‘Dirty Jew, I’m going to kill you’: Man injured in antisemitic attack in Paris suburb
No arrests made; 60-year-old victim wearing a kippah was approached from behind and hit on head, damaging his eye; Jewish leader: ‘How long will this repeated hatred be tolerated?’
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A 67-year-old man wearing a kippah was violently attacked by a man who made antisemitic threats on Saturday in Yerres (Essonne), a suburb south of Paris.
According to a police source, the attack took place around 7:45 a.m. in the town in the northern Essonne region, bordering Val-de-Marne.
“Dirty Jew, I’m going to kill you,” the attacker repeated, according to the source.
“An investigation is underway into the charges of attempted robbery with violence resulting in a total incapacity for work of more than eight days committed on religious grounds and for death threats on religious grounds,” Grégoire Dulin, public prosecutor of Evry, told AFP.
The investigation has been entrusted to the Essonne Territorial Crime Directorate. No arrests have been made at this stage, the magistrate specified.
According to the prosecutor, the victim filed a complaint at 11:30 p.m. on Saturday.
#Antisémitisme : À Yerres (91), un sexagénaire portant la kippa violemment agressé par derrière ce samedi matin. L'attaquant : « Sale Juif, on va te tuer ! » Victime hospitalisée, plainte déposée. Tolérance zéro face à la haine ! #Yerres #Essonne
Source : (@le_Parisien) pic.twitter.com/L0xWPphrHp
— FLAM (@Flam_media) September 28, 2025
The man, who was beaten according to the police source, “is no longer hospitalized” and “has been given a 15-day total work incapacity order,” Dulin said late Sunday afternoon.
“His eye is very, very swollen,” Mendel Gourevitch, director of the yeshiva in Brunoy, a neighboring town of Yerres, told AFP. He described himself as a “close friend” of the victim.
“He had the courage to come to the service this (Sunday) morning,” he noted, “he didn’t want to go into panic and fear.”
“This is the first time” that such an attack has occurred in a relatively “calm” area, the principal added, adding that he was “very surprised” and that “everyone is worried,” including the parents of his school’s students.
“He is very shocked, he wonders where his country is going,” said Benjamin Allouche, president of the Assembly of Jewish Communities of Essonne, told Le Parisienne on Sunday. “For the moment, he is still disoriented and confused.”
Allouche added that “again and again, the Jewish community, French citizens of the Jewish faith, are paying the price for stigmatization. We are being blamed for what is happening (in Gaza) on the right, on the left… This gentleman was out for a walk, he wasn’t claiming anything. He looks like a rabbi, and he was simply attacked because he is Jewish. There was no discussion, not a word before the blows.”
“I can only sympathize,” said Michel Serfaty, the rabbi of Ris-Orangis, also in Essonne. “Today, in France, this is not an extraordinary event,” he lamented to AFP, adding that people should not let it “perpetuate fear and psychosis.”
Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) president Yonathan Arfi took to X on Sunday to decry the “antisemitic aggression in Yerres following those against rabbis in Orléans, Deauville, Neuilly, Levallois in recent months” and to ask “how long will this repeated hatred be tolerated?”
“No one will uproot the Jews from France. But it is high time to uproot the antisemitism that is festering in society, using a conflict 3,000 km away as a pretext,” he said.
He ended by expressing his “support for the victim attacked yesterday and solidarity with their loved ones.”
“We are very traumatized by what happened,” Olivier Clodong, mayor of Yerres, told Le Parisienne. “There seems to be no doubt about the antisemitic attack. We hope there will be no aftereffects, especially in his eye.”
Member of Parliament for Essonne’s 10th constituency, Antoine Léaument, also expressed his “full support” for the victim and his family.
“The insults uttered during this attack leave no doubt as to its antisemitic motive,” he added.
Antisemitic acts have been on the rise in France since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its unprecedented attack against Israel, starting the war in Gaza, which has been ongoing for almost two years.
In the first six months of 2025, 646 antisemitic acts were recorded in the country, according to the Ministry of the Interior, a decrease of 27.5% compared to the first half of 2024, but a jump of 112.5% over the same period in 2023.
The Times of Israel Community.