French police prevent knife attack at Marseille Jewish school

French police arrested a man trying to carry out a knife attack at a Jewish school in Marseille, France, on Friday morning.

– Pierre Sautarel (@FrDesouche) 5 March 2021

The Jewish agency noted that the attacker was turned away by the security of the Yavne school, consisting of parents who volunteer as security. The institution was immediately locked with the students inside to ensure their safety. A police guard was set up in front of the school building. French police forces were immediately notified and instructed Jewish sites in the city to step up security in light of the attempted attack. After turning away from the school, the attacker tried to hide Jewish groceries in a kosher supermarket in the city, where he was once again prevented from attacking by the same security personnel. “While the coronavirus has silenced the world in many ways, it has not silenced the anti-Semitism, or the consequences that result from it, for Jews,” said the chairman of the Jewish Agency Isaac Herzog.

“The attack in Marseille today is a red flag that we must warn about the anti-Semitism taking place under the radar, and just waiting to be released as soon as the movement restrictions of the pandemic come to an end,” he warned. Marseille has seen anti-Semitic attacks before. In 2017, a man with Tunisian citizenship stabbed two women to death at a train station. And in 2016, just two days after the one-year anniversary of the January 2015 attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris, a Jewish man was attacked outside a synagogue by a French minor with a machete. The man was slightly injured and his attacker was arrested ten minutes after the attack.