Paris Jewish Student Group Office Is Vandalized; Inscriptions Read "Death to Israel," "Viva Arafat"

The headquarters of a Jewish student group at a Paris university was ransacked yesterday, with vandals scrawling anti-Israel and anti-Semitic graffiti on the office's walls, just hours before mass marches were held around France to protest anti-Semitism, the Times of Israel website reports today (March 29, 2018).

Sacha Ghozlan, president of the French Jewish Students Union, said the damage was inflicted at the group's facilities at the Pantheon-Sorbonne campus of the University of Paris.

"A cabinet was thrown on the ground and there were inscriptions such as 'Death to Israel' and 'Viva Arafat' on the wall," Gozlan said.

The incident came ahead of marches yesterday in Paris and other cities to oppose racism and to honor 85-year-old Mireille Knoll, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who was stabbed to death in her apartment on March 23 in what authorities are calling an anti-Semitic attack. Thousands -- including some French government ministers -- attended a march in Paris.