Michaël Benamou, 29, was attacked by three Arab-looking men on the busy platform of the Auber suburban railway station. He told YNet, an Israeli news website: "They called me a ‘f***ing Jew' and said they would kill me. They broke my nose and beat me all over." He has decided to emigrate to Israel. Désiré Amsellem, a 70-year-old Jewish family doctor devoted to his patients of all faiths and origins, was shot in the back as he left his office in Valenton, 10 miles south-east of Paris. Investigators have no clue as to the motive or identity of the killer. On 15 January, after a pro-Hamas demonstration in Strasbourg, 50 men travelled to Metz with the intention of breaking into a synagogue during a service. They were held off by the police. On 24 January, the 1,500 square-metre warehouse of a major distributor of kosher foods burned down in Montreuil, a rough eastern Paris suburb. Obviously arson but, with no graffiti, authorities hesitate to classify it as anti-Semitic.

The attack on 24-year-old Jonathan Guez began as an ordinary carjacking in Fontenay-sous-Bois, a Paris banlieue. "I came out with my car keys in my hand. A masked man stepped up and asked me to hand over the keys. A second man grabbed me from behind. The first man saw the Hebrew letters on my pendant. He asked me if it was Hebrew, and I said, ‘Yes.' He asked, ‘Are you Jewish?' I looked him in the eyes and said, ‘Yes.' He pulled out a butcher's knife, said Israel was drinking the blood of Palestinians. They spoke to each other in Arabic, they insulted me in Arabic and in French. The one with the knife said, ‘I am going to cut you until you bleed.' He slashed once. He said: ‘I am going to cut you until you die,' and drew the knife across my skin a second time, a third time. I fell to my hands and knees. The fourth time, the blood started to flow. Then he kicked me in the head with all his might.

"This shouldn't happen in France. I am French and Jewish and for that I was almost killed. The doctor said the last slash was two millimetres from the carotid."