Hundreds of mostly Arab and North African
youths marched through the streets wielding bars and clubs while
shouting, “Death to Israel.”
The neighborhood’s main kosher grocery Naouri
was burned to a shell as was a local Jewish owned pharmacy. The nearby
synagogue in Garges was firebombed, but little damage was done.
Riot police attempted to disperse protesters
and block access to another synagogue in Sarcelles and a few dozen
Jewish vigilantes gathered nearby.
Journalists were assaulted and some police officers were injured by the rioters, France’s Le Figaro reported.
“I live in Garges, near the synagogue, but I’m afraid to go home,” a young woman told the newspaper.
“We are seeing real scenes of urban guerrilla warfare,” Thierry Maze, a local law enforcement officer, told Le Figaro.
Multiple Jewish individuals living in the
neighborhood, which was compared by one to Brooklyn’s Borough Park for
the density of its Jewish population, told The Algemeiner that they feared leaving their homes.
Sunday’s violence came on the heels of a
similar event on Saturday in which 3000 people gathered near the Gare Du
Nord train station and began marching up Barbes Boulevard. 14 policemen
were injured and 38 arrests were made in the incident.
Last Sunday, an anti-Israel demonstration at
Paris’s Bastille Square quickly turned violent with protesters seeking
out and attacking Jewish targets and screaming “death to the Jews” and
“Hitler was right” according to community newspaper, JSS News.
