PARIS: A Palestinian man was taken into custody after he threw a chair at a rabbi on a cafe terrace in a wealthy Paris suburb, a police source told AFP, in an attack France’s main Jewish association condemned as antisemitic.
According to the source, the suspect attacked Rabbi Elie Lemmel in the western Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Lemmel, who wore a traditional kippah cap and a long beard, was taken to hospital with a head injury.
The assailant was arrested.
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The attacker is a Palestinian man residing illegally in Germany, said a source close to the case, adding that the man benefits from a status that offers a form of protection for people who cannot be deported to a conflict zone.
An investigation has been launched into aggravated assault, prosecutors said.
The rabbi said he had been attacked twice in the space of a week. Last Friday he was attacked in the northwestern town of Deauville when three drunk individuals hit him in the stomach.
On Friday, the rabbi was talking to a person he had arranged to meet when he was attacked, receiving “a huge blow to the head”.
“I fell to the ground and heard people shouting ‘stop him’, and I realised that I had just been attacked,” he told broadcaster BFMTV.
“I am very afraid that we are living in a world where words are generating more and more evil,” he said.
The French Jewish community, one of the largest in the world, has faced a number of attacks and desecrations of memorials since the Gaza war erupted on October 7, 2023.
In January, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) deplored what it called a “historic” level of antisemitic acts.
While welcoming the fact that attack was not fatal, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou deplored “the radicalisation of public debate.”
“Day after day, our country is plagued by clashes fuelled by hatred,” he told reporters, also pointing to assaults against “our Muslim compatriots”.
The CRIF condemned “in the strongest possible terms the anti-Semitic attack on the rabbi”.
“In a general context where hatred of Israel fuels the stigmatisation of Jews on a daily basis, this attack is yet another illustration of the toxic climate targeting French Jews,” the CRIF said on X.
Yonathan Arfi, the CRIF president, said: “Nothing, not even solidarity with the Palestinians, can ever justify attacking a rabbi.”
France’s Holocaust memorial, three Paris synagogues and a restaurant were vandalised with paint last week.
A judge has charged three Serbs with vandalising the Jewish sites “to serve the interests of a foreign power”, a judicial source said on Friday.
In 2024, a total of 1,570 antisemitic acts were recorded in France, according to the interior ministry.
Officials say the number of such crimes has increased in the wake of the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 by Palestinian militant group Hamas, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people.
The attack was followed by relentless Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which the Hamas-run health ministry has said resulted in the deaths of at least 54,677 people, and an aid blockade.
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