PARIS (Reuters) -Suspected vandals daubed the front of the Paris office of Israeli national airline El Al in red paint, drawing condemnation from French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot on Thursday.
“Free Palestine” and other slogans were scrawled in red on the El Al entrance.
“Acts of hatred and anti-Semitism have no place in our Republic,” Tabarot wrote on X.
Joshua Zarka, Israel’s ambassador to Paris, also condemned the incident.
“It’s quite simply an attack, nothing more, nothing less, against an Israeli company, and against the state of Israel,” he told reporters.
France has seen a rise in hate crimes following the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas, and Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza.
Last year, police recorded an 11% rise in racist, xenophobic or antireligious crimes, according to official data published in March. The figures did not include a breakdown by attacks on different religions.
The Paris prosecutor’s office did not respond to a request for details on the investigation.
(Reporting by Noemie Olive and Lauren Bacquie;Additional reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta;Editing by Richard Lough and Ed Osmond)
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