French police have arrested four people after a Paris concert by Israel’s national orchestra was disrupted, a prosecutor said Friday, with organisers saying protesters lit smoke flares at the event.
Several individuals repeatedly interrupted Thursday’s concert by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the venue said.
Videos posted on social media show a protester holding a red flare inside the concert hall with smoke billowing. Other people present were then seen to rush to strike the individual.
The Paris Philharmonic said it had filed a complaint, adding it “deplores and strongly condemns the serious incidents that occurred.”
On three occasions, individuals with tickets attempted to disrupt the concert and fellow spectators intervened, the concert venue said.
The protesters were removed and the concert resumed peacefully, it added.
A French prosecutor said that three women and one man were in custody over the incident.
Before the concert, several anti-Israel groups had written an open letter calling for the event to be cancelled.
Israel’s ambassador to France Joshua Zarka, who was at the concert, told AFP that audience members who attacked the protestors were “proof that France has had enough.”
French Culture Minister Rachida Dati condemned the protest, saying “violence has no place in a concert hall.”
“Freedom of programming and creation is a fundamental right of our republic,” she added.
The protest was the latest example of a push for a cultural boycott of Israel.
In September, a Belgian festival cancelled a performance by a German orchestra to be led by Israeli Lahav Shani, the same 36-year-old conductor who headed Thursday’s concert in Paris.
Announcing the cancellation of the Belgian concert, organisers said Shani had not “unequivocally” distanced himself from the Israeli government.
The cancellation was also condemned amid accusations of antisemitism, including from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who warned that “antisemitic rhetoric” was becoming normalised.
