A man was arrested by French police Monday after he attacked a Jewish man from behind in the French capital and stabbed the victim six times.
The Jerusalem Post reports the 35-year-old victim was stabbed by a knife-wielding man while he was walking with his partner in the 14th arrondissement.
During the attack the assailant reportedly yelled anti-Jewish insults and slander as he repeatedly targeted the back of his target.
The attacker subsequently fled the crime scene only to be arrested at his home by the police, according to the French news outlet Le Parisien.
The victim was taken to the hospital for emergency medical care in what is just the latest in a series of attacks against Jews in France.
Residents and traders in the area where the attack took place expressed their shock. “The world has gone crazy,” one fruit stall holder told Le Parisien. “Most of the time here, it’s quiet. Everybody knows each other.”
Reports state the victim and alleged attacker were known to each other, and had been childhood friends, but lately the claimed assailant had taken to threatening the other, and making antisemitic remarks.
Per Le Figaro, he had been inundating his former friend with “malicious calls, anti-Semitic emails, and death threats” for several years. His victim had made several complaints to police over the aggressive, stalking behavior.
What caused this change of attitude towards a former friend has not yet been announced, but it is said the alleged attacker is a drug user.
In a statement posted to X/Twitter, the Union of Jewish Students in France (UEJF) said it was “deeply shocked” by the attack.
“All our thoughts are with the victim, to whom we wish a speedy recovery,” the UEJF said.
As Breitbart London has reported, France’s Jewish population is estimated at between 500,000 and 600,000 people, the largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world.
It is facing increasingly difficult times with attacks rising across the country in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists.
Jewish areas of Paris have also seen vandals stencil the Stars of David symbols on buildings in a grim reminder of the Nazi era.
Citing figures from the French interior ministry and a French-Jewish security watchdog, the Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) said last month there were 1,676 anti-Semitic acts in 2023 year compared to 436 the year prior.
Nearly 60 percent of those acts were attacks involving physical violence, threatening words or menacing gestures, CRIF said in its report.
Worryingly, nearly 13 percent of anti-Semitic acts last year took place in schools, most of them in junior high schools.
“We are witnessing a rejuvenation of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic acts. Schools are no longer a sanctuary of the Republic,” the report said.