Paris synagogue ransacked amid riots

Unidentified individuals vandalized a small synagogue in the 19th arrondissement of Paris on Saturday night, amid widespread rioting by protesters against the government, according to antisemitism activists in France.

It was not immediately clear whether the incident was connected to the riots, in which hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets on Saturday, many clashing with police.

One activist, a leader of the C.H.A.R association (Contre la Haine, l’Antisémitisme, le Racisme), sent JNS a video he said he had received on Sunday morning from a congregant of a synagogue, showing the aftermath of an apparent break-in. It shows cabinets that had been emptied out into the interior floor, with some cabinet doors missing or hanging on one hinge.

The rabbi’s office was also ransacked, the IsraJ news site reported. One member of the synagogue told IsraJ: “It really looks like an attempted robbery. You can see that whoever did this was probably looking for money. The Torah scrolls were untouched; we simply found the contents of the lockers scattered on the floor.” Contacted by JNS, a spokesperson for the synagogue requested its name and address be withheld for security reasons.

The SPCJ security service of French Jewry is aware of the situation and present at the scene, said the C.H.A.R activist, who requested his name be withheld from this article for security reasons.

Radio Shalom, a local Jewish station, reported that community activists are checking whether the vandalism was connected to the riots.

Robert Ejnes, the executive director of CRIF, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, told JNS that so far “nothing indicates that this was an antisemitic attack. It may have been a robbery.” He added: “We remain in high alert, working with police and the authorities.”

In Marseille, a leader of the local Jewish community on Sunday called on the government to declare a state of emergency to deal with nationwide rioting, which he said was being organized by the far left.

“I believe we need to declare a state of emergency in France, send in the army, massively increase law enforcement personnel and arrest these rioters and vandals by every means,” Bruno Benjamin, the president of the Marseille-Provence branch of the CRIF, told JNS.

Benjamin added that Jews did not appear to have been singled out for violence or targeted physically in the current wave of riots in Marseille, which saw heavy rioting and attacks on police.

Dov Maimon, a senior fellow at Israel’s Jewish People Policy Institute and an expert on French Jewry, told JNS the riots were an escalation of previous periods of civil unrest in France, including the Yellow Vests protests of the previous decade. As rioting escalates amid elevated levels of antisemitic violence, harassment and rhetoric, more and more French Jews may be driven to leave, and many of them to Israel, Maimon said.

“Departures would come in successive waves, driven less by antisemitism alone than by the perception that the state is failing in its core duty of protection, especially among families with children and mobile professionals,” Maimon said.