Doctors ‘Optimistic’ About Condition of Jewish Teenager Severely Attacked by Gang

PARIS, France [EJP] — The Jewish teenager who was severely beaten by a gang of youths on Saturday after leaving the synagogue is still in an artificial coma but he is in an “better condition.”

“He will wake up progressively and doctors are optimistic,” Sammy Ghozlan, head of the National Vigilance Bureau Against Anti-Semitism, told EJP Monday afternoon after visiting Rudy Haddad at the Cochin hospital.

The 17-year-old, wearing a kippah or skullcap, was attacked by seven youths of Black African origin who beat him with metal bars and smashed his skull near the Beth Haya Mouchka Lubavitch synagogue in Paris’s 19th district.

The victim, who suffered several broken ribs and a fractured skull, was immediately placed in intensive care at Cochin hospital in central Paris.

“They attacked him because he was wearing a kippah and because he is a Jew,” Rudy’s father said.

The multi-ethnic area, which is harboring several synagogues, has been the stage of several anti-Jewish incidents in the last months.

Gérard Cachet, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said Saturday’s attack was “clearly anti-Semitic” as the young man was wearing a kippah and no other motivation was found.

Rudy’s friends said that as a practising Jew, he never carried either a mobile phone or money on him, making theft an unlikely motive for the attack.

Speaking to the press on Monday, France’s newly elected chief rabbi Gilles Bernheim appeared to be more cautious, saying the anti-Semitic character of the attack “is probable but not certain.“

“It is up to justice to determine the circumstances and motivations of the aggression,” he added.

Bernheim, who was elected on Sunday, said that since the second Intifada or Palestinian uprising in 2000, Jews ”in certain districts of Paris“ have suffered ”threats and intimidation.“

Some anti-Semitic youths want to take it out on Jews while there are also criminal gangs who are exploiting tensions for their own ends ”to sell drugs or whatever,“ Bernheim, who also visited Rudy at the hospital, said.

He added: “Today there is no rise of anti-Semitism but “marks of anti-Semitism have not disappeared.”

”There are districts in Paris where is not good to walk, even in the afternoon, when one is Jewish and carries a kippah on the head and for young girls or teenagers without distinctive sign,” he said.