STRASBOURG - Vandals have daubed
swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans on around 90 graves in a
Jewish cemetery in eastern France, local officials said on
Tuesday, shortly before planned marches nationwide against a
surge in anti-Semitic attacks.
French President Emmanuel Macron visited the cemetery on
Tuesday in the village of Quatzenheim, near the city of
Strasbourg, following the overnight desecration, walking through
a gate scarred with a swastika as he entered the graveyard.
"It's important for me to be here with you today," a solemn
looking Macron told local leaders and members of the Jewish
community after paying respects at one of the desecrated graves.
"Whoever did this is not worthy of the French republic and
will be punished... We'll take action, we'll apply the law and
we'll punish them," he said.
Many French political leaders are due to join Tuesday
evening's march in Paris against anti-Semitism. Macron will
visit the national Holocaust memorial with the heads of the
Senate and National Assembly.
Figures released last week showed there were more than 500
anti-Semitic attacks in France in 2018, a 74 percent increase
from 2017.
Among incidents in recent days, 'yellow vest' protesters
were filmed hurling abuse on Saturday at Alain Finkielkraut, a
well-known Jewish writer and son of a Holocaust survivor.
France is home to the biggest Jewish community in Europe --
around 550,000 -- a population that has grown by about half
since World War Two, but anti-Semitic attacks remain common.
A rabbi and three children were killed at a Jewish school in
Toulouse in 2012 by an Islamist gunman, and in 2015 four Jews at
a kosher supermarket in Paris were among 17 people killed by
Islamist militants. In 2006, 23-year-old Ilan Halimi was
kidnapped, tortured and murdered by an anti-Semitic gang.
This month, artwork on two Paris post boxes showing the
image of Simone Veil, a Holocaust survivor and former
magistrate, was defaced with swastikas, while a bagel shop was
sprayed with the word "Juden", German for Jews, in yellow
letters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement
in response to the cemetery attack.
"I call on all French and European leaders to take a strong
stand against anti-Semitism," he said in a video message
recorded in Hebrew. "It is an epidemic that endangers everyone,
not just us, and it must be condemned everywhere and every time
it rears its head."
His immigration minister, Yoav Galant, sent a tweet calling
on French Jews to quit France and "come home" to Israel, where
around 200,000 French Jews already live.