France probes cafe owner who said ‘too many Jews’

French police officers have launched a criminal investigation into the actions of a cafeteria owner who was filmed telling a Jewish person near Lyon at her establishment that there were “too many Jews” and that this “upsets people,” French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said on Saturday.

Separately, two French Cabinet ministers condemned the actions of another man, an Irish citizen, who was filmed telling a Jewish couple from Australia at a supermarket that he’d “put a bullet” in them after they confronted him, allegedly for having said that “Hitler should have finished the job.”

The cafeteria film, which emerged Friday, shows a middle-aged blonde woman speaking with a man while leaning on the counter of a cash register and rolling a cigarette. She told him: “There are too many of you.” He asked who she meant, to which she replied: “The Jewish community,” adding that this “upsets people.” The man appears to say the woman denied him service, telling another woman: “There are laws, madame, to say we won’t be admitted because we’re Jewish....” According to Nuñez, the incident happened in Les Deux Alpes, near Isère and Lyon.

The video went viral on social media, promoting the police investigation.

Aurore Bergé, the French Cabinet minister responsible for Gender Equality and Combating Discrimination, said in a statement on Saturday that the video was of “tourists who were denied access to a refreshment stand at a resort in Isère.” She added: “Such antisemitic conduct and remarks cannot be tolerated.”

The woman who made the remarks is the owner of the refreshment stand, Bergé added. “She has been summoned and will be questioned by the National Gendarmerie this afternoon,” wrote Bergé.

“No antisemitic act, racist act or act of hatred can be tolerated. Antisemitism and racism are not opinions; they are criminal offenses. I will intervene systematically to ensure that nothing is overlooked and to uphold our laws and values,” added Bergé.

Bergé coauthored a statement on the supermarket incident as well, along with Serge Papin, minister for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, Commerce, Crafts, Tourism and Purchasing Power. According to the Australian Jewish Association, the Irishman became abusive after the woman he accosted criticized the Irish government’s anti-Israel policies and what she called its support for Hamas and Hezbollah. The conversation touched on Ireland as part of what began as a friendly interaction between shoppers about wearing European national soccer team shirts during the World Cup, according to accounts of the incident.

The woman urged the Irishman to make comments she said he’d made seconds before she started recording, about wishing Hitler had “finished the job.” His conduct revealed “a level of violence that is as shocking as it is unacceptable. Such remarks, which explicitly invoke the memory of the Holocaust, must not be normalized or tolerated,” according to the statement by the two ministers. The incident reportedly happened in Avignon near Marseille.

Yonathan Arfi, the president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities and organizations, condemned the incidents in a statement. “In the meantime, let us reject both discrimination against Jews and the rhetoric that equates Nazism and Zionism, which is nothing but a challenge to the right to existence of the State of Israel,” Arfi wrote.