French Anti-Jewish Violence Jumps, Reasons Unclear
August 27, 2004
Attacks on Jewish people and property rose to 160 in the first seven months of this year, compared with 75 for the same period in 2003, Dominique de Villepin told Le Monde.
He said only 11 attacks were committed by extreme right-wingers and 50 by people of Arab or Muslim origin -- the group most frequently blamed for the jump in anti-Semitic attacks in line with Middle East violence in recent years.
"Ninety-nine -- that is, the majority -- were prompted by vague motivations, so the risk of contagion by imitation is undeniable," he said. Police have blamed some recent attacks on deranged people, youthful pranksters or attention seekers.
"I should add that the desecrations (of cemeteries) have touched all religions, Christian as well as Muslim," he said. "Islamophobic acts have multiplied dangerously."
Villepin's figures, the first official statistics to break down anti-Semitic violence by motivation, indicated there were fewer neo-Nazi or Muslim attackers than generally assumed.
The high number of "vague motivations" still poses a serious problem because the unorganized nature of such attacks makes it harder for Paris to track down the culprits, as Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom urged it to do this week.
Justice Minister Dominique Perben issued different figures Thursday showing roughly a tripling of anti-Semitic attacks this year, with 298 so far, compared with 108 in all of 2003.
Perben's figures were broken down by their targets, showing there were 67 attacks on Jewish people, 162 on property and 69 cases of anti-Semitic writings. There was no explanation why his figures differed from Villepin's.
About 80 percent of this year's cases had not been solved, Perben said after meeting France's Grand Rabbi Joseph Sitruk to discuss government efforts to fight anti-Semitism.
French officials have been confounded by a series of cemetery desecrations in recent weeks in which swastikas and other Nazi symbols were scrawled on Jewish, Muslim and Christian graveyards.
SOURCE: Reuters