French Jewish students decry court’s omission of antisemitism

French Jewish students condemned a court’s decision this week to drop antisemitism charges from its sentencing of a woman for her role in a group assault of three Jewish students, whose attackers called them “dirty Zionists” as they beat them.

The Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF) in a statement called the decision by the Correctional Tribunal of Strasbourg “scandalous,” adding: “What else needs to happen so we can name antisemitism?”

The court handed one defendant, identified as Melek M., a suspended sentence of four months in prison and an 1,800-euro ($2,000) penalty in damages to be paid to the victims for her role in the 2024 assault of the three Jews, Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace reported. An aggravated circumstance of antisemitic hate crime would have raised the maximum penalty to three years in jail, though the judge could have still opted for a lighter sentence.

Melek M. and another woman saw the victims removing and altering anti-Israel graffiti on the campus grounds of the University of Strasbourg, according to the court. Melek M. sent a message on the Signal instant messaging application, to which four men responded. They appeared at the scene wearing balaclavas, and they proceeded to beat the three Jews, a Jewish man identified as Arthur and his twin sisters, Haya and Shterna.

Police were unable to identify and locate the four attackers, who called the victims “dirty Zionists” while they assaulted them, beating them to the ground, according to the report.

The court acquitted another defendant, Ines L., of assault charges despite the victims’ testimony regarding her role in the assault, and an audio recording they made during the incident of people who knew her telling her: “Ines, calm down.”

The non-retention of an antisemitic aggravating circumstance has led to controversies in the past in France.

Last year, a French court convicted a 42-year-old Algerian woman of poisoning her Jewish employers but cleared her of the aggravating circumstance of racist hatred, prompting protests from Jewish jurists.

In 2017, burglars who broke into the Paris-area home of Roger Pinto, the late president of Siona, a group that represents Sephardic Jews, were not charged with an aggravating circumstance even though one of the burglars said “You Jews have money,” according to the family members.

In 2021, a French high court upheld a decision not to try the killer of Sarah Halimi, a Jewish physician, who was found not liable for his actions because of a psychotic episode that was induced by marijuana. The killer, Kobili Traoré, was antisemitic and called Halimi “a devil” in Arabic while he beat her to death in 2017, the court also found.