When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invited all French Jewry to come to Israel, a nation of immigrants, declaring they would be welcomed with “open arms,” he stirred a reprisal from critics who said he was exploiting the situation and would do better to call for tighter security for the roughly 500,000 Jews in France.

But with growing manifestations of anti-Semitism and an economic downswing in France, the number of French Jews making aliyah — the Hebrew term for immigration — had already spiked over the last year. Out of a total of nearly 80,000 French immigrants since the early 1970s, nearly 7,000 came in 2014 alone.

For the first time, French Jews constituted the largest portion of immigrants that year from any country in the world, according to Israel’s Ministry of Immigration and Absorption. While Jerusalem and the southern coastal city of Ashdod are also popular with French newcomers, the largest number last year, 2,000, made their home in Netanya, a city of about 200,000.

Victor Atiya, 51, the owner of La Brioche and a native of Netanya, said he transformed his ordinary cafe, formerly called the Peacock Bar, into a French patisserie two years ago to cater to the growing French crowd, bringing pastry chefs from France. The French immigrants were “quality people,” he said, who only improved the surroundings.