Arson Attack on Hyper Cacher, Kosher Market in Paris

Ten years after four Jews were murdered by a Muslim terrorist at the Hyper Cacher kosher market in Paris, another attack — this time not murder, but arson in the middle of the night — occurred at the same market. More on this latest reminder of the dangers French Jews now face, with a steep rise in antisemitic attacks, can be found here.

An arson attack occurred on Thursday outside a kosher shop in Paris—the same market where four Jews were murdered in 2015—amid an ongoing surge in antisemitic incidents in France.

The incident occurred around 3 a.m. outside the Hyper Cacher store after unidentified individuals set fire to nearby dumpsters.

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While no injuries were reported and the interior of the shop remained unharmed, the fire damaged the exterior of the establishment, leaving a side wall covered in soot, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro.

Local police have opened an investigation for “willful damage by fire” and are treating the case as an act of vandalism, but have not indicated any suspicion of an antisemitic motive.

Really? Not a scintilla of suspicion “of an antisemitic motive”? The Hyper Cacher is a kosher market, one where the customers and staff would naturally be Jewish. It was the object of an assault ten years ago by a Muslim terrorist, Amedy Coulibaly, who entered the market with a submachine gun, an assault rifle, and two Tokarev pistols, hellbent on taking Jews hostage as a way to pressure the French authorities to “not harm” the Kouachi brothers, who a few days previously had carried out the killings of twelve people, ten of them cartoonists, at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Before he was killed by French police, Coulibaly had murdered four Jews at the market. Everyone in France knew about the first Hyper Cacher attack, no one in France would have doubted the antisemitic impulse behind the arson attack in 2025. Nobody, that is, except for the French police who try to downplay the epidemic of antisemitism in France.

In 2015, a jihadist terrorist murdered four Jews at the Hyper Cacher, just days after his accomplices murdered 12 people at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine.

Since then, annual commemorations are held outside the shop — the facade of which remained undamaged in the fire — to honor the victims of the attack.

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After the attack this week, the European Jewish Congress (EJC) issued a statement that did not label the incident as antisemitic, but described it as “yet another reminder of the persistent threats Jewish communities face.”…

Why did the EJC not label this attempted arson on a kosher market that had been the site, a decade ago, of the murders of four Jews, and had become a national symbol of Jew-hatred, as the latest display of antisemitism? What good is it to deny the obvious?

Antisemitism in France continued to surge to alarming levels across the country last year, with 1,570 incidents recorded, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) – the main representative body of French Jews.

The total number of antisemitic outrages last year was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022.

What the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France and the European Jewish Congress should have both done is decried this “attempt to commit arson on the Hyper Cacher, the victim and most vivid example of the epidemic of antisemitism that has engulfed France in recent years. The Republic of France must make the Jews of France feel safe again. It must wage war on those whose belief system makes them see Jews as the permanent enemy, and where the law permits, deport such people — that is, remove them from France altogether.”

There is no need to mention Islam or Muslims by name. Everyone will understand who is meant. And many, including millions of non-Jews in France who have endured their own calvary at the hands of their uninvited Muslim “guests,” will agree that such stern measures must now be undertaken.