One arrest has been made and a suspect detained by Paris police so far in the the gang beating of a 13-year-old Jewish boy last Monday (July 6) after he left the Colonel Fabien Jewish Day School.
The traumatized victim, who has not been identified due to his age and the risk such identification poses, spent his Sabbath trying to recuperate from the trauma of the beating he received at the hands of six teens possibly of “African descent.”
The boy was attacked by the gang after leaving the building in the 19th arondissement, near Gare du Nord train station, according to the Bureau National de Vigilance Contre l’Antisémitisme (BNVCA).
Sammy Ghozlan, president of the watchdog organization, issued a statement condemning the attack. “He was spotted as a Jew because he was wearing a kippa,” the group said in a statement on its website.
“Take that, dirty Jew!” one of the attackers shouted at him while they were beating him, the victim told investigators. One of the members of the group also stole his cell phone before they fled the scene.
The boy was taken to a hospital where he was treated for head injuries and received stitches. Police have made one arrest so far, according to the BNVCA. The group urged the boy’s parents to file a formal complaint and also “asked police to launch a full investigation and arrest all the attackers in the case.”
The number of violent anti-Semitic attacks in France more than doubled last year, rising from 105 to 241 between 2013 and 2014. Anti-Semitic incidents as a whole also doubled, rising from 423 to 851 over the same period.
Anti-Semitism in Europe has risen in Belgium, Britain and the Netherlands as well.