French court sentences man who hit Jew on train to suspended term

JTA — A French court this week handed a six-month suspended jail sentence to a young man who attacked a Jewish train passenger.

The Sept. 10 ruling by the criminal court of Lyon was the result of a complaint filed by the SPCJ, the French Jewish community’s watchdog against anti-Semitism.

The aggressor, who was not identified by name in French media, hit a man wearing a kippah on Jan. 26, 2011, aboard a train traveling from Paris to Lyon.

“You Jews with your skullcaps, you think you run the world,” he said, adding profanities. The aggressor then followed the Jewish man to the train bar, making derogatory remarks about him, his mother, father “and your whole race.” He then hit the man in the chest.

The SPCJ said it welcomed the sentence.

In July, two men of North African descent exchanged blows with a Jewish teenager aboard a train from Toulouse to Lyon. The teenager said one of them, Yassine Salhi, had made anti-Semitic remarks. That case is currently being investigated by French prosecutors.

SPCJ has documented more than 90 anti-Semitic incidents in the 10 days that followed the March 19 shooting in Toulouse, in which a Muslim extremist killed three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school.