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Paris Hotel Refuses to Serve Israeli Family as Antisemitism Continues to Spiral in France
Anti-Israel demonstration supporting the BDS movement, Paris France, June 8, 2024. Photo: Claire Serie / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
An Israeli family visiting Paris was denied service at a hotel after an attendant noticed their Israeli passports, continuing a record spike in antisemitism across France that has increasingly led to violence against the Jewish community.
According to the French magazine Le Point, the Israeli family of three intended to spend three nights in Paris. Although they had booked their Novotel Paris Porte de Versailles hotel room online, an attendant informed the family, after seeing their Israeli passports, that the price of the room had increased.
“He completely changed face,” the father said in a complaint to French authorities, according to the publication.
Novotel’s Porte de Versailles hotel in Paris. An Israeli family was turned away from the hotel after an attendant noticed their Israeli passports. Photo: Accor Group
“When he saw that I had an Israeli passport, he told me that the room would cost 1,219 Euros in the end; he increased the price voluntarily,” the father continued.
The attendant also allegedly hurled antisemitic accusations at the family, including, “Israel, you think you are kings of the world; you will not have a room in this hotel!”
The family was turned away from the hotel at 1:30 am and forced to stay elsewhere. The attendant “treated us with contempt and racism,” the father said.
Accor, the group that manages Novotel, offered the family compensation after their poor treatment.
The incident came amid a spike in antisemitism to record levels across France.
In an especially egregious attack that has garnered international headlines, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a Paris suburb on June 15, according to the French authorities. The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack.
The three alleged attackers were arrested by French police two days after the rape. Two of them were indicted for gang rape, death threats, antisemitic violence, attempted extortion, and invasion of privacy. The third boy was charged as a witness.
After the attack, French President Emmanuel Macron “denounced the scourge of antisemitism” overtaking French society and spoke of the need to combat hatred of Jews in schools.
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a press conference in Paris, France, June 12, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
The parents of the girl agreed to speak anonymously with the French newspaper Le Parisien in an interview that was published on Monday. They described the attack as a “mimicry” of Hamas’ sexual violence against Israeli girls and women during the Palestinian terrorist group’s onslaught across southern Israel on Oct. 7.
The rape in France reportedly occurred after the assailants discovered that the victim was Jewish. “Why did you lie? I know you are not Muslim. So what religion are you?” the boys yelled at her before the attack, according to her parents.
According to the girl’s mother, “before they let her leave, they made her swear by Allah not to tell her parents or police.”
The assault was antisemitic and motivated by the war in Gaza, her parents told Le Parisien. “This incident is a sign of a collective social failure in the fight against antisemitism and extreme violence,” they said.
Jewish children were also targeted in another Paris suburb this past weekend. On Saturday, six Jewish minors were assaulted at a movie theater in the suburb of Levallois-Perret. According to reports, three assailants yelled antisemitic slurs at the minors and “slapped one of them several times,” before the victims fled toward Jerusalem Square in the French capital’s 17th arrondissement, where they filed a police complaint. French police are investigating the incident.
“I condemn the physical attack of antisemitic nature in which several young minors were victims,” Geoffroy Boulard, mayor of the 17th arrondissement, wrote on X/Twitter in response to the assault.
The recent antisemitic attacks came amid a record surge of antisemitism in France in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Antisemitic incidents rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported — greater than the total number of incidents in France for the previous three years combined.
The post Paris Hotel Refuses to Serve Israeli Family as Antisemitism Continues to Spiral in France first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.