France Suffering ‘Intifada,’ Jewish Lawmaker Says After Fatal Stabbing In Paris
Is This Living? French police guard synagogue in city of Bordeaux. Image by getty images
(JTA) – Following the stabbing of five people in central Paris by a man who shouted about Allah, a French-Jewish lawmaker said France was experiencing a “knife intifada.”
One victim died from a wound to the neck and two were severely wounded in the attack Saturday near the Paris Opera, which French authorities are treating as a terrorist attack, Le Monde reported. The assailant, a man in his twenties, was killed by police. His name was not immediately released for publication by authorities. The remaining two victims were lightly wounded, the paper reported.
“Knife intifada in the center of Paris, at Opera,” Meyer Habib, a member of the National Assembly, the French parliament, wrote on Twitter. Habib, a former vice president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, expressed his condolences to the surviving victims and their families and expressed his appreciation for police’s rapid response.
“It’s time to finish off radical Islam. It’s them or us,” Habib wrote on Twitter.
Intifada, Arabic for uprising, is the name Palestinians have given their struggle against Israel, which features many terrorist attacks against civilians.
Since 2012, hundreds of people have died in a series of terrorist attacks across France featuring explosives, firearms and vehicular ramming.
French President Emmanuel Macron also expressed sorrow over the incident at the Paris Opera and thanked police, adding: “We will cede nothing to the enemies of liberty.”
The assailant, whose victims have not yet been named, shouted “Allah hu akbar” before stabbing them. The Arabic-language phrase means “Allah is the greatest.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
