An 80-year-old woman from Israel was brutally attacked in her hotel room in Paris

An Israeli tourist in her eighties was violently attacked in the dead of night while staying in her hotel room in Paris. According to a report published today (Friday) in the French media, the attacker broke into the room and beat her vigorously while she was sleeping, until her family members took control of him and arrested him.

According to the report, the incident happened around 03:00 in the morning in one of the hotels in the French capital, where the elderly woman was staying with some of her family members who came with her on vacation. According to the testimonies provided by the local media, a foreign man managed to penetrate unhindered into the hotel room where she was sleeping alone, and began punching her face forcefully without any prior warning and without uttering a single word.

The elderly woman, who woke up in a panic and in severe pain, began to cry for help with all her might. The screams of the explosion echoed in the hotel corridor and woke up her family members who were staying in nearby rooms. They immediately rushed to the scene, broke into her room and managed to forcefully take control of the attacker, captivate him and put an end to the attack – an action that, according to local sources, saved her life. French police forces who were called to the scene arrived in a short time and arrested the suspect on the spot.

Local medical teams that arrived at the hotel rushed the elderly woman to a hospital in Paris, drinking blood, suffering from severe bruises and in a state of confusion and deep anxiety.

During the medical tests conducted on her throughout the day, the extent of the damage became clear: the doctors diagnosed multiple fractures in the bones of her face, a condition requiring urgent and complex surgical intervention. In light of the diagnosis and the severe trauma, the family members announced that they prefer not to operate on her in France, and now efforts are being made to coordinate her quick flight back to Israel, so that she can undergo the operations and recovery in the health system she is familiar with and in her supportive environment in Israel.

Due to the identity of the victim and the tense public atmosphere in Europe, the fear of a nationalist hate crime immediately arose. However, according to reports in France based on inspections by the Israeli consular services in Paris, the current assessment is that this is not an anti-Semitic incident.

According to those reports, the suspect who was arrested was drunk and in a state of advanced intoxication at the time of the act. Officials privy to the details of the investigation stated that the attacker was completely unaware of the elderly woman’s Israeli citizenship or origin before breaking into her room, and it appears that he acted randomly and without an ideological motive. The Paris police continue to investigate the circumstances of the case, and among other things are looking into how the suspect managed to break into the hotel room without being noticed by the security personnel or the hotel staff.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs updated: “An Israeli woman who was staying in a hotel in Paris was attacked tonight. Upon receiving the report, the Israeli Consulate in Paris and the Department for Israelis in Distress Abroad at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are in continuous contact with the Israeli woman and her family members, working with the local authorities to continue handling the case and assisting her in any way possible. It will be clarified that from the circumstances of the case so far it does not appear to be an attack on anti-Semitic grounds.”