French police arrested a 45-year-old man on Wednesday, suspected of assaulting a 70-year-old Jew in the town of Anduze while shouting antisemitic profanities at the victim.
The suspect harassed and then hit the victim on a street of the picturesque town 30 miles north of Montpellier, the France Bleu news site reported. Police quickly apprehended him and he remains in custody until his first court hearing on Monday. The suspect was intoxicated during the assault, according to some reports.
The suspect shouted “Dirty Jew” before striking the victim, according to the report on Thursday.
Locals assisted the victim, a long-time resident of Anduze. A physician examined the victim at the medico-legal unit in Nîmes and he has since filed a formal complaint.
Mayor Geneviève Blanc called the attack a “clearly antisemitic assault.” She emphasized that such violence does not reflect the values or daily life of the town. A politician for the Ecologists, the French left-leaning green party, Blanc proceeded to tie the incident not only to antisemitism, but also to hatred of Muslims.
“This attacker reflects something of the atmosphere in our society, which stigmatizes Jews, Muslims and foreigners,” she wrote in her statement.
Critics have accused the Ecologists party of fanning the flames of antisemitism in France with inflammatory rhetoric on Israel. In January, the party published a statement that accused Israel of perpetrating “15 months of massacres, after 16 years of a blockade” in Gaza, and called for European Union sanctions on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Last year saw the most antisemitic physical assaults in France in more than a decade, with 106 reported cases documented by the SPCJ (Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive). Most antisemitic incidents in France are perpetrated by Muslims or people from Muslim-majority countries or backgrounds, according to the BNVCA (Bureau national de vigilance contre l’antisémitisme).
The total number of antisemitic acts recorded last year—1,570—has slightly decreased from the 1,676 reported the previous year, but the 2024 tally is still one of the highest on record. In the years 2012-2022, France saw an average of 540 antisemitic incidents annually.
The Hamas-led murders of Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel triggered an increase in antisemitic rhetoric and violence in France. In the month that followed the attacks, more than 1,000 antisemitic acts were documented in France, then-Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said.
