Jacques Didn’t Do It | Power Line

Earlier today, Arié Engelberg, the chief rabbi in the city of Orleans, France, was attacked while was walking home from synagogue with his young son:

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned Sunday the “poison of antisemitism” following a shocking attack on the chief rabbi of the central city of Orleans. French authorities are treating the incident as an antisemitic hate crime.

Rabbi Arié Engelberg was assaulted Saturday evening while walking in the city centre with his young son. Local media reported that the suspect hurled antisemitic insults at the rabbi before physically attacking him.

Remarkably, the attack was caught on video. Because the embed function is currently disabled on X, here is a still image; you can go here to watch the video, which is only 20 seconds long.

The name of the perpetrator has not been released because he is a juvenile, but from the video it is obvious that he is not a Pierre or a Jacques. More likely a Mohammed or Muhammed.

The authorities are appalled:

“The attack on Rabbi Arié Engelberg in Orléans shocks us all. I offer him, his son, and all our fellow citizens of the Jewish faith my full support and that of the nation … We will not give in to silence or inaction,” [President] Macron wrote in a post on X.

I don’t know. It doesn’t shock me. Europe has a long history of anti-Semitism, but current attacks on European Jews–there were 1,570 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in France in 2024–are substantially all attributable to Muslim immigrants or their offspring. Macron says the French government “will not give in to…inaction,” but what actions has his administration actually taken? France has a problem, and it isn’t a Jewish problem: it is a Muslim problem.

The perpetrator of the attack on Rabbi Engelberg has been “transferred to a psychiatric facility,” from which no doubt he will soon emerge. Perhaps the French government considers anti-Semitism to be a psychiatric disorder, like Trump Derangement Syndrome. But if so, it is a disorder from which many millions of Muslims suffer. It would seem that the original mistake lay in France’s immigration policies. Where France proposes to go from here, remains to be seen.