bank on Saturday.
Protesters and police clash on Paris' Champs-Elysees.
While turnout figures at midday were only half of last week, by nightfall the Interior Ministry counted a total of 39,300 protesters nationwide, of which 4,000 were in Paris.
It seems that Macron's words created the opposite effect in France, and the Bureau for the War on Antisemitism called the rise in incidents as "frightening."
Although the protester regularly comes clad in a Kippah, he is a Catholic who claims to have converted from Judaism.
Recent social turmoil in France and the febrile atmosphere generated by the so-called “yellow vest” movement has been identified as one of the phenomena that has stirred up antisemitic sentiment.
French intellectual Alain Finkielkraut was verbally assaulted in Paris on Saturday by Yellow Vest protesters who called him a “dirty Jew” and a “dirty Zionist sh*t.”
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