Members of the Ohalei Yaakov congregation discovered that their temporary prayer space on Rue Burnouf had been broken into, ransacked and desecrated, while massive protests by students and unionists took place across France Oct. 17. The congregation had been holding services there while its synagogue on Rue Henri Murger, above, was renovated. Jewish-owned shops in Marseille were also attacked.
“When chaos and violence take over the streets, synagogues are the first to suffer,” Sacha Roytman, the head of Combat Antisemitism Movement, told the press. “The desecration of the synagogue in Paris is a clear warning sign: What begins against Jews never stops there.”
Prayer books and other objects were scattered across the floor and the rabbi’s office ransacked after thugs broke into the temple.
A masked rioter in the city that day had held up a Jew-hating sign reading, “Stop gassing us, we are not Jews.”
In Marseille, France’s second-largest city, rioters vandalized dozens of shops, including a number owned by Jews, with some set ablaze. Bruno Benjamin, president of the Marseille-Provence branch of CRIF, an umbrella coalition of French Jewish institutions, reported that groups of marchers there carried Palestinian flags and chanted, “Intifada.” This word has become increasingly synonymous with extending around the world Hamas’ bloody Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Jews in Israel.
On Paris’ Boulevard des Capucines, “Free Gaza” was written across a shop’s shutter. In Lyon, “Free Palestine” graffiti was painted next to smashed storefronts. Supporters of Hamas falsely present the reactionary Jew-hating outfit as fighting for the liberation of Palestinians.
France has the largest Jewish population in Europe. In 2025 the number of reported acts of Jew-hatred rose to 1,320, three times that in 2022 before the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom that killed over 1,200 people, most of them Jews.