A Palestinian man was arrested in Paris on Friday on suspicion of committing an antisemitic assault against a rabbi. It was the second assault against Rabbi Elie Lemmel within the space of eight days.
Passersby detained the 28-year-old suspect, a Palestinian who was staying in France illegally, close to where the assault occurred in Neuilly-sur-Seine, an affluent suburb west of Paris, Le Figaro reported. Police then apprehended him.
Authorities are treating the case as a possible antisemitic attack. The rabbi had been targeted eight days before the incident in a separate attack in the placid coastal town of Deauville. Both towns have sizable Jewish populations.
Lemmel was sitting at a café terrace with an acquaintance in Neuilly-sur-Seine on Friday when the attacker came up to him from behind, Le Figaro reported. “I didn’t immediately know what had happened, I was on the floor and bleeding,” Lemmel later told Reuters.
He needed immediate hospitalization. The rabbi, in his sixties, sustained a visible hematoma but was declared in stable condition after undergoing a CT scan.
The attacker, born in Rafah and currently residing in Germany under a temporary suspension of deportation status, was found to be in France illegally. He was unknown to the French police before the incident.
According to the Nanterre prosecutor’s office, a psychiatric evaluation later in the day resulted in his involuntary admission to a hospital.
“It’s heartbreaking to find myself in such a situation here in France,” Lemmel told the RTL broadcaster.
In Deauville, three intoxicated individuals punched Lemmel in the stomach and fled, he had told police. That incident is currently under investigation for “violence without incapacity committed due to religion,” according to Le Figaro.
Jewish community leaders and political figures quickly condemned Friday’s assault. The Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) denounced the act as “antisemitic” and “deeply symbolic,” pointing to growing concerns about visible Jewish presence in public spaces. CRIF President Yonathan Arfi, who spoke with the rabbi after the attack, emphasized that such violence is part of a broader societal threat: “Targeting a rabbi is an attack on the Jewish community as a whole. It’s meant to silence or hide Jewish identity.”
Government officials also reacted with urgency. French Prime Minister François Bayrou lamented the increasing frequency of hate-based confrontations in the country, whether against Muslims or Jews. “There is only one policy to pursue—firm and authoritative—to prevent society from collapsing,” he stated. French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau praised the civilians who helped apprehend the attacker and declared via a post on X that “the perpetrator, who had no business being in France, must be punished and removed.”
In 2024, the Service for the Protection of the Jewish Community in France (SPCJ) recorded 1,570 antisemitic acts in the country, a 6.3% decrease from 2023. That year, SPCJ documented an increase of 284% in antisemitic hate crimes over the previous year. About three-quarters of the 2023 incidents happened in that year’s final quarter.