In January 2015, Amedy Coulibaly murdered four Jews at the Hyper Cacher in Paris.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

An arsonist set fire to the entrance of a kosher supermarket in Paris on Wednesday night as French officials marked a decade since a terrorist murdered four Jewish people there a decade ago.

Security cameras caught a man setting fire to four containers placed in front of the entrance to the Hyper Cacher grocery around 2 a,m. He then set ablaze a nearby dumpster used for construction material.

Although firefighters arrived quickly to put out the fires, the front wall was damaged, and an interior wall was lightly blackened.

Police confirmed that they were investigating the case and looking for the suspect.

The criminal incident occurred hours before French President Emmanuel Macron attended a memorial ceremony observing the 10th anniversary of a terror attack at the same store.

On January 9, 2015, Islamic State jihadist Amedy Coulibaly entered Hyper Cacher armed with several weapons and killed four Jews who unsuccessfully tried to overcome him. He then took 19 shoppers and staff hostage, demanding in negotiations that police not harm two Islamist terrorists who had been found by the authorities that day after murdering 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine offices two days previously and then fleeing.

Hours later, police stormed the supermarket and killed Coulibaly as he was shooting and charging at them, wounding two officers.

Several local politicians marked the timing of the latest incident, as well as the huge upsurge in antisemitism in France ever since October7, 2023.

“Antisemitic acts have exploded in recent months, and we have further proof of this with this arson attack,” Maxime Sauvage, first deputy mayor of the 20th arrondissement of Paris and national secretary of the Socialist Party, posted to X.

“As if it wasn’t enough to have experienced the horror of 2015, this arson attack plunges us back into what we have to fight every day,” said his colleague, Deputy Mayor Lila Djellali.

A local Jew, Brigit D’jean, agreed, lamenting that “very few people understand what we’ve been through” and charging that “there’s a certain indifference when it comes to the Jewish community.”

In a January report, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) noted, “For the second consecutive year, we are facing a historic number of anti-Semitic acts.”

Whereas for the decade preceding 2023 the number of reported antisemitic incidents per year swung between 311 and 851, in 2023 it shot up to 1,676, with the vast majority occurring after October 7, the report said.

In 2024, the number dropped only some six percent to 1,570.

Interest in the Jewish community in emigrating, especially to Israel, has exploded, as its faith in the French authorities has been shaken.

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Former French prime minister says commemoration was a ‘necessary tribute’ to the ‘victims of Islamist terrorism.’

By The Algemeiner

Jewish community leaders and French officials gathered on Sunday to mark the seventh anniversary of a terrorist attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris, paying tribute and expressing solidarity against antisemitic violence.

Organized by the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), the main communal body of French Jewry, the ceremony took place in front of the Hyper Cacher where an Islamist gunman shot dead four Jewish hostages on Jan. 9, 2015 — Yohan Cohen, 20; Yoav Hattab, 21; Philippe Braham, 45; and François-Michel Saada, 63. A couple of days before the attack, two Islamist gunmen killed a dozen people at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Multiple French politicians were present at the commemoration, among them former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who described it on social media as a “necessary tribute” to the “victims of Islamist terrorism.” Also in attendance were Marlène Schiappa, minister for citizenship; Sophie Cluzel, secretary of state for people with disabilities; Jean-Michel Blanquer, minister of education, youth, and sports; and Aurore Bergé, a lawmaker from French President Emmanuel Macron’s party.

“Murdered because they were Jews,” wrote Equality Minister Élisabeth Moreno. “Remember, always.”

Remembrance candles were also lit during the ceremony for other French Jews killed in antisemitic violence, including Sarah Halimi, a retired doctor who was beaten and thrown from her third-story Paris apartment in 2017, and Mireille Knoll, an elderly Holocaust survivor who was stabbed and set ablaze in her Paris apartment in 2018.

After a recitation from Psalms and the Mourner’s Kaddish, a Jewish prayer for the deceased, the ceremony concluded with a prayer for France, a minute of silence, and the playing of the French national anthem.

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“Why this hatred of the Jew?” was father of murdered kosher market victim’s agonized question at French terror trial.

By Ben Cohen, The Algemeiner

The father of one of the four victims murdered by an Islamist gunman at a kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015 broke down during court testimony on Tuesday as he recalled the virulent anti-Semitism behind the atrocity.

“Why this gratuitous wickedness, why this hatred of the Jew?” shouted a grief-stricken Eric Cohen — father of Yohan Cohen, a worker killed at the Hyper Cacher market in eastern Paris on Jan. 9, 2015 — before the Paris courtroom where 14 suspects in the three days of terrorist attacks that gripped the French capital are currently on trial.

Cohen’s pained outburst was one of several displays of raw emotion during Tuesday’s proceedings, as witnesses and relatives of the four Hyper Cacher victims — Michel Saada, Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham and Yohan Cohen — spoke before the court.

At one point, Cohen recalled that at 4 p.m. on the day of the attack, while frantically worried for Yohan, he was given the incorrect news that there had been no fatalities during the siege at the market.

“I told myself that I would see my son again, that was huge,” he said. Tragically, he continued, “half an hour later, we were told there had been four deaths…it was a punishment twice over.”

Cohen, who now lives in Israel, said that the passage of more than five years since the attacks has not eased the pain of losing a 20-year-old son. As the details of the siege were laid out before the courtroom, Cohen and other relatives heard of how Yohan — who was shot immediately by the terrorist Amedy Coulibaly — took more than three hours to die from his wounds. Coulibaly at one point asked the other hostages whether they wanted him to “finish off” Cohen, in order to silence his moans.

The trial also learned of the heroism of Yoav Hattab — a shopper at the market who tried to snatch one of the automatic rifles being carried by Coulibaly and was shot dead by the terrorist as he did so.

“The hostages were released, but not my son Yoav — he tried to kill Amedy Coulibaly,” Benyamin Hattab told the court. “I am proud of my son, there is a commandment to save human beings.”

A Tunisian Jew, Hattab recalled that his Muslim friends had mourned his son’s death alongside him.

“The Muslim community in Tunis cried with me,” Hattab said. “They cried for my son. They are my brothers.”

In her testimony, the sister of murdered victim Michel Saada recalled that her Tunisian-born brother had often expressed concern at rising anti-Semitism in France.

“He was very lucid about what was happening in France, in Europe,” Annie-Laure Saada said. “He was in particular very lucid about the threat of anti-Semitism. He was preparing to go and settle permanently in Israel, to be close to his children, and yet he loved France viscerally.”

She remembered her brother telling her, “You can’t stay in France anymore if you’re a Jew.”

“That sentence, it keeps coming back to me,” Ms. Saada said.

Valerie Braham — the wife of victim Phillipe Braham — wept before the court as she described the impact of her husband’s murder upon their young family.

“My husband was my rock, and I died with him,” Mrs. Braham said. “My children are growing up without their daddy, our last child doesn’t even remember him.”

She said that her children “know that it was a bad man who killed their father but they don’t understand why.”

The court also heard harrowing testimony from two other workers at the Hyper Cacher — Zarie Sibony, a cashier, and Lassana Bathily, a market assistant.

Sibony noted that she had traveled from Israel, where she now lives, to attend the trial, but that her colleague from the Hyper Cacher, Andrea Samak, who also moved to Israel after the attack, had been unable to accompany her.

“Andrea, she can’t talk about it,” an emotional Sibony said.  “As of that January 9, she’s not the same.”

Sibony described Coulibaly, who was killed by police at the end of the siege, as cold-blooded and contemptuous toward his victims for the duration.

She remembered Coulibaly telling her that she represented the two things he most hated.

“You’re Jewish and French,” he said.

Coulibaly interrogated all the hostages at the market, asking them their religious affiliations, she said. All but two were Jewish.

“You have chosen the wrong day to go shopping in a kosher store,” he told the group.

When Sibony offered Coulibaly a large amount of cash to leave the remaining hostages unharmed, he mocked her, explaining that he was a colleague of the Kouachi brothers — the terrorists who massacred 12 people at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo two days previously — and that he intended to die as a “martyr.”

Lassana Bathily’s testimony centered meanwhile on his own role sheltering hostages in the toilet and storage rooms in the basement of the market while Coulibaly was upstairs.

The Mali-born Bathily — who received French citizenship in recognition of his heroism in protecting the hostages — said he had started working at the Hyper Cacher market in 2011.

“It was a Jewish store, I was a practicing Muslim, but there was no problem, everyone respected each other,” Bathily recounted.

Bathily said he remembered Yohan Cohen — his fellow employee from 2013 — as a “brother.”

“He liked sports, I liked sports, he listened to the same music as me,” he said.

Bathily added that he had noticed Cohen reversing his shoulder bag whenever he left the market “so that the Hyper Cacher brand couldn’t be seen.”

“Yohan was afraid he would be attacked,” Bathily said.

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An unknown assailant slashed the face of a 15-year-old girl wearing a Jewish school uniform in Sarcelles.

By: Adina Katz, World Israel News

In what French lawmaker Francois Pupponi called “a heinous anti-Semitic attack,” an unknown assailant slashed the face of a 15-year-old Jewish girl in the northern Paris suburb of Sarcelles.

As reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Service (JTA), the attack occurred as the victim was walking home from school on Wednesday, wearing the uniform of her private Jewish school. Her mother told French daily Le Parisien that the girl arrived home bleeding and “shocked.”

The victim said she did not see her attacker’s face, explaining that he ran away immediately after the assault.

“I have no doubt the perpetrators of this attack had anti-Semitic motives,” Pupponi wrote in a statement Friday, JTA reported.

“Faced with these acts, we need to abandon pretense and naiveté,” he added. “In Sarcelles, everybody knows who is a practicing Jew according to the way they dress. Delinquents know it too. When someone slashes a young girl’s face with a utility knife, when she is wearing clothes favored by many women from the Jewish community, then there is no room for doubt.”

The day before the assault on the girl, a kosher grocery market in Creteil, a Paris suburb, was vandalized and torched. The latest in a string of attacks against Jews in France, it included anti-Semitic graffiti and was carried out exactly three years after a deadly Islamic terror attack at the Hyper Cacher market in the French capital, which left four Jews dead.

Albert Elharrar, president of the Creteil Jewish community, said Jewish groups believe the shops were deliberately targeted at the time of commemorations for the 2015 attacks.

“There’s a link between the graffiti and the fire,” he told AFP. “It’s clear that they came for no other reason but to attack a kosher shop on the day of the commemorations.”

French Jews, who constitute the largest Jewish community outside of Israel and the United States, continue to leave France, mainly for Israel. Since 2006, 40,000 French Jews have left the Republic.

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On the third anniversary of the Hyper Cacher attack, vandals set fire to a Jewish market in Paris, the latest anti-Semitic incident in the country.

By: World Israel News Staff and AP

A kosher grocery market in Paris was vandalized and torched on Tuesday, in an apparent anti-Semitic attack.

No one was hurt in the incident, but the fire damaged much of the Promo & Stock store.

Antoine Besme, of the regional prosecutor’s office, said authorities believe the fire Tuesday in the suburb of Creteil was of a criminal nature, because the store’s protective shutters had been forced open.

Last Wednesday, two Jewish stores in the area, including the one set on fire on Tuesday, were spray-painted with five swastikas. The second store was also slightly damaged in the fire.

The fire raised concerns because of the anti-Semitic graffiti, and because the fire broke out three years after a deadly Islamic terror attack at the Hyper Cacher market in Paris which left four Jews dead.

Creteil is home to some 23,000 Jews among its 90,000 residents.

President of the Creteil Jewish community Albert Elharrar said Jewish groups believe the shops were deliberately targeted at the time of commemorations for the 2015 attacks.

“There’s a link between the graffiti and the fire,” he told AFP. “It’s clear that they came for no other reason but to attack a kosher shop on the day of the commemorations.”

Elharrar told the AP that the manager of the shop is Muslim. “That shows the spirit of the city of Creteil where the Jewish community lives,” he said.

Israel’s ambassador to France Aliza Bin Noun called the act of vandalism on the third anniversary of the attack a “shameful provocation.”

A record number of French Jews have immigrated to Israel since 2015, amid growing violent anti-Semitism in the country.

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The perpetrators of a horrific home invasion in France expressed hatred for Jews as they robbed and beat their victims.

Multiple members of a Jewish family in the Parisian suburb of Livry-Gargan were imprisoned in their own home last Thursday, and then assaulted and robbed. Throughout the attack, the assailants divulged their intention to target Jews, spewing a number of anti-Semitic tropes as they beat their victims.

The three attackers cut off the electricity, threatening their victims, “You are Jews, you have money. We take money from Jews to give to the poor,” reported Ynet.

One of the victims was eventually able to escape and contact the police, in addition to France’s National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism (BNVCA), but not before the criminals could abscond with jewelry, cash and credit cards.

As is the case in many other European nations, Jews in France remain the targets of hate crimes. Between the flood of migrants from North Africa and the Arab world, who have proven fertile ground for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism in Europe, and the ascendance of far right and neo-Nazi parties, Jews justifiably feel increasingly unsafe on the Continent.

While hate crimes against Jews have spiked in the UK, a recent report indicates that enforcement of laws prohibiting anti-Semitic acts has decreased precipitously. France is also no stranger to violent anti-Semitism, including the murderous attack on a Jewish supermarket in Paris in 2015, in addition to Islamic terror attacks including the massive vehicular attack last summer in Nice.

French Jews, who constitute the largest Jewish community outside of Israel and the United States, continue to leave France, mainly for Israel. Since 2006, 40,000 French Jews have left the Republic.

By: World Israel News Staff

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Republican lawmaker Lee Zeldin of New York has become a one-man crusade in questioning the reason President Obama left out any mention of Jews in the list of minorities threatened by ISIS.

US Congressman Lee Zeldin. (Wikipedia)

President Barack Obama forgot one minority threatened by ISIS in his request to Congress for an authorization for the use of military force: the Jews. Republican lawmaker Lee Zeldin of New York is calling on Obama to amend the request in light of the deadly terrorist attack on the kosher supermarket in Paris by an ISIS-allied gunman.

The draft Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) notes that “ISIL has threatened genocide and committed vicious acts of violence against religious and ethnic minority groups, including Iraqi Christian, Yezidi, and Turkmen populations.”

Zeldin told CNN that he immediately noted the omission of Jews from the list. The language in the draft authorization is borrowed directly from a resolution passed last year by Senate Foreign Relations Committee. However, the resolution was passed before the Paris attack. Zeldin is the sole Jewish Republican in Congress and a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, which will debate the AUMF.

“I strongly believe we were reminded in Paris that these radical Islamic extremists, they want to wipe Israel off the map,” said Zeldin. “They target not only Jews but our freedom our exceptionalism as Americans — the whole western world.”

“Jews should have been included by the White House.”

The president recently came under scrutiny after he referred to the January attack on the Paris Hyper Cacher as “random.” Spokespersons for the White House and State Department raised further ire by suggesting that Obama was referring to the victims as random, not the choice of target. “If a guy goes into a kosher market and starts shooting it up, you don’t – he’s not looking for Buddhists, is he?” asked one reporter from the AP. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest later clarified that Obama never meant to suggest that the attack was not anti-Semitic in nature.

Amedy Coulibaly. (Screenshot)

The terrorist in the attack, Amedy Coulibaly, had pledged allegiance to ISIS, and was working in coordination with the gunmen in the Charlie Hebdo shooting. Coulibaly’s common law wife, Hayat Boumeddiene, is believed to have been an accomplice. She was last traced to ISIS-controlled border town of Tel Abyad, Syria.

If approved, the AUMF will authorize the president to participate in the war against ISIS over the next three years. However, the AUMF proscribes ground operations except for rescue operations and special forces operations to “take military action against ISIL leadership.” Obama may face a tough fight in Congress as Republicans are concerned that the document does not give the president sufficient flexibility and Democrats are concerned that it gives him too much.

By: Atara Beck, World Israel News

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Islamic terror continues to plague France. In the latest incident, two soldiers were stabbed on Tuesday while guarding a Jewish center.

(Photo: shutterstock)

A knife-wielding Muslim attacked three French soldiers on Tuesday who were on patrol, securing a Jewish community center in the southern French city of Nice. Two were lightly wounded, and the assailant was arrested. France 24 reports that two alleged accomplices fled the scene.

“It seems like a premeditated and quite violent act,” said regional police chief Marcel Autier.

“The person responsible, who is in his 30s and from the Paris region, is known to police,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told Reuters.

According to Nice Mayor Christian Estrosi, the attacker carried an identity card with the name Moussa Coulibaly. The surname is the same as that of the terrorists who murdered four Jewish hostages in January at the Hyper Cacher supermarket in Paris, although it is not known whether they are related.

The attacker, known to police for previous acts of violence, was reportedly stopped on a tram for not having paid for a ticket. “He paid his fine, but refused to show his identity papers. He got out suddenly near the soldiers and with a sharp knife struck the cheek of one and the arm of another,” France Inter radio reports.

An ISIS Link?

A French security official said the attacker had been sent home by Turkish authorities last week after flying there on a one-way ticket. Turkey is known to be a transit point for Jihadis from Europe on their way to join up with Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. Border police had flagged Coulibaly on January 28 to the attention of their Turkish counterparts on January 28, who promptly returned him home, the French security official said.

Earlier on Tuesday, French authorities arrested seven men and a woman for suspected involvement in a network sending fighters to join Islamic terrorists in Syria. Three of the arrested had traveled to Syria and returned in December 2014, but it was unclear whether they joined ISIS or another terror group.

Since the string of terror attacks that rocked the country in recent weeks, including the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the Hyper Cacher terror attack, France has deployed approximately 10,000 soldiers and policemen to secure Jewish sites and sensitive targets.

By World Israel News staff

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A recent poll showed that a majority of Palestinians blame Israel for the recent wave of terror in Paris, including the Charlie Hebdo attack. Could Palestinian incitement be responsible for this sentiment?

Five out of six Palestinians – 84 percent – are apparently convinced that Israel aided the perpetrators of the terror attacks in Paris earlier this month.

Responding to a poll conducted by the Palestinian Maan News Agency, 84 percent of Palestinians said that the massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine headquarters and the Hyper Cacher supermarket attack were “suspicious, and that Israel may be behind it.” Fewer than nine percent of respondents say Islamic terror was to blame for the attacks.

Palestinian Incitement and Propaganda

These findings may not be that surprising when the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) ongoing incitement is taken into consideration.

The official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, wrote earlier this month that Israel was behind the terror attacks in France because the Jewish state “was the only one to benefit from them.”

The newspaper alleged that the Mossad (Israeli intelligence) planned the attacks, claiming that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders had wanted to encourage Jewish immigration and take “revenge on European governments… because of their… support for… an independent Palestinian state,” Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reports.

Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor and publisher of ‘Charlie Hebdo’ who was murdered earlier this month along with 11 others in an Islamic terror attack. (Photo: The Gatestone Institute)

One regular columnist, Muwaffaq Matar, argued that because Netanyahu “wishes to realize the myth of the ‘Jewishness of Israel'” and encourage immigration, the attacks against Jews in France and elsewhere in Europe were “no coincidence, but a carefully executed and fully controlled plan,” according to PMW.

“‘Netanyahu’s Jewish State’ was the only one to benefit” from these attacks, Matar stated.

Netanyahu “trades with the blood of the 17 victims of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and of the supermarket,” wrote another columnist, Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul, saying that Netanyahu wanted to “exploit the terrorism that struck some French Jews” in order to encourage them “to immigrate to Israel.” The writer claimed that “Turkish sources, including intelligence and the mayor of Ankara,” determined that the attacks were “planned by the Israeli Mossad,” PMW continues.

Similarly, journalist Akram Atallah, interviewed on official PA TV, claimed that “in the past, the Israeli Mossad carried out operations [i.e., terror attacks]: It bombed synagogues in order to force the Jews to emigrate,” and that “the operation [Charlie Hebdo] served Israel’s demographic [interests], for the Israeli media and government bodies predicted yesterday that 10,000 French Jews would immigrate to Israel.”

“The perpetrators of the two attacks in Paris and the Israeli settlement establishment” have “matching interests,” said Hafez Al-Barghouti, another columnist for the PA daily, thereby insinuating that Israel was involved in the attacks.

By World Israel News Staff
(With files from Palestinian Media Watch)

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Christopher Lee Cornell. (Photo: Butler County Sheriff’s office)

The FBI arrested a man from Ohio who had planned a mass attack on Capitol Hill in Washington, the FBI announced on Wednesday. The would-be terrorist reportedly received his inspiration from the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) terror organization.

Christopher Lee Cornell, 20, also known as Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah, allegedly planned to set off multiple pipe bombs on Capitol Hill and then kill anyone who survived the attack. The FBI said that he had purchased two semi-automatic rifles and about 600 rounds of ammunition. He was arrested after meeting with an undercover FBI informant.

“I believe we should just wage jihad under our own orders and plan attacks and everything,” Cornell allegedly told the informant. “I believe that we should meet up and make our own group alliance with the Islamic State here and plan operations ourselves.”

He later told the informant that he considered members of Congress to be enemies. The FBI learned of Cornell and his Twitter feed from the informant, who was seeking “favorable treatment with respect to his exposure on an unrelated case,” the FBI report stated.

The FBI began to track Cornell when he voiced support for a violent Jihad on Twitter. He reportedly had contact with ISIS elements overseas.

Cornell is charged with attempting to kill a US government officer and with possession of a firearm in furtherance of an attempted crime of violence.

DHS agents. (Photo: shutterstock)

In an interview with CNN Wednesday evening, Cornell’s father said that there was “no way” his son could have carried out a terrorist attack. “He very seldom left the house,” John Cornell told CNN. “He’s a big mama’s boy. His best friend is his kitty-cat named Mikey.”

“He only had 1,200 bucks saved up to his name and the guns that he supposedly purchased today were over 1,700 bucks,” the father said. “I want to know where he got those other $500,” Cornell stated, claiming that his son must have been coerced by the FBI.

Lieutenant Kimberly Schneider, a spokeswoman for US Capitol Police, said on Wednesday that her agency cooperated with the FBI in this case. At no point did the matter lead to the taking of any security precautions above those normally in place, she said.

High Alert in the West

US security agencies have been on high alert in recent months following threats made by ISIS. They have been monitoring threats on major bridges. NYPD has been warned to stay alert, and Homeland Security issued a stern warning on possible ISIS attacks against military personal on American soil.

Western security agencies in general are on high alert and are bracing for a pending massive terror attack, especially in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the Hyper Cacher attack in Paris last week.

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