Anti-Israel demonstration supporting the BDS movement, Paris France, June 8, 2024. Photo: Claire Serie / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
An Israeli family visiting Paris was denied service at a hotel after an attendant noticed their Israeli passports, continuing a record spike in antisemitism across France that has increasingly led to violence against the Jewish community.
According to the French magazine Le Point, the Israeli family of three intended to spend three nights in Paris. Although they had booked their Novotel Paris Porte de Versailles hotel room online, an attendant informed the family, after seeing their Israeli passports, that the price of the room had increased.
“He completely changed face,” the father said in a complaint to French authorities, according to the publication.
Novotel’s Porte de Versailles hotel in Paris. An Israeli family was turned away from the hotel after an attendant noticed their Israeli passports. Photo: Accor Group
“When he saw that I had an Israeli passport, he told me that the room would cost 1,219 Euros in the end; he increased the price voluntarily,” the father continued.
The attendant also allegedly hurled antisemitic accusations at the family, including, “Israel, you think you are kings of the world; you will not have a room in this hotel!”
The family was turned away from the hotel at 1:30 am and forced to stay elsewhere. The attendant “treated us with contempt and racism,” the father said.
Accor, the group that manages Novotel, offered the family compensation after their poor treatment.
The incident came amid a spike in antisemitism to record levels across France.
In an especially egregious attack that has garnered international headlines, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a Paris suburb on June 15, according to the French authorities. The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack.
The three alleged attackers were arrested by French police two days after the rape. Two of them were indicted for gang rape, death threats, antisemitic violence, attempted extortion, and invasion of privacy. The third boy was charged as a witness.
After the attack, French President Emmanuel Macron “denounced the scourge of antisemitism” overtaking French society and spoke of the need to combat hatred of Jews in schools.
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a press conference in Paris, France, June 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
The parents of the girl agreed to speak anonymously with the French newspaper Le Parisien in an interview that was published on Monday. They described the attack as a “mimicry” of Hamas’ sexual violence against Israeli girls and women during the Palestinian terrorist group’s onslaught across southern Israel on Oct. 7.
The rape in France reportedly occurred after the assailants discovered that the victim was Jewish. “Why did you lie? I know you are not Muslim. So what religion are you?” the boys yelled at her before the attack, according to her parents.
According to the girl’s mother, “before they let her leave, they made her swear by Allah not to tell her parents or police.”
The assault was antisemitic and motivated by the war in Gaza, her parents told Le Parisien. “This incident is a sign of a collective social failure in the fight against antisemitism and extreme violence,” they said.
Jewish children were also targeted in another Paris suburb this past weekend. On Saturday, six Jewish minors were assaulted at a movie theater in the suburb of Levallois-Perret. According to reports, three assailants yelled antisemitic slurs at the minors and “slapped one of them several times,” before the victims fled toward Jerusalem Square in the French capital’s 17th arrondissement, where they filed a police complaint. French police are investigating the incident.
“I condemn the physical attack of antisemitic nature in which several young minors were victims,” Geoffroy Boulard, mayor of the 17th arrondissement, wrote on X/Twitter in response to the assault.
The recent antisemitic attacks came amid a record surge of antisemitism in France in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Antisemitic incidents rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported — greater than the total number of incidents in France for the previous three years combined.
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