French police detained a person initially from Gaza on June 6 after a rabbi was attacked in a Paris suburb, capping per week of antisemitic incidents elevating alarm amongst French Jews.
Rabbi Elie Lemmel was sitting at a restaurant within the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine on June 6 when he mentioned he was hit within the head by somebody wielding a chair. Earlier within the week, he had posted on social media that he had been punched within the abdomen by an unknown assailant within the city of Deauville in Normandy, writing, “I obtained a blow and was insulted in a language I didn’t perceive.”
Previous to the 2 incidents, the rabbi — who has hundreds of followers on social media — mentioned he had by no means been bodily assaulted.
“Sadly, given my beard and my kippah, I suspected that was most likely why, and it’s such a disgrace,” Lemmel informed Reuters.
France is dwelling to over 440,000 Jews, essentially the most of any European nation. In accordance with knowledge from the French Inside Ministry, the nation noticed 1,570 antisemitic acts in 2024, accounting for over half of the religion-based hate crimes within the nation.
“This act disgusts us. I wish to categorical our solidarity with him,” French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, whose father was Jewish, mentioned in a put up on X. “Antisemitism, like all hatred, is a lethal poison for our society. We are going to at all times battle it.”
A person being held for questioning on the Neuilly-sur-Seine police station was hospitalized following a psychiatric examination, in line with the prosecutor’s workplace in Nanterre. The workplace mentioned the 28-year-old man was born within the metropolis of Rafah within the Gaza Strip, in line with German-language paperwork present in his possession. France’s inside minister tweeted that he “had no enterprise being in France.”
It was not clear whether or not the alleged attacker mentioned something through the incident.
The incident follows a number of assaults on Jewish targets in america by pro-Palestinian activists. Some in France tied the assault on Lemmel to the pattern.
“To assault a rabbi is to assault essentially the most seen face of the Jewish presence in society,” Arfi tweeted, including, “Allow us to say it forcefully: nothing, not even solidarity with the Palestinians, will ever justify attacking a rabbi. Hatred of Israel has right now turn into the gas for hatred of Jews.”
The incident follows one other assault on a rabbi in France in March by which the chief rabbi of the French metropolis Orléans was bodily assaulted and referred to as antisemitic slurs whereas strolling together with his 9-year-old son on Shabbat. Not too long ago, a number of Jewish websites in Paris have been vandalized with inexperienced paint, in what French Jews, worldwide watchdogs and native authorities all mentioned they seen as an antisemitic assault.
For more information, go to JTA.org.