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French President Emmanuel Macron condemned on Friday the destruction of an olive tree planted in memory of Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man murdered in an act of antisemitic violence nearly two decades ago.
Macron called the vandalism an attempt to “kill him for a second time,” referring to Halimi, and promised authorities would find and punish the perpetrators.
Attackers cut down the memorial tree, planted 14 years ago in Epinay-sur-Seine, a northern Paris suburb, on Wednesday night. Local officials later posted a photo showing only the stump where the olive tree once stood.
Macron, writing on X, declared that France “will not forget” Halimi, who was “killed because he was Jewish.” He emphasized that the Republic remained “uncompromising” against antisemitism.
French Prime Minister François Bayrou also condemned the vandalism. He said the tree “was cut down by antisemitic hatred” and insisted that no crime can erase memory.
Paris Police Chief Laurent Nuñez confirmed that investigators had opened a case and vowed the attackers would be tracked down. “We will find them and deliver justice,” he pledged.
In January 2006, kidnappers targeted Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old French Jew, because of his identity. They held him for more than three weeks and subjected him to torture. Police eventually discovered him near railroad tracks south of Paris. He was naked, handcuffed, and covered in burns. Halimi died while being rushed to the hospital.
The brutal killing shocked France. Moreover, it reignited fears about antisemitism and deepened anxiety within the country’s Jewish community, the largest in Western Europe.
Attackers have struck Halimi memorials before. For example, in 2017, vandals ripped down a commemorative plaque near Paris, hurled it to the ground, and smeared it with antisemitic graffiti. These repeated incidents show how Jewish remembrance sites remain frequent targets of hate.
France has experienced a dramatic surge in antisemitic hate crimes since October 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Across Europe, antisemitic threats are escalating, public spaces are growing increasingly hostile to Jews, and governments are failing to draw clear lines between legitimate protest and hate-fueled incitement.
Just two months ago, five Jewish-linked sites in Paris — including a national Holocaust memorial, three synagogues, and an Israeli restaurant — were defaced with green paint.
According to the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), 1,570 antisemitic incidents were tracked across France in 2024 — following a record-breaking 1,676 in 2023. These figures reflect a stark and sustained rise in Jew-hatred, up from just 436 incidents in 2022.
Alarmingly, CRIF reported that more than 65% of last year’s antisemitic incidents targeted individuals directly, with more than 10% involving physical violence.
Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) Advisor on European Affairs Shannon Seban posted on X, “How could we have descended to such barbarity, to the point of attacking the very memory of the victims of antisemitism?”
“I wish I could say that all this is just a nightmare,” she wrote. “A nightmare from which we will soon wake up. Yes, I wish I could say that what we are experiencing right now isn’t real. That every day that passes isn’t marked by a new antisemitic attack.”
Seban concluded, “I wish I could wake up. I wish we all would. But no, this isn’t a nightmare. It’s today, it’s now. And as long as we don’t face it, it will continue. Until when?”
L’olivier en mémoire d’Ilan Halimi, assassiné parce que juif, a été tronçonné à Épinay-sur-Seine, en Seine-Saint-Denis. Comment a-t-on pu sombrer à ce point dans la barbarie, au point de s’en prendre à la mémoire même des victimes de l’antisémitisme ?
J’aimerais pouvoir dire…
— Shannon Seban (@ShannonSeban) August 14, 2025
