A 15-year-old Jewish boy was violently assaulted and humiliated at knifepoint by antisemites in a suburb of Toulouse.
By Rachel Avraham
The Combat Antisemitism Movement recently reported, “a 15-year-old Jewish boy was violently assaulted and humiliated at knifepoint last week in the southwestern commune of Colomiers, a suburb of Toulouse. The teen, who attends a private Jewish school, was reportedly meeting a girl he had connected with over social media. When he arrived, he was ambushed by two men waiting outside a basement entrance. One of the attackers brandished a knife, made the boy strip off his shirt, and forced him to dance while filming the abuse.”
According to the report, “the assailant then grabbed the boy by the neck, forced him to kneel, and ordered him to “beg and pray,” repeatedly calling him a “dirty Jew.” The attacker threatened to kill the teen if he contacted police. The video of the assault was later posted on TikTok, further compounding the victim’s trauma.”
Algeimeiner reported that using the attackers’ TikTok accounts, the victim was able to file a formal complaint. According to the report, on Friday, local police arrested one of the suspects who posted the video, according to the French broadcaster Europe 1. He was taken into custody on charges of aggravated assault motivated by religious hatred, Algeimeiner added. According to the report, as of this week, the investigation is ongoing, with authorities actively searching for the remaining suspects.
Philippe Bodin, a prominent French right-wing activist, noted on X similarities between the case and the abduction and murder of Ilan Halimi in 2006, a harbinger of the antisemitic murders and assaults that have been directed at French Jews for about 20 years, JNS reported. “Same fake-date setup that led to Ilan Halimi’s murder, fortunately without the fatal outcome. Macron’s France, anti-white or antisemitic racism,” Bodin wrote on X.
And near Nantes in western France on May 28, a Jewish woman was accosted, JNS reported. The woman, who spoke to Cnews under the condition of anonymity, had entered a café bar near her home, whose owners knew her and that she was Jewish, that evening, JNS noted. According to the report, the owner’s son asked her whether she was “not ashamed of her origins” in light of “the genocide in Gaza,” she told Cnews.
She told him she was not ashamed of being Jewish and an Israeli citizen and that the only act of genocide happened on Oct. 7, 2023, she recounted, JNS noted. She then left the place but the owner’s son followed her out, calling her a “dirty whore” and “dirty Jew,” she said. According to JNS, he also said: “We need to finish Hitler’s job,” she said.
According to JNS, she entered a nearby shop to get away from the owner’s son but he followed her in, where she filmed him screaming, “Dirty whore, I will f***k your mother. You’re filming? We’ll steal your cell, you dirty whore,” according to the recording viewed by Cnews. Turning to another person, the assailant is heard saying: “Walid, take her cell, wallah [‘by God’ in Arabic].” The woman, her husband and her children have decided to leave France, JNS reported. “I don’t want the violence anymore. I live in fear and don’t want my children to experience this,” she said.
Both incidents occurred around the time that the French authorities sentenced two teenagers to nine and seven years in prison over the gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl last year outside Paris, Le Monde noted. According to the report, the presiding judge justified the harsh sentence against the two boys as being due to their “worrying” personalities, “the immense social disturbance” they caused to society, and the crime being committed on religious grounds. Le Monde noted that she undoubtedly “would not have been raped if she had not been Jewish,” the judge said at a juvenile court in Nanterre, a western Paris suburb. However, the third suspect, who was charged with being an accomplice to the gang rape, won’t serve time in jail because of his age when he committed the crime. Instead, the French authorities are placing him in foster care and mandating that he be monitored by professionals for the next five years.
This comes after earlier this month, French Rabbi Elie Lemmel was physically assaulted twice in one week in public. Other recent incidents in France included the defacement of five Jewish-linked sites in Paris — including a national Holocaust memorial, three synagogues, and an Israeli restaurant — with green paint.
According to the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), 1,570 antisemitic incidents were reported across France in the first months of 2024 — following a record-breaking 1,676 in 2023. According to the Combat Antisemitism Movement, these figures reflect a stark and sustained rise in Jew-hatred, up from just 436 incidents in 2022. Alarmingly, CRIF reports that more than 65% of last year’s antisemitic incidents targeted individuals directly, with over 10% involving physical violence.
Following these incidents, Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) Advisor on European Affairs Shannon Seban commented, “What can I say? It’s like a bad movie… but it’s true. An unbearable reality, where not a day goes by without news of a new antisemitic attack. An antisemitism that is becoming commonplace, almost ‘trendy’ in certain circles, fueled and trivialized by a segment of the political class. It is high time that the fight against antisemitism be elevated to a major national cause. Before it’s too late.”
