Following Marseille machete attack, president says citizens should not be forced to hide for fear of assault because of their religion.

French president François Hollande rejected as “intolerable” Wednesday the idea that fear of attack would prompt French Jews to “hide.”

“It is intolerable that in our country citizens should feel so upset and under assault because of their religious choice that they would conclude that they have to hide,” Hollande said following Monday’s attack on a kipa-wearing teacher in the southern city of Marseille. The French president’s comments came two days after a machete-wielding teen claiming to have been inspired by the Islamic State attacked a Jewish teacher, wounding him.

The knifing of Benjamin Amsellem prompted Zvi Ammar, head of Marseille’s Israeli Consistory, to warn Jews against wearing the traditional skullcap–known as a yarmulke or kipa–in public, sparking a debate over the issue.

“Remove the kipa during this troubled time until better days,” Ammar said.

Other local Jewish leaders disagreed.

Ammar said it was worth taking the precaution in the “one in 1,000 chance” that it would save a life.

But the local representative of France’s CRIF umbrella Jewish group said hiding skullcaps is “to stop being Jewish” and said “Jews have been in France for generations before Muslims.”

Chief Rabbi of France Haim Korsia also opposed the idea, tweeting that “we must not cede to emotion.”

Amsellem’s wife said Tuesday her husband had decided to stop wearing a skullcap.

Several ministers and other politicians expressed opinions. Education minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said: “It’s certainly not the advice I would give, personally.”

Joël Mergui, president of France’s Israelite Central Consistory, said: “If we have to give up wearing any distinctive sign of our identity, it clearly would raise the question of our future in France.”

Brice Hortefeux of the opposition center-right Republican Party agreed with the chief rabbi “giving up [the kipa] is giving in”. He conceded, however, that it was impossible “not to modify your behavior in the face of these unspeakable acts.”

Anti-Semitic acts in France have soared in recent years, increasing by 84 percent in the period between January, 2015, and May, 2015, compared to the same period in the year prior.

Government spokesman Stéphane Le Foll said anti-Semitism “unfortunately has gone on for too long and has taken new forms today.”
Amsellem’s hand was slightly wounded when he was attacked on his way to synagogue for morning prayers, local reports said. The attacker was arrested 10 minutes later. He reportedly declared he was inspired by the Islamic State terrorist group.

The suspect is an ethnic Kurd from Turkey and told police he didn’t regret the assault on the Jewish teacher in Marseille, the latest in a string in recent months. A source close to the investigation told local media the juvenile said he was “ashamed” he hadn’t killed Amsellem. He said he became interested in jihad in March of 2014 after seeing documentaries claiming Muslims were persecuting Westerners.

“One thing led to another and he came upon jihadist websites” arguing that in fact it was Westerners that were persecuting Muslims, and he “agreed,” a police source said.

“I don’t represent Daesh, they represent me,” the teenager reportedly told investigators.

“The individual does not seem to be in full control of his faculties,” a source close to the investigation said. Other sources had police characterizing him as mentally unstable.

In November another teacher at a Jewish school in Marseille was stabbed by three people shouting anti-Semitic slurs.

In October a rabbi and two Jewish worshipers were stabbed outside a synagogue in Marseille following Sabbath prayers. The knife-wielding assailant was heard shouting anti-Semitic slogans during the assault.

Marseille is a city of more than 850,000 people and is home to France’s second-largest Jewish community of about 70,000.

“When I drop my children off at school, I have a pit in my stomach,” a 43-year-old Jewish mother in Marseille said, adding she had asked her 14-year-old son to take off his kipa.

Bruno Attal, a Jewish resident of an eastern suburb in Paris, asked: “Why should we take off our kipas? We might as well not go out at all. Have Parisians stopped going to cafés after the November 13 attacks? It’s a false problem. It won’t change anything in terms of the community’s security.”

Full story here.