French police arrest protesters who allegedly assaulted security at Jewish event
No one is hurt in incident at aliyah fair in Lyon, which saw a similar disruption in December
Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter
Police in Lyon, France arrested several people who assaulted security personnel guarding an event organized by the Jewish Agency for Israel, the organization said.
The incident Tuesday evening ended without serious injury, the France office of the Jewish Agency wrote in a statement.
The altercation followed a pro-Palestinian demonstration that took place earlier Tuesday near the Perrache train and bus station in the second district at the center of the eastern city.
Several hours after that demonstration ended, the Jewish Agency for Israel held an aliyah fair — an event to encourage immigration by Jews to Israel — at a venue in the same district.
About 90 minutes into that event, several pro-Palestinian activists arrived and began assaulting the security guards, leading police to intervene, the French-language statement said.
“At no point did the assailants enter the venue and none of the participants was in any danger,” the statement said. No protesters were present on the street when the fair ended and participants left the venue “in total safety,” the statement said.
Ofir Sofer, Israel’s minister for aliyah and integration, said in a statement: “I take very seriously the antisemitic assault during the Aliyah fair in Lyon and call on the French government to act firmly against antisemitism and the supporters of [Hamas commander] Yahya Sinwar and the October 7 massacres.”
More than 3,000 people have attended a series of aliyah fairs in Paris, Marseille and Lyon this week, Sofer said. The Jewish Agency expects some 3,200 new immigrants, or olim, to move to Israel this year, more than three times last year’s tally, Jewish Agency representative Shay Felver said Monday at a Knesset committee discussion about aliyah.
Ariel Kandel, the head of the Qualita nonprofit for encouraging aliyah from France, told The Times of Israel that a similar incident happened in Lyon during an aliyah fair in December. “Unfortunately, this is the current reality in France,” he said.
In 2023, France registered the highest increase in recorded antisemitic incidents of any country with reliable statistics, according to a report published earlier this month by Tel Aviv University and the Anti-Defamation League. The report showed a near-quadrupling of incidents in France, from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 last year.
On May 17, a synagogue was torched in Rouen, France, in what police suspect was an antisemitic hate crime.
The 2023 tally showed that 74 percent of the incidents happened after October 7, when invading Hamas terrorists killed some 1,200 people in Israel and abducted another 252, triggering a still-ongoing military campaign by Israel in Gaza and daily exchanges of fire with Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon.
“The war in Israel, along with the atmosphere of antisemitism and the thousands of incidents targeting French Jews, is prompting an unprecedented desire among French Jews to make aliyah and help the war effort,” Kandel said in a statement Monday.
Hamas’s health ministry in Gaza accuses Israel of killing about 35,000 people, a toll that cannot be independently verified. The UN says some 24,000 fatalities have been identified at hospitals. The rest of the total figure is based on murkier Hamas “media reports.” It also includes some 15,000 terror operatives Israel says it has killed in battle. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
In multiple cities in France, Europe, North America and beyond, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrators hold weekly rallies accusing Israel of genocide and other crimes.
