Macron struggles against anti-Semitism
President Emmanuel Macron yesterday condemned a steep rise in antiSemitic violence in France as tens of thousands gathered nationwide to protest repeated attacks on Jews.
In its annual report, the French Interior Ministry said last week that instances of anti-Semitic violence increased by 74 per cent in 2018.
Yesterday, a Jewish cemetery was desecrated in the eastern French city of Quatzenheim, with swastikas scrawled on about 80 graves.
“Anti-Semitism is the opposite of what France is,” Macron tweeted as he made his way to the site.
Anti-Semitism has been a persistent problem in France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish community. Since 2003, isolated instances of antiSemitic violence in the country have claimed 12 lives. Successive governments have struggled to address the problem. Macron’s government is no exception. Despite any number of speeches the violence against Jews has continued. Earlier this month, a tree planted in memory of Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old Jewish cellphone salesman murdered in 2006 by a group calling itself the “gang of barbarians”, was chopped down ahead of a ceremony planned to mark his death anniversary.
Last week, “Juden” — the German word for Jew and a clear reference to Nazi anti-Semitism — was scrawled across the window of a Paris bagel shop. Swastikas were drawn on a mailbox that depicted the face of Simone Veil, a French Holocaust survivor, abortion rights advocate and national hero who died in 2017.
Although authorities have not named suspects in these recent incidents, their coincidence with a weekend “gilet jaune”, or “yellow vest”, demonstration raised fears about the real motivations of a protest movement that regularly decries high finance, the media and Macron, who formerly worked at the investment bank Rothschild, a favourite target of anti-Semitic vitriol.
In Paris on Tuesday, thousands gathered in the symbolic Place de la Republique, many wielding signs that read “C¸a Suffit!” (“That’s enough!”).
People also gathered in Toulouse and Marseille, as well as several other locations across the country.