The distraught parents of a 12-year-old Jewish girl who was raped in Paris have broken their silence to share their fears that their daughter was being attacked “because of her religion” in what they believe was a “copycat” Hamas attack. on October 7. In Israel.
“For me, it is a clearly anti-Semitic attack that is related to the importation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict into France,” said the girl’s heartbroken father. Le Parisien on Monday.
The girl’s mother added that they understood one of the attackers asked her daughter, “What religion are you?” before the attack.
‘He learned that our daughter was Jewish and deduced that she was necessarily “pro-Israel” and anti-Palestinian. The reality is very different since our daughter, like us, is in favor of the peace camp,” she said.
In a candid first interview, the girl’s mother said her daughter had suffered “bullying” at school since the conflict between Israel and Hamas escalated last October, that her classmates began giving fascist salutes in November, drawing swastikas on desks and made jokes about the Holocaust.
Urging people to distinguish between the conflict in the Levant and the plague of anti-Semitism festering its roots in France, he acknowledged: “We are not experiencing residual anti-Semitism, but a heavy, visible and palpable anti-Semitism.”
The Courbevoie girl said she was going to Place Henri Regnault (pictured) with her boyfriend when three teenagers grabbed her and took her to an abandoned hangar on the site of a former nursery school nearby.
People attend a demonstration against anti-Semitism in front of Paris City Hall after three teenagers aged between 12 and 13 were charged in Courbevoie with rape and anti-Semitic violence against a 12-year-old girl, in Paris on June 19. : ‘I could have been your sister’
Protesters hold banners that read “Anti-Semitism is not residual,” “+1000% in anti-Semitic acts, not just numbers,” “Our lives are worth more than imported conflict,” and “Jewish girl raped, Republic.” in danger” as they gathered to condemn the alleged anti-Semitic gang rape of a 12-year-old girl during a demonstration in Lyon Terreaux Square in Lyon on June 18.
The young woman, named only as ‘A’. To protect her identity, she was kidnapped and attacked by two boys in a park in Courbevoie, northwest of Paris, on June 15.
The victim said he knew one of his attackers and reportedly received death threats before his arrest two days later.
The girl’s parents claimed that the attackers were outraged that A. lied about her religion and questioned her about her background.
“Obviously, this F. (suspect) couldn’t stand the fact that she could have lied to him about her religion,” the girl’s mother said.
Since the attack, just over a week ago, the victim remains in shock, closed to talking about her experience and suffering flashbacks at night.
“It’s a pretty painful daily life,” his father told the French media in an exclusive first interview.
An investigation source said after the attack: ‘The girl went out with her parents’ permission on Saturday at 3pm to meet her current boyfriend.
‘Two teenagers approached her and forcibly dragged her to a shed connected to a disused daycare, as she returned home through a park near her parents’ tower block home in La Défense.
“A third minor joined them and insulted the young woman about her religion, calling her a dirty Jew.”
The girl was beaten, thrown to the ground and photographed with cell phones, according to the victim’s initial statement.
The boys allegedly said they would use the images to blackmail her, before saying they would burn her, while holding a lighter next to her face.
It was later learned that the girl’s boyfriend was sent a video of her sobbing during the ordeal.
Several sexual acts were performed on the girl and she was allegedly told she would “be killed” if she spoke to police.
One of the attackers is said to have asked the girl to return the next day to give her €200 (about £170) as part of a blackmail plot.
A gynecological examination confirmed that the girl had been repeatedly raped and the accused were arrested soon after.
According to French media reports, all the boys come from the neighboring neighborhood of Rueil-Malmaison.
Two of them, aged 13, have been accused of “gang rape, death threats and insults and violence of an anti-Semitic nature.”
If convicted, they could face a maximum sentence of 10 years in a juvenile section of an adult prison, Nanterre prosecutors said.
A third suspect, aged 12, was granted “rape witness” status and charged with related offences.
The parents expressed concern that their daughter’s “affair” could be used for political purposes, but linked the rise in anti-Semitism in France to the conflict in Gaza “several thousand kilometers away.”
“In our opinion, there is a mimicry between the acts perpetrated by Hamas terrorists in the kibbutz and what our daughter suffered just down the road from us, in Courbevoie,” acknowledged the girl’s mother.
Reports of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe have increased in several states since the conflict broke out in October.
In November, more than 200 paintings of the Star of David appeared to mark buildings in Paris, an act that the Union of Jewish Students of France said was designed to reflect the public identification of Jews with armbands in Nazi Germany.
Just over a month after the Hamas attack on Israel, the French Interior Ministry said 1,247 anti-Semitic incidents had been reported since October 7, almost three times the total for all of 2022.
Protesters hold a banner during a demonstration against anti-Semitism in Paris, France, on June 20, as hundreds gathered following the rape of a girl near Paris on June 15.
A protester holds a sign that reads “anti-fascists equal against anti-Semitism” during a demonstration in Paris on June 20.
In April, a Jewish woman was allegedly raped and threatened with death by a man seeking to “avenge Palestine” in France.
A 32-year-old man was charged with “religious death threats” and drug use after his arrest in Gennevilliers.
Police sources said the suspect took the woman’s phone and sent a text message to her mother and ex-boyfriend after kidnapping her from an apartment on Chenard-et-Walker Avenue.
To her parents she wrote: “Good luck, you will never find your daughter again, you will never see her again, I will defile your daughter.”
She wrote to her ex-boyfriend that she wanted to “avenge Palestine.”
The victim was able to alert police when she retrieved her phone and called her mother for help, leading to the geolocation of her call and an arrest later that day, initially suspected of kidnapping.
The conflict between Israel and Palestine is complex and multifaceted, but it erupted in October with the deadly Hamas incursion into southern Israel.
Hamas is the de facto authority in Gaza, a Palestinian enclave on the Mediterranean coast.
Hamas gunmen, along with their allies, rampaged through kibbutzim (small villages) in Israel, killing about 1,170 people, mostly civilians.
Some 240 people were also returned to Gaza as hostages.
Since then, protests have broken out around the world, focusing attention on Israel’s devastating retaliatory offensive in Gaza, which killed more than 37,600 people, according to the local Health Ministry.
The war has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and basic goods to Gaza, which is now totally dependent on aid. The United Nations’ highest court has concluded that there is a “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza, a charge Israel strongly denies.
Many Palestinians believe they were expelled from their homeland in 1948 with the creation of Israel when the British gave up their mandate, struggling to manage local uprisings.
Repeated failures to find a viable solution and the construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the years since have fostered distrust in Western governments and seen support for violent revolutionary tactics increase.
The United Kingdom has banned Hamas’s military wing as a terrorist organization since 2001, extending the ban until November 2021 to the group as a whole.