Monday, February 16, 2015

France Rushes to Reassure French Jews After Cemetery Desecrated

Good luck with that.

Jews should take Netanyahu's advice and get the hell out of Gaul.

At WSJ, "Prime Minister Calls on Country to Unite Against ‘Islamo-Fascism’":

PARIS—France’s top leaders rushed Monday to reassure the country’s Jews about their safety after a Jewish graveyard in eastern France was desecrated and a gunman in Copenhagen targeted a synagogue, a month after deadly attacks in Paris.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls called for France to unite against “Islamo-fascism,” and reaffirmed his call for French Jews to stay in France, even amid encouragement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for European Jews to move to Israel.

“France is injured as you are and France doesn't want you to leave,” Mr. Valls told French radio, in what he described as a message to French Jews. “France once again expresses its love for you, its support and solidarity.”

France is grappling with a growing sense of insecurity among its Jewish community, who feel threatened by a rise of anti-Semitic attacks.

The graveyard vandalism left around 300 out of 400 tombstones knocked down and spray-painted in Sarre-Union, a town near the French-German border. The incident came just over a month after a gunman killed four Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris, part of a three-day spree of violence that left 17 people dead. Over the weekend, Jewish fears were further fanned when a lone gunman in Copenhagen killed a 37 year-old Jewish man who was guarding the door of a bat mitzvah ceremony in a parish hall.

Danish police said they shot and killed the gunman, a day after he also attacked a seminar on free speech that featured a Swedish cartoonist who has lampooned Islam.

Since the January attacks, France has tightened security at Jewish institutions, posting police and soldiers outside Jewish schools, community centers and places of worship. The community, which is already on edge, was further rattled after a man wielding a knife attacked soldiers guarding a Jewish center in the southern French city of Nice earlier this month.

France has the world’s third-largest Jewish population after Israel and the U.S., according to most estimates, but many French Jews have been moving to Israel, citing fears about their security at home.

Anti-Semitic attacks have been on the rise in France. In 2013, the latest year for which data have been compiled, there were 423 reported anti-Semitic incidents in France, compared with 82 in 1999, according to the Jewish Community Security Service, a body that compiles data based on police reports.

Around 6,900 French Jews moved to Israel in 2014, up from 3,300, according to the Jewish Agency for Israel, an Israeli organization that oversees the immigration process...

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