On Friday and Saturday, several Jewish sites in Paris were vandalized with green paint, including the Mémorial de la Shoah, the Tournelles synagogue, and the Agoudas Hakehilos synagogue—all in city’s Jewish quarter—as well as a third synagogue in a different part of the city.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on Sunday that it has been common in France for red paint to be used as a protest against Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza. Green paint, however, is new. There was no accompanying message in the graffiti, nor has a group claimed responsibility.
“Whatever the perpetrators and their motivations, these acts do not only target walls: they violently stigmatize French Jews, their memory and their places of worship,” French Jewish group CRIF told JTA. “These paint sprays are a stain on our republican values.”
According to Le Monde, an open can of green paint was found at the Chez Marianne restaurant, which was also vandalized. CCTV footage has shown a person dressed in black committing the vandalism at the Memorial at 4:30 a.m. on Saturday morning.
An investigation, the Paris prosecutor’s office told the AFP, is ongoing.
Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, said in a statement, “I condemn these intimidations in the strongest possible terms; anti-Semitism has no place in our city and in our Republic. I have asked the sanitation department to intervene urgently. We will file a complaint.”
Meanwhile, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said in a statement that he was “appalled” by the acts, and called on French officials to “act swiftly and firmly to bring the perpetrators to justice and to defend the Jewish community against hatred and attacks of all kinds.”
Herzog’s great grandfather, Rabbi Joel Herzog, helped build one of the vandalized synagogues.
