French rabbi tells of two attacks in one week as hate crimes rise
PARIS, June 6 (Reuters) - A French rabbi was attacked on Friday for the second time in a week, he told Reuters, reflecting a broad rise in hate crimes across France that has included high-profile anti-Semitic assaults.
Elie Lemmel said he was sitting at a cafe in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine on Friday when he was hit in the head by a chair.
"I found myself on the ground, I immediately felt blood flowing," he said.
He was stunned and unsure what exactly had happened, he said, initially thinking something must have fallen from a window or roof, before it occurred to him he had been attacked.
"Unfortunately, given my beard and my kippah, I suspected that was probably why, and it's such a shame," he said.
Friday's incident follows another in the town of Deauville in Normandy last week, when Lemmel said he was punched in the stomach by an unknown assailant.
Lemmel said he was used to "not-so-friendly looks, some unpleasant words, people passing by, spitting on the ground," but had never been physically assaulted before the two attacks.
The prosecutor's office in Nanterre said it had opened an investigation into the Neuilly attack for aggravated violence and that a person was being held for questioning. It said it could not provide further details.
"This act sickens us," former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal wrote on X regarding Friday's incident involving Lemmel. "Antisemitism, like all forms of hatred, is a deadly poison for our society."
Last week, five Jewish institutions were sprayed with green paint in Paris.
"I condemn in the strongest possible terms the anti-Semitic attack that targeted a rabbi in Neuilly today. Attacking a person because of their faith is a shame. The increase in anti-religious acts requires the mobilization of everyone," Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said in a post on X.
France has seen a rise in hate crimes. Last year, police recorded an 11% rise in racist, xenophobic or antireligious crimes, according to official data published in March. The figures did not include a breakdown by attacks on different religions.
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It can be as simple as just thinking 'something is wrong here' like a war for example, but the emotional priority is to belong to the cause.' Perhaps the most infamous example of student entitlement was recorded during the Columbia tent encampment, with the appearance of Johannah King-Slutzky as its spokesperson. King-Slutzky, a PhD English student and the daughter of psychologists, warned that students illegally occupying university property could 'die of dehydration and starvation' if they were not given supplies. The protests have raised the ire of the Trump administration, which sees the demonstrations as evidence that universities such as Columbia and Harvard are gripped by a 'woke' elite complicit in the radicalisation of their students. The US president threatened to redirect $3 billion in Harvard research grants last week, following a decision to suspend foreign students from enrolling. 'Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect,' he said. 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