Stars of David spray-painted on buildings in Paris, heightening fears among Jews
Aim is to ‘terrify’ and recall Holocaust, says Jewish student leader; suburb mayor decries acts as contrary to ‘tolerance and mutual respect,’ another files complaint
PARIS, France — Paris has seen Stars of David stencils painted on buildings again overnight, residents said Tuesday, as fears mount over the targeting of Jews amid the war between Israel and Hamas sparked by the terror group’s devastating October 7 assault on the Jewish State.
The Jewish symbol was painted in multiple spots across several building fronts in a southern district of the French capital.
Similar tags appeared over the weekend in suburbs of the city, including Vanves, Fontenay-aux-Roses and Aubervilliers.
In another nearby town of Saint-Ouen, they were accompanied by inscriptions such as “Palestine will overcome.”
The Union of Jewish Students of France said they were designed to mirror the way Jews were forced by the Nazi regime to wear yellow stars.
“This act of marking recalls the processes of the 1930s and the Second World War which led to the extermination of millions of Jews,” its president Samuel Lejoyeux told AFP.
“The people who did this clearly wanted to terrify,” he added.
The mayor of Aubervilliers, Karine Franclet, condemned the graffiti as being “in total contradiction with the fundamental values that we hold, including tolerance, equality and mutual respect, particularly in the current context.”
Saint-Ouen town hall has made a complaint to the public prosecutor.
“The perpetrators must be prosecuted and punished by the courts with the greatest severity and intransigence,” said Mayor Karim Bouamrane on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The incidents mirrored events in Berlin where Stars of David have also been recently found scrawled at the entrances of buildings with Jewish residents.
They came amid a spike in antisemitism around the world as Israel fights a fierce war against the Hamas terror group, some 2,500 of whose gunmen burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip earlier this month by land, air and sea, killing over 1,400 people and seizing some 245 hostages of all ages under the cover of a deluge of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities.
The vast majority of those killed as gunmen seized border communities were civilians — including babies, children and the elderly. Entire families were executed in their homes, and over 260 people were slaughtered at an outdoor festival, many amid horrific acts of brutality by the terrorists.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and remove it from power in Gaza. The IDF has carried out intensive strikes on Gaza saying it is hitting terror targets while striving to minimize civilian casualties. Hamas and other terror groups have continued to barrage Israel with rockets, displacing over 200,000 people from their homes while over a million are repeatedly forced to run to bomb shelters.
As the war rages on, there have been demonstrations in support of both sides in cities around the world.
Earlier this month, a global task force against antisemitism warned that already rising antisemitism due to the war was likely to spread.
The so-called J7, representing the six largest national Jewish communities outside of Israel along with the US-based Anti-Defamation League, called on governments to take a clear stance against antisemitism while also working to protect and secure their Jewish communities.
Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry has reported over 8,500 deaths from Israel’s strikes. The figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza and Israel, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. Israel says it killed some 1,500 Hamas terrorists inside Israel on and after October 7.
