A 65-year-old Jewish man was violently attacked and his Star of David necklace was ripped from his neck in Livry-Gargan, Paris.
According to the complaint filed with the French police, Dov Sitruk was walking alone down the street wearing a kippah on Saturday when a car with three people stopped next to him.
Two of them got out of the vehicle, asking him for directions, but then, out of nowhere, they began hitting him in the face, pushing him, and grabbing his collar. After this, they tore his gold Star of David necklace from his neck.
Sitruk was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance and then referred to the Forensic Medicine Unit (UMJ) for further examinations and an assessment.
He reported being left after the assault with bruises to his left eye and swelling.
Attack in Val-d'Oise
Also on Saturday, a French Jewish man wearing a kippah was attacked on the street in Soisy-sous-Montmorency in Val-d’Oise, north of Paris.
At around 11 a.m., the attacker approached the man and asked if he was Jewish. When the man replied that he was, “the individual insulted him, attacked him, and hit him,” Nathalie Cohen-Beizermann, vice president of French Jewish umbrella organization CRIF, told CNews.
Cohen-Beizermann confirmed that the aggressor is known to the judicial services.
According to Le Journal du Dimanche, the victim was not injured physically, and the attacker has been arrested. The police station of Enghien-les-Bains has been put in charge of the investigation.
Attack in Lyon
On Wednesday, August 6, a Jewish couple in Lyon was threatened. They feared for their lives as they were met with verbal abuse after coming out of a restaurant in the Brotteaux district.
According to French media, two individuals shouted, “Dirty Jews,” at the couple. The suspects were later arrested by the police.
The city’s mayor, Grégory Doucet, condemned the “antisemitic attack,” which he said has “no place in Lyon.”
“I send all my support to the victims, their loved ones, and the entire Jewish community of Lyon,” said the mayor.
However, only one week later, on Wednesday, August 13, the Lyon public prosecutor’s office announced that it had closed the case into the antisemitic assault “after an investigation,” based on the “evidence available to the prosecutor’s office.”
It found that an altercation broke out between four individuals, the prosecutor said, adding that the two people taken into custody denied that the incident had any antisemitic nature.
Citing insufficient evidence, the case was then closed with no further action taken.
“There is an explosion of antisemitic acts and threats; the Israel-Hamas conflict has been transposed onto our soil,” Richard Zelmati of the CRIF Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes told Actu Lyon.
“The unbridled antisemitism is worrying French Jews,” he added.