A kosher restaurant in Levallois-Perret, Paris, named Mr. Shnitz, was defaced with antisemitic graffiti on Saturday. The owner pointed out a dozen words daubed repeatedly in black across his storefront: “thief” and “Jewish.
According to BFMTV, a French news outlet, which cited a police source, by evening on Saturday, “the alleged author of the inscriptions was arrested on the public highway by the local police.”
Reactions to the vandalism
The town’s mayor, Agnès Pottier-Dumas, shared her reaction with BFMTV, saying she was “extremely shocked by this antisemitic act.” She added that “the cleaning of the storefront will be carried out once the restaurant manager has returned from his vacation.”
Il y a l'antisémitisme de salon qui corrompt les esprits. Et il y a l'antisémitisme de la rue qui charrie sa violence sous nos yeux. Face à ces tags à Levallois, nous disons fermement qu'ils ne gagneront pas. Ni dans les salons, ni dans la rue.Ça doit être le combat de tous. pic.twitter.com/IF4gFl8rqe
— Yonathan Arfi (@Yonathan_Arfi) August 19, 2023
Highlighting the broader implications, Yonathan Arfi, president of Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF), the representative body of French Jews, took to Twitter to say “There is salon antisemitism, which corrupts minds, and there is the antisemitism of the streets, which carries its violence before our eyes.” He declared: “Faced with these [graffiti] in Levallois, we firmly say that they will not win. It should be everyone’s fight!”