Cars belonging to Jewish tourists were daubed with ‘Free Palestine’ graffiti in a French Alpine town.
The incident occurred in the village of Châtel in the northern part of the French Alps, near the Swiss border.
Some nine vehicles belonging to a group of strictly Orthodox Jews, some of whom were from Stamford Hill in London, were reportedly vandalised with the spray paint.
The group was on holiday in the picturesque Haute-Savoie region when their vehicles were defaced overnight.
It is understood that local authorities have opened an investigation into the incident and are reviewing CCTV in an effort to identify who is responsible.
Dozens of strictly Orthodox families from Europe are on holiday in the French mountain village, reported Ynet.
One Jewish man who had his car defaced was from Vienna. He told the Israeli outlet: ‘It’s a horrifying feeling, and the police are not taking the case seriously.’
It comes amid what Israel’s ambassador to France, Joshua Zarka, has called an ‘enormous wave of antisemitism’ across Europe, ‘something not seen since the last century, with the rise of Nazism.’
Several groups of Jewish tourists have encountered hostility while travelling this summer.
In July, dozens of French-Jewish students aged between 10 and 15 and several adults were kicked off Vueling flight V8166 as it waited on the tarmac at Valencia for ‘unruly behaviour’.
The expulsion of the 44 students amid reports they were endangering the safety of the flight sparked a row, with the carrier coming under fire for alleged anti-Semitism.
The holiday camp the children were flying with accused Vueling of ‘brutality’ as footage emerged showing their adult group leader being detained with handcuffs by Spanish police.
In Italy, a Jewish man claimed he and his six-year-old son were attacked at a motorway service area by an enraged pro-Palestinian crowd.
They were both wearing traditional Jewish kippahs and attracted the attention of people at the services near Lainate on the main Milan-Lagi motorway.
In the clip which was later uploaded to social media, a group of people can be heard shouting in Italian ‘Palestina Libera ‘(Free Palestine)’ and ‘Go back home’.
Others also shout in Italian ‘Assassini’ (murderers) while another adds: ‘This isn’t Gaza, here is Italy’ and another can be heard shouting: ‘You will go to hell sooner or later’.
In interviews with Italian media he claimed to have been pushed to the floor and then kicked with the crowd demanding he delete the video.
And in Greece, Israelis travelling on the Crown Iris cruise ship have been forced to leave Greek islands after being met with hundreds of pro-Palestine protestors demonstrating against their arrival.
Anti-war protesters on Greece’s Cycladic island of Syros were the first to hold a furious demonstration against the docking of the cruise ship containing tourists on July 22.
Some 1,700 Israeli nationals, including between 300 to 400 children, were prevented from disembarking at Ermoupoli and were instead diverted to the Port of Limassol in Cyprus.
Protestors clashed with riot police in separate demonstrations against the arrival of more Israelis on the Greek islands of Rhodes and Crete in the following days.
In June, five Jewish sites including three synagogues and France’s Holocaust Memorial were vandalised with green paint in the Marais district in central Paris.
On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to punish those who felled a tree planted in memory of a Jewish man who was tortured and murdered in 2006.
The olive tree was planted in 2011 in memory of Ilan Halimi, who was kidnapped by a gang of 20 young people and tortured to death on a housing estate in Bagneux, in the southern suburbs of the French capital.
‘Every effort will be made to punish this act of hatred,’ Macron wrote on X after the tree was cut down, probably with a chainsaw.
‘In the face of antisemitism, the Republic is always uncompromising,’ he added. ‘The nation will not forget this son of France who died because he was Jewish.’
