The UN General Assembly opened a special session on the rise of anti-Semitism worldwide, two weeks after Islamist attacks in Paris that shocked the world.

French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy is to deliver the keynote address during the daylong meeting and the French and German ministers for Europe, Harlem Desir and Michael Roth, are to make statements.

The meeting was scheduled before the attacks on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Paris kosher supermarket but the gathering has taken on a fresh sense of urgency in the wake of the violence.

Four Jews were killed during an attack on January on a kosher supermarket in Paris that followed the slaying of 12 people in the assault on the Charlie Hebdo weekly.

Thirty-seven countries including Israel, the United States, all 28 countries of the European Union, Canada and Australia requested the meeting in October.