From Italy to France, Jews Face Mounting Abuse as Antisemitic Incidents Surge Across Europe

"Amid a worsening climate of anti-Israel hostility and rising antisemitism across Europe, Jews and Israelis are increasingly finding themselves targeted in public spaces, with a wave of recent incidents underscoring growing concerns over their safety and freedom.

Italian authorities arrested a 31-year-old Algerian man on Wednesday in connection with two brutal assaults on a 22-year-old French tourist in central Rome over the weekend, in a disturbing string of attacks that erupted in the heart of the Italian capital.

According to the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), the victim — a young French Jewish tourist wearing a kippah — was targeted in a suspected antisemitic attack on Friday in Rome’s Piazza Cairoli, near the city’s historic Jewish Quarter, when an assailant allegedly sprayed him with pepper spray while shouting ‘Free Palestine’ and other hateful slogans.

The victim was reportedly attacked a second time the following day, when the same assailant, joined by three other individuals, brutally beat him as he walked through the city center near Largo di Torre Argentina, roughly 300 meters from the site of the first assault, with the group shouting ‘Free Palestine’ and hurling antisemitic insults...

Israel’s Ambassador to Italy, Jonathan Peled, described the attack as a disturbing example of the growing antisemitic hostility confronting Jews across Europe.

‘This is yet another example of how anti-Zionism and antisemitism are one and the same,’ Peled wrote in a post on X. ‘When a Jewish person can no longer walk freely through a city without being attacked, it is not merely the safety of a minority that is at risk — it is everyone’s freedom.’

In a separate incident in France, a Jewish couple was subjected to a disturbing antisemitic confrontation at a supermarket, where an Irish tourist allegedly told them he was sorry Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had not ‘finished the job’ before later threatening to shoot them..."