Police arrested four people, two of them illegal immigrants, in the Paris no-go suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis on suspicion of assaulting a Jewish family which was celebrating Hanukkah.
The incident took place in the commune of Aubervilliers, Seine-Saint-Denis, on Thursday at around 8:40 pm when the Jewish family was in their vehicle listening to Hebrew music and “messages of peace”.
According to a report by broadcaster France Bleu, a group of people yelling antisemitic slurs approached the family, proceeding to shake the car and throw glass bottles at the vehicle.
Jewish Population of Paris Suburbs Rapidly Decreasing https://t.co/N3FDNG9NEA
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 22, 2019
Two fo the four suspects are said to be illegal adult migrants and the two others were minors, according to investigators.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin condemned the attack, writing: “Yesterday evening, in the middle of Hanukkah, a family from Aubervilliers was insulted and attacked because they were Jewish. In France, in 2020.”
“The perpetrators were arrested very quickly by the police. They should be punished commensurate with the gravity of these facts,” Mr Darmanin added.
For years, the heavily migrant-populated Seine-Saint-Denis has had a problem with antisemitism to the extent that in 2017 it was reported that members of the Jewish community were leaving the neighbourhood entirely.
“It’s hard to explain, it’s provocations, it’s looks,” a local synagogue president said and added: “There are places where we do not feel welcome.”
France: Anti-Semitic Incidents Up 73 Percent in 2018 https://t.co/Nvwz1CcBIt
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 14, 2019
In 2019, Jerome Fourquet, director of polling firm Ifop, stated that over the last 15 years, the number of Jews fleeing the area due to antisemitism had soared.
“Over fifteen years, numbers of Jewish populations or families have collapsed in a series of municipalities from Seine-Saint-Denis,” Mr Fourquet said.
“In Aulnay-sous-Bois, the number of families of Jewish faith has thus decreased from 600 to 100, at Blanc-Mesnil from 300 to 100, in Clichy-sous-Bois from 400 to at 80 and at La Courneuve from 300 to 80,” he added.
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