French authorities on Friday arrested a man originally from Gaza after an assault on a rabbi in a suburb of Paris, the latest in a series of troubling antisemitic incidents that have shaken the Jewish community in France.
Rabbi Elie Lemmel reported that while seated at a café in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb just outside Paris, he was suddenly struck in the head with a chair by an unknown individual.
Earlier in the week, Rabbi Lemmel had posted on social media describing a separate attack in Deauville, Normandy, where he said he was punched in the stomach by someone speaking a language he didn’t recognize. “I received a blow and was insulted in a language I didn’t understand,” he wrote.
The rabbi, who has a large online following, said he had never experienced physical violence before these two assaults.
“Unfortunately, given my beard and my kippah, I suspected that was probably why, and it’s such a shame,” Rabbi Lemmel told Reuters.
France has the largest Jewish population in Europe, with over 440,000 Jews. In 2024, the French Interior Ministry recorded 1,570 antisemitic incidents, which made up the majority of all religion-based hate crimes reported in the country.
“This act disgusts us. I want to express our solidarity with him,” French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal posted on X. “Antisemitism, like all hatred, is a deadly poison for our society. We will always fight it.”
The suspect, currently being held at the Neuilly-sur-Seine police station, was transferred to a hospital following a psychiatric evaluation, according to the prosecutor’s office in Nanterre. Officials said the 28-year-old man was born in Rafah, a city in the Gaza Strip, based on German-language documents found on him. France’s interior minister commented on the situation, tweeting that the individual “had no business being in France.”
Authorities have not confirmed whether the assailant made any statements during the attack.
This incident comes on the heels of a series of assaults on Jewish individuals and institutions in the United States carried out by pro-Palestinian activists, leading some in France to draw parallels.
“To attack a rabbi is to attack the most visible face of the Jewish presence in society,” tweeted Yonathan Arfi, President of CRIF, the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions. He continued, “Let us say it forcefully: nothing, not even solidarity with the Palestinians, will ever justify attacking a rabbi. Hatred of Israel has today become the fuel for hatred of Jews.”
Just three months earlier, another rabbi in France was assaulted—this time the chief rabbi of Orléans, who was attacked and subjected to antisemitic insults while walking with his 9-year-old son on Shabbat. Earlier this week, several Jewish sites in Paris were defaced with green paint, an act widely condemned by French officials, Jewish leaders, and international monitoring groups as a blatant antisemitic provocation.
{Matzav.com}
