Live UpdateFrom the Liveblog of Thursday, September 1, 2022

Funeral held in Israel for French Jewish man killed in suspected antisemitic attack

1 September 2022, 2:07 pm Edit

The funeral for a Jewish man who killed in a recent antisemitic attack near Paris is being held in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.

Eyal Haddad, 34, was killed in Longperrier, just northeast of Paris, on August 20. His neighbor, a Muslim man identified as Mohamed Dridi, confessed to killing him with an axe and attempting to burn and bury the body, according to a statement this week by the National Bureau of Vigilance against Antisemitism (BNVCA).

The BNVCA said the suspect turned himself in to the police and told officers that Haddad, who lived next door to him, owed him 100 euros and had not returned them. He later also confessed that he had killed Haddad because he was Jewish.

Haddad, who was originally from Tunisia, also had Israeli citizenship.

“He was killed because he was Jewish. He did not owe money or anything,” Haddad’s brother Elior tells Channel 12 news.

The chief rabbi of Beersheba says Haddad’s murder “was not only a tragedy for the Haddad family, but the entire [Jewish] community.”

“The antisemitism in France does not spare any Jew there. Eyal was merciful and compassionate,” Rabbi Yehuda Deri says.

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