The distraught parents of a 12-year-old Jewish girl who was raped by teenagers in Paris “because of her religion” say the attack was a “copycat” of the October 7 Hamas atrocities.

• On June 15, a girl was kidnapped and raped in Paris, sparking nationwide protests
• Her parents expressed their concern about increasing anti-Semitism in France since October

The distraught parents of a 12-year-old Jewish girl raped in Paris have broken their silence and expressed fears that their child was attacked “because of her religion” in what they believe was a “copycat” of the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel.

“For me, this is a clearly anti-Semitic attack linked to the importation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into France,” the girl’s grieving father told Le Parisien on Monday.

The girl’s mother added that she believes one of the attackers asked her daughter before the attack: “What religion do you belong to?”

“He learned that our daughter was Jewish and concluded that she was necessarily ‘pro-Israel’ and anti-Palestinian. But the reality is quite different because our daughter, like us, is for the peace camp,” she said.

In a first open interview, the girl’s mother said her daughter had been “bullied” at school since the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas last October. In November, classmates began giving the fascist salute, drawing swastikas on the desks and making jokes about the Holocaust.

She called on people to distinguish between the conflict in the Middle East and the anti-Semitism simmering in France, admitting: “We are not experiencing residual anti-Semitism, but a serious, visible and tangible anti-Semitism.”

The young girl, who is referred to only as “A.” to protect her identity, was kidnapped and attacked by two boys in a park in Courbevoie, northwest of Paris, on June 15.

The victim claimed to have known one of her attackers and reportedly received death threats before the two were arrested two days later.

The girl’s parents said the attackers were outraged that A. had lied about her religion and questioned her about her past.

“Obviously this F. (suspect) could not bear the fact that she might have lied to him about her religion,” said the girl’s mother.

Since the attack, barely more than a week ago, the victim has been in shock, cannot talk about what happened and struggles with flashbacks at night.

“It’s a pretty painful daily life,” her father told the French broadcaster in a first exclusive interview.

An investigative source said after the attack: “The girl went out at 3pm on Saturday with her parents’ permission to meet her current boyfriend.”

“She was approached by two teenagers and forcibly dragged into a shed adjacent to a disused kindergarten as she returned home through a park near her parents’ house in a high-rise building in La Défense.”

“Then a third minor joined them and insulted the young girl because of her religion, calling her a dirty Jew.”

The girl was beaten, thrown to the ground and photographed with mobile phones, according to the victim’s first testimony.

The boys allegedly said they would blackmail her with the pictures and then that they would burn her while holding a lighter to her face.

It later emerged that the girl’s boyfriend had been sent a video of her sobbing during the ordeal.

The girl was subjected to various sexual acts and was allegedly told that she would be “killed” if she spoke to the police.

One of the attackers is said to have blackmailed the girl by asking her to come back the next day and give him 200 euros – about 170 pounds.

A gynecological examination confirmed that the girl had been repeatedly raped, and shortly afterwards the accused were arrested.

According to French media reports, the boys all come from the neighboring suburb of Rueil-Malmaison.

Two 13-year-olds were charged with “gang rape, death threats, and insults and violence of an anti-Semitic nature.”

If convicted, they face a maximum sentence of ten years in the juvenile section of an adult prison, the Nanterre public prosecutor’s office said.

A third suspect, 12 years old, was granted rape witness status and charged with related offenses.

The parents expressed concern that their daughter’s “affair” could be used for political purposes, but linked the rise in anti-Semitism in France to the Gaza conflict “several thousand kilometers away.”

“In our opinion, there are similarities between the actions of the Hamas terrorists in the kibbutz and what our daughter suffered just down the street in Courbevoie,” the girl’s mother admitted.

Since the conflict broke out in October, reports of anti-Semitic attacks have increased in many European countries.

In November, more than 200 paintings of the Star of David were apparently put up in Paris. The Union of Jewish Students of France said the action was intended to reflect the public identification of Jewish people with armbands in Nazi Germany.

Just over a month after the Hamas attack in Israel, the French Interior Ministry said 1,247 anti-Semitic incidents had been reported since October 7, almost three times as many as in all of 2022.

In April, a Jewish woman was allegedly raped and threatened with murder by a man who wanted to “avenge Palestine” in France.

A 32-year-old man was charged with making “death threats based on religion” and drug use following his arrest in Gennevilliers.

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According to police sources, the suspect had taken the woman’s cell phone and sent text messages to her mother and ex-boyfriend after capturing her in an apartment on Avenue Chenard-et-Walker.

He wrote to her parents: “Good luck, you will never find your daughter again, you will never see her again, I will desecrate your daughter.”

He wrote to his ex-boyfriend that he wanted to “avenge Palestine.”

When the victim found her phone, she was able to alert the police and call her mother for help. Her call was then located and an arrest was made that same day. Initially, kidnapping was suspected.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is complex and multifaceted, but flared up again in October with Hamas’ deadly incursion into southern Israel.

Hamas is the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian enclave on the Mediterranean coast.

Hamas gunmen, along with their allies, have swept through kibbutzim – small villages – in Israel, killing an estimated 1,170 people, most of them civilians.

In addition, around 240 people were returned to Gaza as hostages.

In the months that followed, protests broke out around the world, focusing on Israel’s devastating retaliatory offensive in the Gaza Strip, which, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, left more than 37,600 people dead.

The war has largely disrupted the flow of food, medicine and basic goods to Gaza, which is now completely dependent on aid. The United Nations’ top court has concluded that there is a “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza – a charge Israel strongly denies.

Many Palestinians believe they were expelled from their homeland when the State of Israel was founded in 1948, when the British gave up their mandate and were left to combat local uprisings.

Repeated failures to find a viable solution and the construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the years that followed fueled distrust of Western governments and led to growing support for violent revolutionary tactics.

The United Kingdom has banned Hamas’s military wing as a terrorist organization since 2001 and extended the ban to the entire group in November 2021.

In the wake of the unprecedented conflict in the Gaza Strip, European states have taken steps towards recognizing a Palestinian state. The mediators are striving for a lasting peaceful solution.

Israel has vowed not to stop fighting until Hamas is defeated and will not jeopardise its security by allowing Hamas to remain in power.

Hamas has said it would accept a return to pre-1967 borders, but had previously promised not to “cede an inch of land.”

“Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north,” said Khaled Mashaal, an exiled politician, in 2012. “We will never recognize the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation, and therefore there is no legitimacy for Israel. We will liberate Jerusalem piece by piece, stone by stone. Israel has no right to be in Jerusalem.”

Before the British Mandate and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Jews and Arabs lived together in the region.