88-year-old grandmother of Israeli MK beaten in France, called ‘dirty Jew’https://www.timesofisrael.com/88-year-old-grandmother-of-israeli-mk-beaten-in-france-called-dirty-jew/#:~:text=The%2088%2Dyear%2Dold%20grandmother,threat%20posed%20by%20radical%20Islam.
The 88-year-old grandmother of MK Sharren Haskel (New Hope) was physically and verbally assaulted last month in France in what the Israeli lawmaker said was an antisemitic attack that should serve as a wake-up call to the French people about the threat posed by radical Islam.
French media reported Wednesday that the elderly woman had filed a complaint with police about the June 24 assault. She said she was beaten to the ground as her two assailants called her “a dirty Jew.”
Haskel panned the French government for not doing enough to curb antisemitism, saying it “ignores and allows the spread of blood libels against Israel,” in particular following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that set off the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
In her complaint to police, the woman, who was not named in media reports or by Haskel, described leaving her home in Val-d’Oise, north of Paris, for a medical appointment when two men assaulted her, reports said. One of them, she said, punched her in the face, breaking her tooth and causing her to fall to the ground. She was kicked in the back as one of the men shouted “dirty Jew” and called her “a dirty old woman.”
In her police complaint, the woman noted that she was wearing a Star of David necklace and that the two men may have noticed, “otherwise they wouldn’t have known” that she was Jewish, according to reports.
She was left with pain in her back, her knees, her shoulder, and her right wrist, and required medical treatment.
In a statement to Hebrew media outlets, Haskel said that the two men who attacked her grandmother were “Arab thugs.”
“Antisemitism in France has been on the rise for a long time. Since October 7, it has become intolerable and the government in France is ignoring and allowing the spread of blood libels against Israel. As a result the Jewish community is suffering from violence, rape, murder.”
Adding that she does not have any hope that French authorities will deal with the assault, the lawmaker called on the Israeli government to “wake up and lead the fight against exploding antisemitism.
“The Jewish communities in the world are an inseparable part of us and we have a great responsibility toward them,” Haskel said. She urged Jews living in the Diaspora to move to Israel.
Haskel also published an opinion piece in the Causeur, a French news magazine, in which she called for an end to “state-run anti-Israeli propaganda” that she claimed is led by the Agence France Presse (AFP) news service and French public media, and that according to her is feeding antisemitism.
“France, a country renowned for its values of liberty, equality and fraternity, is failing to protect its Jewish citizens,” she wrote. “The violent attack on my grandmother is not an isolated incident but part of a pervasive and growing trend of antisemitic violence that has gripped the country.”
She said ongoing aggression stems from “the rise of radical Islamist ideologies that have taken root in parts of Europe, particularly in France.”
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