Levy immediately took refuge in a nearby bar before an ambulance came to take him to hospital. Witnesses to the attack seized the assailant who did not put up any resistance.
Mendel Samama, a Strasbourg rabbi who visited Levy at the hospital, said the victim described surviving the attack as a miracle. “He was shocked. He is weak. He was hit in the abdominal region a few centimetres from a vital organ.”
The Grand Rabbi of Strasbourg, René Gutman, said the attack was carried out by “one person” and did not reflect general tensions in the city. He said however, “If this person can stand in the city and when he sees a person in yarmulke, assault them with a knife, this is a problem.” He called on improving security in the city. Interior Minister Bernard Cazaneuve called him to express solidarity.
The aggressor had stated in the past that he believed himself to be “the victim of a Jewish conspiracy” which he blamed for “all his misfortunes.” To the prosecutors, this may sound lunatic, but they fail to appreciate that a big part of the Muslim world believes in such lunacies.
French prosecutors said the attacker has a history of anti-Semitic attacks, but said he was not mentally responsible for his acts under criminal law and was detained in a psychiatric hospital.
Jews have been targeted in a number of French attacks in the past year, including four who were killed in January 2015 in a Jewish supermarket in Paris and a Jewish teacher in Marseille was attacked with a machete this January.
