Investigators tracked them down after discovering two slices of watermelon left by the perpetrators at the base of the olive tree, which contained their DNA.

By Ailin Vilches Arguello, The Algemeiner

Two Tunisian twin brothers have been arrested in France after allegedly cutting down an olive tree that had been planted to honor Ilan Halimi, a young French Jewish man tortured to death nearly a decade ago.

According to the Bobigny prosecutor’s office, two 19-year-old undocumented men with prior convictions for theft and violence were arrested for vandalizing Halimi’s memorial in the northern Paris suburb of Épinay-sur-Seine.

Both brothers appeared in criminal court on Wednesday and were remanded in custody pending their trial, scheduled for Oct. 22.

They will face trial on charges of “aggravated destruction of property” and “desecration of a monument dedicated to the memory of the dead on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion,” offenses that, according to prosecutors, carry a sentence of up to two years in prison.

Both suspects were taken into custody around noon on Monday while returning to the crime scene, French media reported.

Investigators tracked them down after discovering two slices of watermelon left by the perpetrators at the base of the olive tree, which contained their DNA.

Halimi was abducted, held captive, and tortured in January 2006 by a gang of about 20 people in a low-income housing estate in the Paris suburb of Bagneux.

Three weeks later, Halimi was found in Essonne, south of Paris, naked, gagged, and handcuffed, with clear signs of torture and burns. The 23-year-old died on the way to the hospital.

In 2011, an olive tree was planted in Halimi’s memory. Earlier this month, the memorial was found felled — probably with a chainsaw — in the northern Paris suburb of Epinay-sur-Seine.

Halimi’s memory has faced attacks before, with two other trees planted in his honor vandalized in 2019 in Essonne, where he was found dying near a railway track.

Hervé Chevreau, the mayor of Épinay, announced that a new memorial tree will be planted in the second half of September.

After the attack, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the incident, vowing that the perpetrators would be brought to justice.

“Felling the tree in honor of Ilan Halimi is a second attempt on his life,” the French leader said in a post on X.

Halimi’s sister, Anne-Laure Abitbol, also condemned the incident, warning that public denunciations are no longer enough and calling for concrete action.

“In France, we are no longer safe, neither alive nor dead,” Abitbol told RTL in an interview.

“I feel less safe in France,” she said. “By recognizing a Palestinian state, Macron is encouraging antisemitism and failing to take action against antisemitic attacks in the country.”

Last month, Macron announced that France will recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September as part of its “commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”

Israeli officials have criticized the move, which was followed by several other Western countries, calling it a “reward for terrorism.”

France’s Jewish community has faced a troubling surge in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel sentiment since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Jewish leaders have consistently called on authorities to take swift action against the rising wave of targeted attacks and anti-Jewish hate crimes they continue to face.

According to the French Interior Ministry, 646 antisemitic incidents were recorded from January to June this year — a drop from the previous year’s first-half record high but a 112.5 percent increase compared with the same period in 2023, when 304 incidents were reported.

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There were several anti-Semitic incidents in Paris over the past few days whose cumulative effect shocked the government into speaking out.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The French government called on the authorities on Tuesday to crack down on anti-Semitic offenses after a spate of anti-Jewish graffiti and vandalism hit the country this past weekend.

Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux blamed instigators on the fringe of the weekly “yellow vest” economic protests. He told France 2 television that “those who are committing violent acts, openly anti-Semitic or racist acts must be charged and severely punished.”

But as the government’s own interior minister pointed out only the day before, anti-Semitism was a growing phenomenon even before the protests began last November.

On Monday, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner disclosed that there had been a huge upswing in police reports of anti-Semitic offenses between 2017 and 2018 – from 311 incidents to 541, a surge of 74 percent. His office later clarified that 183 of them involved physical assaults — and at least one murder — while 358 were verbal threats or insults.

“Anti-Semitism is spreading like poison,” Castaner said at the Paris memorial for Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish Frenchman kidnapped by a gang for ransom, tortured for three weeks and then murdered in 2006. Memorial planners discovered that a tree planted at the site in Halimi’s honor had been cut down.

There were several other incidents over the past few days in the capital whose cumulative effect shocked the government into speaking out. The word “Juden” (German for Jew) was painted on a bagel bakery window, and large swastikas were found scrawled on mailboxes showing a photo of Simone Veil, a Jewish former government minister. Graffiti lashing out at President Emmanuel Macron by using anti-Semitic tropes has also appeared on the building of French daily Le Monde.

Although the numbers indicate that Jew-hatred is increasing in the country, Jewish citizens are not immigrating to Israel in larger numbers. There was a spike in 2015, when almost 7,500 made Aliyah, but the figures have gone down since, with only some 2,600 moving to Israel in 2018.

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