A journalist took to the streets of Paris to film what it is like for Jews to walk around in the predominantly Muslim areas of the French capital wearing a kippah.
The posted video "Ten hours walking in Paris as a Jew" shows verbal abuse and physical threats aimed at him as he walked around the French capital wearing a yarmulke.
Reporter Zvika Klein from the Israeli news outlet NRG walked around for 10 hours, but the final video is 90 seconds long. In the video, Klein is spat upon and shouted at with a barrage of taunting comments such as “Viva Palestine” and “Are you Jewish?”
The journalist was secretly filmed by a colleague and protected by a nearby bodyguard.
He started his walk at the Eiffel Tower but while he sparked little reaction in the city centre, he claimed to receive “hateful stares, belligerent remarks, and hostile body language” in suburban areas with a high Muslim population that were “at times like walking in downtown Ramallah”.
In one filmed sequence, a group of suburban youths can be heard saying: “Arsehole. He’s gonna get fxxxxx from the front and back. You’re going to get screwed around here brother.”
The video shows at least two people spitting at the sight of him, another calling him a “homo” and a third man walking close by him in a foreboding manner after saying “Jew” in his direction.
One boy whom Klein encountered near a public housing project even asked his mother, “What is he doing here, Mommy? Does he not know he will be killed?"
Klein noted that his team later took the advice of two youths and left the neighborhood after receiving physical threats.
"A few more minutes and this would have been a lynching," the bodyguard said to the reporter. "Leave this area right now."
Zvika Klein recounted : ‘’At a nearby cafe, fingers were pointed at us, and moments later two thugs were waiting for us on the street corner. They swore at me, yelled "Jew" and spat at me. "I think we've been made," the photographer whispered at me. Two youths were waiting for us on the next street corner, as they had apparently heard that a Jew was walking around their neighborhood.’’
Klein’s walk follows a similar video that the Swedish channel Sveriges Television filmed in January of verbal abuse suffered by kippah-clad journalist Petter Ljunggren in the streets of Malmo, Sweden.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last Sunday during his weekly cabinet meeting that recent attacks targeting European Jews should provoke a mass migration to Israel.