Horror antisemitic attack left Jewish man dripping with blood – thugs wanted 2 things

A 67-year-old Jewish man was assaulted in the French town of Yerres (Essonne) on Saturday morning (Image: Cohen Family Handout)

A 67-year-old Jewish man has been brutally beaten up in a mugging for cash and synagogue keys. Gilles Cohen, wearing a kippah, was on his way back from the mikveh in the town of Yerres, France on Saturday morning when he was attacked from behind. Before searching Cohen in an attempt to "find money and the keys to the synagogue", the attacker shouted "Dirty Jew, we will kill you!".

According to a police source, the attack took place around 7.45am in the town in the northern Essonne region, bordering Val-de-Marne. Cohen was reportedly rescued by a passerby. 

Antoine Léaument, LFI MP for the constituency, said: "The insults uttered during this attack leave no doubt about his antisemitic motive. The perpetrator of this heinous attack must be found and tried."

A protester holds a placard that says 'Stop the antisemitism and all racism' (Image: Getty)

Grégoire Dulin, public prosecutor of Evry, told AFP: "An investigation is underway into the charges of attempted robbery with violence resulting in a total incapacity for work of more than eight days committed on religious grounds and for death threats on religious grounds."

"His eye is very, very swollen," Mendel Gourevitch, director of the yeshiva in Brunoy, a commune near Yerres, told AFP, claiming that Cohen still attended a morning service on Sunday. 

Benjamin Allouche, president of the Assembly of Jewish Communities of Essonne, told Le Parisienne on Sunday: "For the moment, he is still disoriented and confused. He added that "again and again, the Jewish community, French citizens of the Jewish faith, are paying the price for stigmatisation. We are being blamed for what is happening (in Gaza) on the right, on the left… This gentleman was out for a walk, he wasn't claiming anything. He looks like a rabbi, and he was simply attacked because he is Jewish. There was no discussion, not a word before the blows."

Similar antisemitic attacks were reported in recent months, including attacks on rabbis in Orléans, Deauville, Neuilly, and Levallois. Yonathan Arfi, the President of CRIF President of the Representative Council of the French Jewish Institutions, said: "No one will uproot the Jews from France. But it is high time to uproot the antisemitism that is festering in society, using a conflict 3,000 km away as a pretext."

In France, the first six months of 2025 recorded 646 antisemitic acts, according to the Ministry of the Interior. While this is a decrease of 27.5% compared to the first half of 2024, it is a jump of 112.5% ​​over the same period in 2023. In Britain, the number is even higher. Community Security trust (CST) recorded 1,521 antisemitic incidents across the UK in the first half of 2025, the second-highest total ever reported to CST in the first six months of any year. In a series of antisemitic attacks in Bournemouth this August, a teenage boy was shot with an air rifle, and antisemitic graffiti appeared on a building.