Posted on 04/01/2002 8:14:53 PM PST by goody2shooz
Jewish leaders in France yesterday demanded urgent government action after an unprecedented wave of attacks on synagogues and Jewish-owned property around the country.
A synagogue in Marseille, destroyed by fire along with its Torah scrolls and other sacred books on Sunday night, was the third to be hit by arson since Friday, prompting the central consistory of French Jews to compare the violence to the Nazi-led Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, in Germany in November 1938.
President Jacques Chirac issued a call for "dialogue, respect and tolerance". In a statement, the president urged the government to increase police protection at Jewish places of worship and "employ every means necessary to ensure the perpetrators of these acts are tracked down and severely punished".
In signs that anti-semitic violence, apparently linked to escalating Arab-Israeli violence in the Middle East, was spreading in Europe, Belgian police said minor damage was caused to a synagogue in the Brussels district of Anderlecht when a petrol bomb was thrown through a window late on Sunday.
"We are living through a new and deeply dangerous period of anti-semitism, of increasingly violent commando operations carried out against Jews and Jewish interests," said Alain Jakubowicz, president of the Jewish community in Lyon.
"If anyone wanted a demonstration of the reality and the gravity of what the Jews of France live through, they have it now."
Late on Friday, some 15 masked youths rammed two stolen cars through the main gates of Lyon's La Duchere synagogue, and set light to one of the vehicles inside the prayer hall in what Mr Jakubowicz called "an act of war". The doors and facade of another synagogue in Strasbourg were badly damaged in another arson attack.
Also this weekend, a gunman opened fire on a kosher butcher's shop in Toulouse, a Jewish school was broken into in Sarcelles north of Paris, and a Jewish couple in their 20s were beaten up by five youths in Villeurbanne in the Rhone region. The woman, who was pregnant, was kept in hospital overnight.
A book published a fortnight ago by the anti-racist organisation SOS Racisme and UEJF, the Union of Jewish Students in France, described 405 acts of anti-semitic violence reported in France between September 2000 and January 2002. The incidents included insults, spitting, stone throwing, physical violence, racist graffiti, desecration of Jewish graves and arson attacks.
Many were recorded in autumn 2000, after the start of the second intifada in the occupied territories. But a new wave came after the September 11 attacks in America and the ensuing explosion of Israeli-Palestinian violence. The current encirclement of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat seems to have prompted this weekend's attacks.
"Most of these acts seem to be committed by youngsters of Arab origin who identify with the Palestinian cause but who don't really know what they're doing," said a spokesman for the EUJF. "But there's clearly a difference between that kind of kids' stuff and the organised, extremely effective and dangerous attacks in Lyon and Marseille."
France's large Muslim and Jewish communities have on the whole co-existed peacefully and government officials as well as community leaders have sought to play down the recent wave of anti-Jewish violence for fear of inflaming racist feeling. But Jean Kahn, president of the central consistory, said yesterday the French authorities "must take this new threat very seriously indeed".
The prime minister, Lionel Jospin, said he was "revolted by the cowardly and absurd" attack in Lyon which appeared "organised and premeditated".
You think these attacks are organised and premeitated? Gee. I wonder by whom?
Oh, Good Lord, the French are going to have some more Jerry Lewis film festivals?
Islam is an insane death cult, and "moderate islam" is its trojan horse.
(France, are you paying attention?)
Hello Annan ... Hello United Nations .. ummmmm .. what do you have to say know ..
This whole situation can get out of control quickly and the French government will have corpses on their hands and the reality of murderous terrorists in their midst.
Maybe then the death penalty for capital crimes won't look so bad.
Another person (the spokesman) with his head in the sand. Of COURSE they know what they're doing. They're learning in school that Jews are to be hurt and Jewish property vandalized or destroyed. It's just part of their education. As they grow older some will graduate to even more violent acts, and may actually become young adult terrorists. An elite few may actually go to the middle east and participate in the violence there. (Unless we have an all out war, I expect these young terrorists will have plenty of opportunity to practice their trade there.)
What about all the cheerleaders that posted on the thread about the guy that drove his truck into the mosque in Florida last month saying how great it was?
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