The Synagogue of La Grande-Motte, a seaside resort about twenty kilometers from Montpellier, was the scene of an attack on Saturday that could have turned into a tragedy and which the author was arrested in Nîmes after a short escape.
The suspect was caught on CCTV with a Palestinian flag on his belt as he tried to set fire to the synagogue shortly before 8.30am on Saturday, just before the early Sabbath service. Only one municipal police officer was slightly injured when a gas cylinder exploded next to a grill in the synagogue's parking lot.
“A miracle” that there were no casualties
“It is a miracle that we did not have to deplore any victim, because of this desire to kill which was that of the suspect”, emphasized in Montpellier the national president of the Israelite Consistory of France, Elie Korchia. “When we attack a synagogue […]it is the values of the Republic that we are attacking,” he added, facing the tricolor flags brandished in public.
“We need this gathering to be not just a gesture of fraternity, but a moment of republican reaffirmation,” explained, for his part, the president of the Crif national bodies, Yonathan Arfi.
“We call on the Republican forces to make our speeches clear. To combat anti-Semitism, so that the nauseating conflations with the conflict in the Middle East stop,” demanded the president of the Jewish community of La Grande-Motte, Sabine Atlan, as the demonstrators carried signs that read: “Our lives are worth more than the import. of conflict.”
“We Will Defend You”
The president of the Occitanie region, the socialist Carole Delga, suffered whistles and boos from a part of the audience evoking the Auschwitz extermination camp and “what the ignominy of fascist and Nazi regimes resulting from extreme right-wing ideas can produce.
“Those who, as a political game, choose to boo are dishonoring themselves,” the Socialist mayor of Montpellier, Michaël Delafosse, then reacted. “My fellow Jews in France, this is your country, and in this country we will defend you,” he said, promising that he would “let nothing pass.”