Investigation in France after the appearance of images of a Jewish child humiliated at the airport in Paris. “Are you going to liberate Palestine?”
Illustrative image of a French policewoman in Paris on November 10, 2025. Credit: Adnan Farzat/NurPhoto / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia
French authorities have opened an investigation after a video emerged of a man harassing and humiliating a Jewish child at a Paris airport, asking him to “free Palestine” and “dance”, a judicial source told AFP on Tuesday.
Paris police chief Patrice Faure expressed his “outrage at these unacceptable and intolerable remarks”.
“They will not go unpunished,” the official said in a post on the X platform.
He stated that an investigation “to identify the individual and bring him to justice” is “under way”.
“We express our support to our Jewish compatriots and assure them of our full commitment to combating anti-Semitic acts,” Faure added in a post showing an image from the video that captured the incident.
The Bobigny prosecutor's office told AFP that an investigation was opened into a possible act of violence motivated by race, ethnicity, nationality or religion, but did not provide any other details about the incident.
“Are you going to liberate Palestine, brother?”
On Sunday, The SwordOfSalomon account posted footage of the incident on X, which has been viewed more than 440,000 times, claiming it was filmed at Charles de Gaulle Airport in the French capital on June 25.
The video shows a little boy, whose face has been pixelated to avoid identification, playing on a console until a man, whose face cannot be seen, comes and takes the joystick from his hand.
“Are you going to liberate Palestine, brother?” the man says, in English, to the child. “If you don't release them, I'll rip your hat off, brother,” he added, referring to the child's kippa.
The man repeatedly tells the child, in broken French, “dance, «cachou»”, in what appeared to be a mispronunciation of the French word “cochon” (“pig”), and the boy, visibly confused, tries to dance.
The Jewish community condemned the incident
Jewish organizations claim that the number of anti-Semitic attacks has increased in France in the context of the war in Gaza.
Yonathan Arfi, president of CRIF, which represents Jewish institutions in France, said the incident was “another illustration of the climate of anti-Semitism that has prevailed in Europe” after the attack launched by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, followed by the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
According to a statement, the Paris airports company, Groupe ADP, “collaborates closely with the state services and all actors in the airport community, including the chief rabbi, who is one of the airport's chaplains.”
“No compromise from Groupe ADP on anti-Semitism,” the company added.
