PARIS: Paris prosecutors opened an investigation Tuesday into dozens of Stars of David daubed on buildings around the city and its suburbs, seen as threatening Jews amid the war between Israel and Hamas.
Fresh stars were painted overnight on the facades of several buildings in a southern district of Paris, an AFP journalist saw on Tuesday.
Similar tags appeared over the weekend in suburbs of the city including Vanves, Fontenay-aux-Roses and Aubervilliers.
In the 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 to wear the stars by the Nazi regime.
“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’s mayor Karim Bouamrane said perpetrators must be punished by the courts “with the greatest severity” in a statement on X (formerly Twitter).
Israel has bombarded the Palestinian territory of Gaza since the October 7 attacks by Hamas militants, which killed around 1,400 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.
More than 8,500 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Gaza, the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory said in its latest toll.
Many Jews say they have felt unsafe in Paris since the violence flared in Israel.
Jacques Isaac Azeroual, a kosher butcher in the city’s 19th district, which has a large Jewish community, said his customers had fallen by half.
“People are demoralized. They are scared of going out to shop,” he told AFP, adding that he shuts an hour early and covers his kippa with a hat when he leaves for fear of aggression.
The government says more than 800 incidents of anti-Semitism were registered in France in the three weeks after the Hamas assault.
That is equal to the number of incidents over two or three years previously, says the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions.
“They were not triggered by indignation over the images from Gaza — the anti-Semitic acts began on October 7, even before the Israeli response,” said its president Yonathan Arfi.
France probes Stars of David graffiti in Paris
https://arab.news/88pcu
France probes Stars of David graffiti in Paris
- Fresh stars were painted overnight on the facades of several buildings in a southern district of Paris
- In the nearby town of Saint-Ouen they were accompanied by inscriptions such as “Palestine will overcome”
Philippines struggles to evacuate nationals from Middle East as attacks escalate across region
- Over 1,400 Philippine nationals in Middle East have requested for repatriation
- Filipinos are told to shelter in place, follow host government’s advice on situation
MANILA: The Philippines is in talks to evacuate its nationals from across the Middle East, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Tuesday, as an increasing number of Filipinos are seeking to leave amid growing destruction from US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Tehran’s counterstrikes against US bases in Gulf countries.
More than 2.4 million Filipinos live and work in the Middle East, where tensions have been high since Saturday, after coordinated US-Israel strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian officials.
Tehran responded by targeting US military bases in Gulf countries, and violence has been widening across the region.
Evacuating Philippine nationals across the region is not yet possible, Marcos said, as countries closed their airspace, leading to airport shutdowns and the cancellation of thousands of flights throughout the Middle East.
“For now, we are depending on the advice that will be given to us by the local authorities in the place where our nationals — where our people — are,” Marcos told reporters in Manila on Tuesday.
The Philippine government has received requests for repatriation from more than 1,400 Filipino nationals in various Middle Eastern countries, including 872 from the UAE and almost 300 from Israel. Similar requests have also been made by Filipinos in Iran, Bahrain and Jordan.
“Right now, the most dangerous area for our people right now would be Israel as attacks there are continuous,” Marcos said.
“The problem now is that no planes are flying and airports are being hit. That’s why the situation is very fluid, our assessment is that it may be too dangerous to mount flights.
“Even if we could charter an aircraft, we cannot do anything because number one, the airports are closed. They are all no-fly zones.”
As the Philippine government prepares for multiple scenarios, officials have secured buses and other vehicles for possible evacuation by land.
Filipinos in “danger areas” have been moved to a safer place, Marcos said, citing the targeting of Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura oil refinery by Iranian drones on Monday morning.
“But essentially our advice to them is shelter in place and follow the host government’s advice … For now it’s extremely difficult to enter or exit the region because the only aircraft flying are fighter jets and drones, and missiles.
“That’s why it is not a place that you would want to put in a civilian aircraft to take out our nationals,” he said.
“But again, as I said, the situation is changing by the minute, by the hour. We just have to be in very good and close contact with the local authorities.”
