A Holocaust memorial in central Paris has been vandalized with blood-red handprints in protest of the Gaza war.

As per The Algemeiner, the incident occurred at the Wall of the Righteous at the Shoah Memorial, which honors the 3,900 people who risked their lives to save Jews in France during the country’s Nazi occupation from 1940-1944. On Tuesday, vandals defaced the memorial with around 20 blood-red handprints, coinciding with the anniversary of the first large-scale roundup of Jews in France, which occurred on the same date in 1941.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo called the vandalism an “unspeakable act” and said that city prosecutors had filed a criminal complaint. Yonathan Arfi, president of the French Jewish representative body CRIF, described the defacement as “despicable” and a clear act of antisemitism.

“No matter who the perpetrators are, this degradation of the Shoah Memorial, the symbol of the bloody hands of the terrorists who lynched two Israeli soldiers in October 2000, resonates like a hateful rallying cry against Jews,” Arfi wrote on X.

Arfi’s reference recalls a particularly disturbing moment during the Second Intifada when a Palestinian mob brutally murdered two Israeli reservists, Vadim Nurzhitz and Yosef Avrahami. One of the terrorists, Aziz Salha, appeared at the window of the Ramallah police station and displayed his blood-stained hands to the cheering crowd gathered outside.

France has seen a surge in antisemitic incidents ever since Hamas launched its massacre against Israel on October 7. Antisemitic outrages rose by over 1,000 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with the previous year, with over 1,200 incidents reported — more than the total number of incidents in France for the previous three years combined, according to the report.