The felling of an olive tree planted in memory of a young French Jewish man tortured to death in 2006 caused outrage in France on Friday, with Emmanuel Macron promising to punish an act of “antisemitic hatred”, reports The Guardian.
Politicians across the political spectrum condemned the felling as an attack against the memory of Ilan Halimi, who was kidnapped by a gang of about 20 young people in January 2006 and tortured on a low-income housing estate in the southern Paris suburb of Bagneux.
Found three weeks later, the 23-year-old died on the way to hospital.
An olive tree planted in his memory in the northern Paris suburb of Épinay-sur-Seine in 2011 was cut down on Wednesday night, probably with a chainsaw.
The felling stoked fresh concerns about an increase in antisemitic acts and hate crimes in France as international tensions mount over Gaza.
“Every effort will be made to punish this act of hatred,” Macron wrote on X, adding that France’s fight against antisemitism would be uncompromising. “The nation will not forget this son of France who died because he was Jewish,” Macron wrote.
The French prime minister, François Bayrou, called the tree “a living bulwark against oblivion”. “The never-ending fight against the deadly poison of hatred is our primary duty,” he said.
Officials promised to plant a new memorial tree as soon as possible.
Members of France’s Jewish community, one of the largest in the world, say antisemitic acts have surged since Israel launched its war in Gaza in response to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack.
Halimi’s murder struck horror into the country’s Jewish community and stirred debate about antisemitism in France. Police at the time initially refused to consider the murder a hate crime, and tens of thousands of people protested to demand justice.
Read more of this AFP report published by The Guardian.