A 67-year-old Jewish man was assaulted in the French town of Yerres (Essonne) on Saturday morning, local media reported on Sunday evening.
According to reports, Gilles Cohen, who was wearing a kippah, was on his way back from the mikveh when he was ambushed from behind and beaten.
The attacker shouted “Dirty Jew, we will kill you!” before searching Cohen in an attempt to “find money and the keys to the synagogue.”
The Évry prosecutor’s office told TF1-LCI that a passerby intervened and rescued Cohen.
Antoine Léaument, LFI MP for the constituency, said, “The insults uttered during this attack leave no doubt about his antisemitic motive. The perpetrator of this heinous attack must be found and tried.”
Attack echoes many similar ones
Yonathan Arfi, the President of CRIF, noted that the attack echoes many similar ones, including attacks on rabbis in Orléans, Deauville, Neuilly, and Levallois in recent months.
“No one will uproot the Jews from France,” he said. “But it is high time to uproot the antisemitism that is festering in society, using a conflict 3,000 km away as a pretext.”
The Évry public prosecutor confirmed to TF1-LCI that an investigation is underway for attempted violent theft resulting in more than eight days of total incapacity for work, committed on religious grounds, and for death threats made on religious grounds.
“His eye is very, very swollen,” Mendel Gourevitch, director of the yeshiva in Brunoy, a commune near Yerres, told AFP.
Gourevitch claimed that Cohen still had the courage to come and attend the Sunday morning service.
