Macron vows to punish anti-semitic vandals

The French president has promised to punish vandals who daubed swastikas on 100 graves at a Jewish cemetery just hours before nationwide rallies against an ‘‘unprecedented’’ wave of antisemitic acts.

‘‘We shall act, we shall pass laws, we shall punish,’’ Emmanuel Macron told Jewish leaders while inspecting the 96 tombs daubed with blue and yellow swastikas in the village of Quatzenheim, near the city of Strasbourg in Alsace, eastern France.

His words came shortly before France’s political leaders convened for a march in Paris against a recent surge in antisemitic acts, which rose 74 per cent last year.

‘‘Those who did this are not worthy of the Republic,’’ Macron said, later placing a white rose on a tombstone commemorating those Jews who were deported to Germany during World War II. One of the graves was daubed with the words Elsassisches Schwarzen Wolfe (Black Alsatian Wolves) – a militant separatist group active in the 1970s and 1980s with links to neo-nazis.

This is the second such cemetery in the area to be vandalised since December, along with a nearby monument to Holocaust victims.

Macron paid his respects at the Paris Holocaust memorial before the anti-racism marches, attended in Paris by Edouard Philippe, the prime minister, and leaders of all parties except the far-right National Rally (formerly the National Front), which is holding its own ceremony.

France has been shocked by a recent series of anti-semitic acts, culminating last weekend in a violent barrage of insults against a prominent French writer at a ‘‘yellow vest’’ protest.

In the filmed incident, a man can be seen branding the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut a ‘‘dirty Zionist’’ and telling him ‘‘France belongs to us’’.

While several high-profile ‘‘yellow vests’’ were due to attend the anti-hate marches, a recent Ifop poll of the self-professed gilets jaunes found that nearly half those questioned believed in a worldwide ‘‘Zionist plot’’ and other conspiracy theories.

Responding to the desecration, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said: ‘‘I call on all French and European leaders to take a strong stand against antisemitism.’’

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. France’s parliament yesterday debated whether antizionism should be classified as a form of anti-semitism, a stance Macron said he opposed. –

AP People gather at Republique square in Paris to protest against antisemitism yesterday. In dozens of other French cities, ordinary citizens and officials across the political spectrum geared up to march and rally against antisemitism.