Police officer wounded in blast outside synagogue in France

The use of a gas canister ‘in a car at a time when worshippers are expected to arrive at the synagogue is not simply a criminal act,’ said CRIF president Yonatan Arfi.

By JNS

A French police officer was wounded on Saturday in a bombing outside the Beth Yaakov synagogue in the seaside resort town of La Grande-Motte, close to Montpellier in southern France.

Two vehicles were found at the scene engulfed in flames, according to the European Jewish Press. Worshippers had not yet arrived at the house of prayer for Shabbat services when the blast occurred.

The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) said the incident showed “an attempt to kill Jews.”

The use of a gas canister “in a car at a time when worshippers are expected to arrive at the synagogue is not simply a criminal act,” CRIF president Yonathan Arfi told Agence France-Presse.

CCTV footage reportedly showed a suspect waving a PLO flag near the synagogue.

“Our thoughts are with the congregation at the Grande-Motte synagogue and all the Jews in the country,” said French President Emmanuel Macron.

“Everything is being done to find the perpetrator of this terrorist act and protect places of worship. The fight against antisemitism is a constant battle, that of the united nation,” he added.

French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin described the incident as “manifestly criminal,” adding, “I want to assure our Jewish fellow citizens and the municipality of my full support and say that at the request of President Macron, all means have been mobilized to find the perpetrator.

Earlier this month, Darmanin said at a ceremony commemorating an Aug. 9, 1982, terrorist attack at Chez Jo Goldenberg, a Jewish restaurant in Paris’s Marais district, that the first half of 2024 saw 887 antisemitic incidents, almost triple the 304 documented in the same period of 2023.

Darmanin warned that antisemitism “no longer hides” and that “it is an insult to the dead, the wounded, the humiliated and our history.”

He also noted that to date, law enforcement has only captured one suspect in the Chez Jo Goldenberg attack.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff attended the event, laying a wreath and lighting one of six candles memorializing the six individuals killed in a grenade attack that also wounded 22 others.

“The United States stands in solidarity with you,” he said. “We cannot be silent, and we must not be afraid.”