Macron to unveil measures to fight anti-Semitism
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron will announce measures to fight a flare- up in anti- Semitism during a dinner with Jewish community leaders Wednesday, a day after thousands of people took to the streets to denounce hate crimes.
Macron’s address to the annual dinner of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) will be closely followed by Europe’s biggest Jewish community, which is reeling after a string of attacks that have made global headlines.
On a visit Tuesday to a cemetery in the Alsace region, near Germany, where 96 Jewish tombstones were spray-painted with blue and yellow swastikas, Macron promised: “We shall act, we shall pass laws, we shall punish.”
But he has baulked at a call by a lawmaker in his Republic on the Move party to criminalise antiZionist statements, which criticise the movement that established Israel as a home for Jews.
“I don’t think that it’s a good solution,” he said.
On Tuesday, thousands of people, some carrying banners proclaiming ‘ That’s enough’, held a rally in Paris to denounce anti- Semitism — one of around 70 protests staged nationwide.
Macron and his government has linked the appearance of swastikas and other anti- Semitic graffiti on artworks, shopfronts and headstones to far-right and far-left elements within the ‘yellow vest’ protest movement.
A protester caught on video hurling abuse at Jewish writer and philosopher Alain Finkielkraut during a ‘ yellow vest’ demonstration in Paris last weekend was taken into custody Tuesday evening in the eastern city of Mulhouse, authorities said.
Police confirmed the suspect, who has been named in French media as telephone salesman Benjamin W., was the bearded man seen on video calling 69year- old Finkielkraut a ‘dirty Zionist’ and telling him ‘France is ours’ after the philosopher ran into demonstrators on the street. — AFP