Horrified Parisians condemn ‘monster’ youths who raped 12-year-old Jewish girl ‘for hiding her religion from her ex’, as activists plan mass rally against shocking anti-Semitic attack

• A police source said they forced the girl to have sex and made death threats
• Across France, protesters lined the streets to denounce anti-Semitism
• Several organizations are calling for a rally today at the Place de la Bastille in Paris

Angry French citizens have condemned three boys involved in the shocking gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in an abandoned hangar at the weekend as monsters as they took to the streets to protest against anti-Semitism.

Hundreds of protesters lined the streets of Paris and several other French cities on Wednesday and today, carrying signs with slogans such as “Don’t sacrifice French Jews” and “This could have been your sister.”

French organizations such as the anti-racism group SOS Racisme and the Women’s Foundation are organizing another rally on Thursday evening at the Place de la Bastille in Paris.

Commenting on the brutal gang rape of the young girl, SOS Racisme said: “We were horrified to learn of the gang rape of a 12-year-old girl because she was Jewish,” adding that the organization expressed its solidarity with “this young girl, marked by misogyny and anti-Semitic hatred, as well as with her family.”

“We call on all women and men to stand together against this particularly shameful anti-Semitic and misogynistic act,” the organization said when announcing the rally on the Place de la Bastille, where it will “denounce anti-Semitism and violence against women.”

The A girl from Courbevoie, a suburb of the Hauts-de-Seine department northwest of the French capital, told police on Monday that she had been raped by three teenagers over the weekend, one of whom was her ex-boyfriend.

Investigators heard the gang grab her as she sat with her boyfriend on Place Henri Regnault in Courbevoie and drag her to an abandoned warehouse in the nearby La Défense district to carry out the attack.

According to a police source, during the heinous attack, the youths forced her to perform sexual acts “while making death threats and anti-Semitic remarks,” including “dirty Jew.”

Two of the suspects, both 13, were charged on Tuesday with gang rape, anti-Semitic insults and violence, and death threats, while a third boy, 12, was charged with the same charges, but not rape.

Police began arresting the attackers after a gynecological examination at a local hospital on Monday confirmed the girl had been raped.

The boys appeared before a judge yesterday afternoon and reportedly admitted the crimes after the victim’s friend was able to identify two of them.

The girl’s ex-boyfriend told police he was angry that she had hidden her Jewish heritage from him and wanted revenge, Le Parisien reported.

An investigating source said: “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 in La Défense.

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

According to the girl’s initial testimony, she was beaten, thrown to the ground and photographed with mobile phones.

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.

The girl was then subjected to various sexual acts and was 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.

Investigators allegedly found anti-Semitic comments and images on the boy’s cell phone, including one of a burned Israeli flag.

One of his friends reportedly told police that he beat the girl because she said bad things about Palestine.

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

France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim community, has seen an increase in anti-Semitic acts since Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, which sparked a brutal Israeli retaliation campaign in the Gaza Strip.

According to government figures, the number of anti-Semitic acts in France rose sharply in the first quarter of 2024. Between January and March, 366 cases were registered, an increase of 300% compared to the same period last year.

Of the 1,676 anti-Semitic acts recorded in 2023, 12.7 percent occurred in schools.

Leaders of France’s Jewish community – the largest in any country outside Israel and the United States – expressed horror at the attack, while Macron told parliament that more must be done to combat anti-Semitism in schools.

Macron spoke solemnly and seriously about the “scourge of anti-Semitism” in a cabinet meeting and called for a “dialogue” about racism and hatred of Jews in schools to prevent “hate speech with serious consequences” from “penetrating” classrooms, a government source told AFP.

France’s Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia wrote on X that he was “horrified” and that “no one should be excused in the face of this unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism.”

Marine Le Pen, figurehead of the extreme right, whose Rassemblement National party is predicted to do well in the elections, accused the “extreme left” of “stigmatizing Jews” since the war between Israel and Hamas began.

Meanwhile, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-right party “La France Inségée” (LFI), condemned “anti-Semitic racism” which is accused of trivialising the significance of anti-Jewish attacks.

Courbevoie’s centre-right mayor Jacques Kossowski condemned the “heinous act” and demanded that the perpetrators be punished with the full force of the law “regardless of their age”.