The trail of an act of an anti-Semitic nature favored by the police. According to our information, an investigation was opened after the discovery, Thursday evening, of several graffiti in the Sentier district, in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris. For the police, these could be erroneous representations of five-pointed Stars of David, when the latter have six. According to our findings on site, there are at least twenty of them spread across Rue du Croissant and Rue Saint-Joseph. The investigations were entrusted to police officers from the Paris Center police station. At this stage, no suspects have been arrested.
It was around 6:30 p.m. that Romain, manager of a restaurant specializing in South American cuisine, noticed a star painted blue on the white wall of his establishment which is on the corner between rue Montmartre and rue Saint-Joseph. “We saw it when it opened. This must have been done around 5 p.m. because it was not there when we left at 3 p.m.,” he estimates. Less visible, five other identical graffiti were written on the extension of the wall as well as eight others on the building opposite.
In Rue du Croissant, parallel to Saint-Joseph, around ten other stars have been tagged, obviously by the same author, on the facade of a building. “It’s deplorable but unfortunately I’m not surprised. It matches the mood of the moment,” sighs a passerby. “We must not let this happen. Especially since people are starting to get used to the rise in anti-Semitism in France currently,” protests Jean-Pierre, who lives in the neighborhood.
According to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, 887 anti-Semitic acts were recorded in France in the first half of 2024, almost triple the incidents recorded last year during the same period. Last year, these facts increased by 1,000% between October 7 – the date of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel – and January 2024, according to the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif).
