Artist wearing 'Israel' T-shirt attacked in France
One of the attackers stole the young graffiti artist's spray paint and wrote on the ground "forbidden to Jews and bitches."
By SARAH CHEMLAA FRENCH gendarme inspects swastikas painted on a wall of a former synagogue turned into a cultural center in Mommenheim near Strasbourg.(photo credit: REUTERS)
A young Jewish graffiti artist who was wearing a T-shirt with the word "Israel" was approached and pushed by a group of individuals on Wednesday afternoon in Strasbourg, France.The young man, under contract with the city of Strasbourg, was decorating an electric box on Léon-Blum Street, when he was attacked by several people.He was pushed around by the group, which ordered him to leave the area.One of the attackers, particularly virulent, told him, "you're a Jews, and you have nothing to do here", asking him to "go change" his t-shirt, what the graffiti artist did.The young man, after changing, returned to finish his work but was approached by the same man who this time was alone, and who stole his spray paint and wrote on the ground "forbidden to Jews and bitches."The victim, "very traumatized", left and warned his person in charge at the town hall of Strasbourg, said the lawyer.The person in charge came where the attack happened and took a photograph of the antisemitic inscriptions, before being himself threatened by the attacker still around who ordered him to "clear the place."The police verified the facts at the scene and launched an investigation.No arrests have taken place yet but the police said they will use the CCTV images for the investigation.The artist filed a complaint to the police on Thursday morning for "threats" and "racial insults," according to his lawyer.
"The police services are mobilized and are carrying out (...) the needed investigations to apprehend the perpetrator(s), within the framework of an investigation opened by the Prosecutor's Office of Strasbourg", indicated in a press release from the Prefect of Bas-Rhin, Josiane Chevalier, who "strongly condemned this intolerable act.""Incitement to hatred of Israel is the essential source of contemporary antisemitism. This aggression provides further clear proof of it," said Sammy Ghozlan, the President of the National Office for Vigilance Against Antisemitism (BNVCA).In a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron, the Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations head Dr. Shimon Samuels listed all the antisemitic and anti-Zionist attacks that have occurred in France in the last week alone, saying that "the exponential growth of Jew hate-mongering in France, under the cover of the virus pandemic, requires firm steps from the Elysée Palace for rapid identification, arraignment and incarceration of the perpetrators.”
