A Jewish boy was beaten by teen-age assailants in a suburb of Paris in what French prosecutors are calling an anti-Semitic attack.
The boy, 8, was wearing a kippa while walking to a tutor on Tuesday afternoon in the Sarcelles suburb of Paris when two assailants, about 15 years old, knocked him to the ground and beat him, the French news agency AFP reported.
It is the second attack on a Jewish child in the same area this month. On January 10, a 15-year-old Jewish girl was slashed in the face while walking home from school, wearing the uniform of her Jewish private school.
French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the incident Tuesday night on Twitter. “An 8-year-old boy was attacked today in Sarcelles. Because he was wearing a kippa. Every time a citizen is attacked because of his age, his appearance or his religion, the whole country is being attacked,” Macron tweeted.
“And it is the whole country that stands, especially today, alongside the French Jews to fight each of these despicable acts, with them and for them.”
Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said in a statement late Tuesday that investigators suspect the incident was motivated by anti-Semitism.
Earlier in January, two kosher shops in Creteil, another suburb of Paris, were torched two weeks after the same shops were attacked by individuals who painted swastikas on their facades.
Aliya to Israel has averaged 5000 French Jews per year for the past several years, with 40% of French Jews, out of a Jewish population of 450,000 seriously considering the option of moving to israel due to increasing anti-Semitism..