“The death of a young Jew in Bobigny, north of Paris, shocked the whole of France and aroused the indignation of French presidential candidates”, recount The Guardian.
On February 16, Jérémy Cohen, a 31-year-old man with a disability, died after being hit by a tram in Bobigny. The facts were first reported in the local media as an accident. However, after a call for witnesses launched by the family, a video showed that the young man had been violently beaten by about fifteen people. It was therefore to escape his assailants that he had run across the railway line.
“It is not the first time that the death of a Jew has made the headlines in France, nor that rumors have circulated about a desire to cover up the affair”, warns the British conservative newspaper The Spectator. The presidential candidates did not fail to give “their opinion on this death”, denouncing the “silence” around the case, thereby targeting Emmanuel Macron.
“Did he die to flee scum? Did he die because he was a Jew? Why is this case being hushed up?” tweeted Éric Zemmour, himself a Jew. Her far-right rival, Marine Le Pen, wondered on France Inter if he “n’y [avait] not had an instrumentalization by hiding these facts”. We also spoke on the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Yannick Jadot demanding the “truth” and the “justice”.
Political event
A few days before the first round of the presidential election, “this new drama comes at an inopportune time for Emmanuel Macron”, observe the Spectator. Human dramas “must not give rise to political manipulation of any kind”, warned the President of the Republic, traveling to Brittany.
Many Jewish public figures indeed seem to consider the anti-Semitic motives of this attack as obvious, comparing it with that of Sarah Halimi, killed in 2017 by a young Muslim man, notes the Jerusalem Post. Deputy Union of Democrats and Independents Meyer Habib thus pointed out that the young man was probably wearing his yarmulke at the time of the events, reports the Israeli newspaper, anchored on the right.
Franck Serfati, lawyer for the Cohen family, said he did not want any political recovery of the case. However, the father of the victim admits having himself contacted Éric Zemmour in order to advance the investigation, reports The evening.
The Belgian daily recalls events that occurred in a similar context in 2002:
“The violent attack on an old man, Paul Voise, highly publicized in the two days which had preceded the first round of the presidential election, had been the high point of a campaign largely devoted to insecurity. On the evening of the election, the socialist candidate Lionel Jospin had been beaten by Jean-Marie Le Pen, who for the first time hoisted the far right in the second round of an Elysian ballot.
And the newspaper to ask itself: “Will this drama have an influence on Sunday’s election?”