Marseille Jews urged not to wear skullcaps after attack

The leader of Marseille's Jewish community today urged Jews in the southern French port city to refrain from wearing skullcaps after a teacher was hurt in an attack by a Turkish teenager.
"Remove the kippah during this troubled time until better days," said Zvi Ammar, head of Marseille's Israelite Consistory, a day after the youth attacked the 35-year-old Jewish teacher with a machete in broad daylight, leaving him injured in the shoulder and one hand.
"Unfortunately for us, we are targeted. As soon as we are identified as Jewish we can be assaulted and even risk death," he told AFP.

"For me, life is more sacred than any other criterion," Ammar said, while adding that making such an appeal made him "sick to the stomach".
The 15-year-old ethnic Kurd who attacked the teacher yesterday told police he was acting in the name of the Islamic State group.
The attack was the third on Jews in recent months in Marseille, which has the second-largest population of Jews in France after the capital Paris.
Three Jews were assaulted in October, one with a knife near a synagogue by a drunken assailant.
In November, another Jewish teacher was stabbed by youths shouting anti-Semitic obscenities and expressing support for the Islamic State group.