Two men have been charged with the murder of an elderly French woman, with the police investigating whether anti-Semitism became a motive for the killing, a judicial source told the AFP news agency.
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Mireille Knoll was stabbed to death in her Paris apartment, which was then set on fire, a crime which has shocked France's Jewish community.
The brutal murder comes a year after the killing of another Jewish woman in Paris, whose neighbor beat her and then threw her out of the window while shouting "Allahu Akhbar" (God is great).
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France has the largest Jewish community in Europe and recently attacks against Jews have been on the rise. In January, a Jewish schoolboy wearing a yamulke was beaten by two teenagers in a northern suburb of Paris, in an attack that police considered to be antisemitic. Reacting to the assault, French President Emmanuel Macron equated racially motivated violence with an attack on the whole state, adding that France "stands alongside the French of Jewish faith to fight with them and for them in each of these heinous acts."
