Paris
ParisFlash 90

While investigators have yet to officially classify last week’s brutal abduction and kidnapping of two Jewish brothers as an anti-Semitic attack, relatives of the victims, Natanel and Yaakov Azoulay, say the motivation of the attackers is clear.

Last Tuesday night the two brothers were forced to stop while driving in Bondy, a Paris suburb where the family lives. Several men described as Middle Eastern in appearance dragged the brothers from their car to a nearby building.

The assailants beat and kicked the two, threatening to murder them if they resisted or attempted to flee. One of the attackers brought a saw, which he used to cut off one of his victim’s fingers.

The parents of the victims, Bellah and Armand Azoulay, spoke with Israel’s Channel 10 in an interview aired Sunday and described the attack.

“They threatened my son with a saw,” said Armand, “they put a saw to his throat. It was because of his kippah. They told him ‘Dirty Jew, we’re going to kill you’.”

“The boys are still traumatized,” said Bellah.

Armand added that the motivation for the attack was clear.

“They wanted to murder them. It wasn’t because of a traffic dispute – they wanted to shed Jewish blood.”

"This was an anti-Semitic attack in all its manifestations," ​​Armand repeated to i24News.