Paris woman’s nose broken in alleged anti-Semitic assault

A French-Jewish woman tells police that two teenagers robbed and hit her on a main street of Paris suburb, hurling anti-Semitic insults.

The woman, aged 20, says in her complaint to police that the incident happened yesterday in the heavily Jewish suburb of Sarcelles north of Paris, the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, or BNVCA, writes in a statement.

Prying her cellphone out of her hands, the two assailants, whom she says were black, hit her face while saying: “Are you afraid, you Jewess?” she tells police. A passerby intervened, allowing the woman to flee to her home with a broken nose and bloody face, the report says. She was on her way home from work, she also says. The two alleged assailants fled the scene. BNVCA calls on police to investigate and apprehend the suspects.

France has seen an increase of 69 percent in the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the first 10 months of 2018 over the corresponding period last year, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said last month.

In addition to anti-Semitic assaults motivated purely by hate, French Jews have reported an increase in the number of incidents also featuring robbery. Some of the victims were selected because they are Jewish, while others began as random criminal acts before escalating into violent assaults after the perpetrators discovered the Jewish identity of their victims.

— JTA