Free Republic

PARIS - France, struggling with a resurgence of anti-Semitic crime, said on Saturday it had thwarted an attack on a synagogue in a Paris suburb overnight after discovering a homemade bomb in its grounds. The French Interior Ministry said the amateur bomb, found in the garden of a synagogue in the Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel overnight on Friday, came a day after an attack on a monument to Jewish soldiers who died at Verdun in World War I. The incidents followed the desecration of 127 tombs in the Jewish cemetery of Herrlisheim in Alsace earlier this month. Interior Minister Dominique...

PARIS – The number of anti-Semitic attacks committed in France rose in the first three months of this year, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday, a day after 127 graves were found desecrated in a Jewish cemetery. The ministry said it recorded 67 acts of violence against Jewish people or property in the first quarter of 2004, up from 42 in the final three months of last year. The news added to the debate over anti-Semitism in France as the desecration of the Jewish cemetery close to the border with Germany continued to make headline news. Foreign Minister Michel Barnier...

PARIS - Vandals painted swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti on headstones at a Jewish cemetery in eastern France, an act that drew the swift condemnation of the government on Friday. French President Jacques Chirac promised a tough crackdown on anti-Jewish violence after the vandalism on the cemetery in Herrlisheim. "Anti-Semitism is contrary to all the values, principles and ideas of the Republic," Chirac said. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's office said he immediately wrote a letter to a local Jewish group to express outrage, and Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin called off appointments and immediately headed to the village in the...

PARIS (Reuters) - Three Jewish brothers urged a Paris court on Friday to ban Mel Gibson's "The Passion of The Christ" from French cinemas as anti-Semitic only days before the U.S. box office hit is due to open in France. The brothers -- Patrick, Jean-Marc and Gerard Benlolo -- said at a hastily-arranged hearing that they as Jews felt insulted by the film, which they had not seen, and were sure it would provoke anti-Semitic violence. Jewish critics in the United States, where the movie opened last month, have charged the film about Jesus Christ's suffering and death unjustly portrayed...