PARIS: Prime Minister Edouard Philippe voiced alarm on Friday (Nov 9) over a sharp increase in anti-Semitic acts in France, where community leaders urged the government to combat the “cancer” of anti-Jewish sentiment. After two years of declining anti-Jewish violence in 2016 and 2017, the number of reported anti-Semitic attacks and threats rose 69 per cent to 385 between January and September this year, the government said. France has the largest Jewish community in Europe but has a long history of anti-Semitism, with collaborationist French authorities deporting thousands of Jews, including children, to Nazi death camps during World War II. In a Facebook post to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) pogrom in Nazi Germany on Nov 9, 1938, Philippe echoed the alarm of Jewish groups. “Any attack on a citizen because or she is Jewish sounds like more breaking glass,” he said. “We are very far from being done with anti-Semitism.” The head of the Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), Francis Kalifat, said the latest figures were “not a surprise.” “Anti-Semitism is profoundly rooted in our country,” he told AFP, deploring the fact that successive government plans had not managed “to staunch this cancer which corrodes our society”. The figures mirror a trend seen in the United States, where 11 people were shot dead at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last month – the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in recent US history. France’s 500,000-strong Jewish community has been warning about the emergence of a new… [Read full story]
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