Paris, 10 September 2017

In a letter to French Interior Minister, Gérard Collomb, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, expressed horror at “the latest anti-Semitic assault on a Jewish family in their own home in the Paris suburb of Livry-Gargan.”

He noted that “savagely beaten, bound and robbed, the assailants had cut through the window bars and disconnected the electricity.”

Samuels added, “this follows the April murder of 65 year old Sarah Halimi, first tortured and then thrown from her third floor balcony by her neighbour who was screaming “Allahu Akbar” – that perpetrator still languishes in a psychological ward with the authorities for long, stubbornly refusing to define the murder as antisemitic.”

The letter continued, “after the Charlie Hebdo/Kosher supermarket attacks, I requested your predecessor, Minister Cazeneuve: ‘the day you withdraw the military guards from Jewish institutions, please announce that they have been replaced by 2,000 plainclothesmen even if there is not even one’.”

Samuels explained that “although the ‘state of emergency’ has been extended until December, the guards are gone, while our office building – a Jewish community centre – now houses over 100 kindergarten infants who have been brought in from the dangers of the non-Jewish school network.”

The Centre urged the Minister to take measures “for the perpetrators of the latest event must be charged with hate-crime and not excused due to disaffection, as in so many previous attacks.”

“Though terrorism has been indiscriminate, its primary focus is still on Jewish targets that require the protection of the State,” argued Samuels.