Jewish schoolboy assaulted at Paris bus stop

JTA — Two men hit and threatened a Jewish schoolboy at a Paris bus stop, according to the security unit of France’s Jewish community, SPCJ.

The two men, both in their 40s, hit the 12-year-old boy with a belt on Oct. 22 and told him to remain silent, SPCJ wrote in a statement on Wednesday. The boy was waiting for a bus to take him to school.

The attackers also hurled insults in Arabic at the boy, the report said. The incident, which SPCJ defined as “an anti-Semitic act of aggression,” took place in northeast Paris, in the city’s 19th arrondissement.

The parents have filed a complaint with the police and with the SPCJ, the unit’s report said.

In the first eight months of 2012, SPCJ counted 386 of what it calls “anti-Semitic acts,” the organization said in a report published earlier this month. It was a 45 percent increase compared to the corresponding period in 2011, when SPCJ counted 266 such incidents. SPCJ said the figures correlated to official data by French authorities.

Of the incidents this year, 101 were “violent actions,” SPCJ said, including the slaying of four people at a school in Toulouse on March 19 by Mohammed Merah, a Muslim extremist. The attack triggered “an explosion” of anti-Semitic attacks, SPCJ said. Most other incidents documented were cases of intimidation, the report said.