Security measures increased at Jewish sites following knife attack in Zurich

Police have stepped up security measures at Jewish sites in Zurich following a serious knife attack on an orthodox Jewish man in the Swiss city overnigh.

Swiss police said they had taken action after a 15-year-old Swiss youth was arrested for inflicting “life-threatening” injuries on a 50-year-old Jewish man in central Zurich on Saturday night.

A Zurich police statement said it was not clear what sparked the attack, but that investigations were “explicitly including the possibility of a crime motivated by antisemitism.”

The extra security was put in place for “specific locations with a Jewish connection,” police said, following discussions with local Jewish organisations. They gave no further details.

Jonathan Kreutner, general secretary of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (SIG), told Swiss television that physical attacks on Jewish people in the country were rare.

“A case like this is really a new dimension,” he said.

Concern about the risk of antisemitic behaviour in Switzerland has grown since the attacks by Hamas gunmen on southern Israel on Oct. 7 and subsequent campaign against the Islamist group by the Israeli government in Gaza.

Last month, the SIG raised concern about attitudes to Jewish people after local media reported police had opened an investigation into a sign in Hebrew displayed by a business in Davos which declared Jews were barred from renting ski gear.

It comes as French authorities are hunting an assailant who attacked a man leaving a synagogue in Paris.

Interior minister Gerald Darmanin said the attack on a man in his early 60s was “a new antisemitic attack that occurred in Paris” on Friday evening.

He added: “Everything is being done to apprehend the perpetrator of this unspeakable act.”

Reports in French media say an assailant was seen physically and verbally assaulting a man at about 5.30pm local time on Friday while he was leaving a synagogue in Paris’s 20th district.

The assailant kicked and punched the man several times, and shouted an ethnic slur at him, according to a report by French broadcaster BFM, citing police sources.

The victim of the attack was taken to a hospital. The suspected attacker fled on foot, the report also said.

The attack came hours after Mr Darmanin said he had ordered police prefectures around the country to “immediately strengthen protections” of Jewish communities, particularly around schools and places of worship.

He said in a post on X that heightened surveillance around places, frequented by “our Jewish compatriots” aimed to prevent them being targeted because of the “unfolding tragedies in the Middle East”.

A sharp rise in antisemitic acts in France has been reported in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

Data from the interior ministry and the Jewish Community Protection Service watchdog showed 1,676 antisemitic acts were reported in 2023, compared to 436 the previous year.