French attack Jewish cemetary

J

John Uskglass

Venerable Relic of the Wastes
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...tisemitism_dc_2

LYON, France (Reuters) - Vandals daubed swastikas and slogans on 56 graves and a war memorial in a Jewish cemetery in eastern France, the latest in a spate of attacks on Jewish, Muslim and Christian property that have shocked France.


The attackers also used black paint to scrawl slogans glorifying Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and declaring "Resistance to the Islamist invasion" on some of the graves on Monday evening in a cemetery in Lyon, France's second city.


President Jacques Chirac, the government, opposition and Jewish leaders on Tuesday condemned the attack, which prompted calls for tougher action to prevent such vandalism.


More than 300 tombs or graves have been desecrated in eastern France since April -- many in Jewish cemeteries but also some Muslim and a few Christian graves -- despite a drive led by Chirac to eradicate racism and protect France's tolerant image.


"It is very symbolic to see graves that bear the Star of David defaced by a swastika," Richard Wertenschlag, Lyon's chief rabbi, said at the cemetery. "It's an indescribable shock."


He noted that the attack coincided with the 60th anniversary of France's liberation from Nazi occupation in World War II and described it as an attack on the Jewish community.


Police said they were questioning two people who were in the area when a warden found the graffiti on Monday evening but had no evidence against them. They have failed to identify those responsible for the other recent attacks.


Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said the attack was odious, Chirac called it cowardly and Justice Minister Dominique Perben visited the cemetery. All expressed solidarity with the Jewish community and vowed to fight anti-Semitism.


But patience with the authorities is running out and alarm is growing among France's 600,000 Jews and five million Muslims -- western Europe's biggest Jewish and Muslim communities.


"A crackdown is needed to make these people (attackers) realize the consequences of their acts," Wertenschlag said.


The CRIF umbrella group representing Jewish organizations appealed for more tolerance in society and said it regretted the attack on the war memorial, which honors all Jews killed in the war.


Their words echoed those of Abdellah Boussouf, rector of Strasbourg mosque, after 15 Muslim graves were desecrated in a war cemetery in the eastern city last Friday.


"I can no longer be content now with the condemnations and solidarity pledges of political rulers. I want results," he said last Saturday. "France's Muslims as a whole have the feeling they are considered second-class citizens."


France has only just ended a row with Israel after its prime minister, Ariel Sharon (news - web sites), urged French Jews in July to emigrate to Israel to escape "the wildest anti-Semitism."


French leaders say they have boosted protection for Jewish schools and synagogues and blame some of the recent tension on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


Racist and anti-Semitic acts in France soared in the first half of 2004, the Interior Ministry says, totaling 135 physical acts against Jews and 95 against other ethnic groups.
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So what is the motivating factor? Is it general angst or real hatred? Also, why is it flaring up in France of all places considering Nazi German stomped France?
 
:P
Probably because there are lots of muslim immigrants there. *shrugs* It happens.
 
Buckle said:
So what is the motivating factor? Is it general angst or real hatred? Also, why is it flaring up in France of all places considering Nazi German stomped France?
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it's the "teenage angst, i'm angry at my father"-syndrome

and why? there is Le Pen preaching hate in France and the ghettos are terrible (for both the french and the immigrants)
 
True, French ghettos are quite the yuk-i-don't-wanna-live-there. But then, that's why they're ghettos. This kinda vandalism is old, though. I recall someone setting fire to a synagog or a jewish school or something.
 
Meh, I remember living in an arab district for a year in Paris.

This thread's title makes one believe that the French government attacked Jewish cementarys, it's a tad misleading.

Vichy left a lasting influence? I doubt so. The French are, overall, hardly anti-semitic, in comparison to other nations. Poland, for one.

No, I think this incident was more an act of vandalism among local nazi-skins or other patriotic imbeciles.
 
This is much, much worse. These people deserve to be put in a time machine back to when it was run.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1092021256783&apage=1

.
Tamar Schuri, a member of the group of Israeli and Jewish students who were attacked while visiting the death camps in Auschwitz earlier this week said that during and after the attack no one came to help the victims, not even the guides employed by the camp, Army Radio reported Wednesday.

"The main accusations were that the place does not only belong to Jews, and that we use it as a publicity tool for pro-Israeli propoganda,," Schori said. "There was a guide with us that worked there, and she just backed off. We didn't have anyone to turn to," she added.

While on a tour of the museum at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland on Sunday, a group of around 50 Jewish university students from Israel, the U.S. and Poland were verbally attacked by a three-member gang of French male tourists.

Evidently incited by the presence of an Israeli flag wrapped around the shoulders Schuri, the first assailant ran at the group while its members were being guided through a model gas chamber and crematoria and began swearing and hurling anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli insults.

"He told us to go back to Israel and said that we were stupid and should be ashamed to walk around with an Israeli flag," testifies Maya Ober, a 21-year-old Polish student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan and member of the Polish Union of Jewish Students (PUSZ), which organized the 16-day summer learning program along with the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS).

After the initial altercation, a second assailant grabbed Ober by the arm. "One of the guys held me by the arm and wouldn't let go," says Ober, who lost several members of her family at Auschwitz. "I was afraid. I couldn't move and I didn't know what he was going to do.

"I was shocked. Although I have met anti-Semitism many times, I never expected to meet it at Auschwitz, where so many of my relatives were killed," she says she spoke to the assailants in French and that in addition to being "brutish and vulgar," their sentiments "made absolutely no sense."

"Violence was narrowly averted," adds Laurence Weinbaum, Director of Research at the World Jewish
Congress and resident scholar for the group, who says the Polish police were not notified of the incident because the assailants did not commit an actual crime.

"But, if the two sides hadn't been separated, it would have come to blows."

Weinbaum, who has been to Poland more than 30 times on educational tours, says he never before saw anything like what happened, happen. "It was simply shocking," he says. "In some way, I felt that these men were satisfied to visit Auschwitz. This was another reminder that in Western Europe there is sympathy for dead Jews; it's just the live ones that they cannot tolerate."

"This event shocked me," adds 24-year-old tour participant Yigael Ben-Natan from Zichron Yaacov, a recent graduate from the University of Haifa. "But, it bought into focus a small part of what it's like to be a Jew in the Diaspora today and a little bit about what it was like to be a Jew in the Diaspora during the Holocaust.
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Dude, this some fucked up shit right here.

Makes me wonder why the coppers didn't intervene, normally, they stop you on the street even for looking suspicious, a thing like this would get their attention.
It would go under discrimination with religious/racial background, 5 years in prison.

Weirdness. They should turn to one of the many Polish antifascist organizations to sort this out.
 
50 Jewish university students from Israel, the U.S. and Poland were verbally attacked by a three-member gang of French male tourists.
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With 50 on three, was there a reason a beatdown didn't happen? I am not Jewish but if some asshat was pulling that while I was there, I would have stomped them.
 
Well, as long as you don't mind disgracing everybody that was slaughtered there.

2 wrongs no right, and all that.

I find this highly suspect, though. Somebody must have done SOMETHING. Unless everybody who works at Auschwitz is an anti-semite due to boring over-exposure.
 
Something similar happened on a smaller scale in New Zealand. However, it is probably because of the arrest.

I find it very amusing that two Mossad agents would try to obtain false passports and end up with 6 months in jail. Most people may forget about New Zealand, but they take no crap from anyone.

[url=http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3582989&thesection=news&thesubsection=general said:
NZ Herald[/url]]

Worldwide Dismay at Attacks on Graves

09.08.2004
By NICOLA BOYES

The desecration of Jewish graves in Wellington's Makara Cemetery has attracted worldwide media coverage, and Jewish internet chatrooms suggest New Zealand has a growing anti-Semitic movement.

More than 90 graves were desecrated and a prayer chapel burned overnight on Thursday, and the attack has been reported in the United States, Australia, Israel and Britain.

Police are also investigating the vandalism of 16 Jewish gravestones in Central Wellington's historic Bolton St Cemetery three weeks ago.

They were destroyed soon after the jailing of suspected Israeli spies Eli Cara and Uriel Kelman for passport fraud and Prime Minister Helen Clark's criticism of Israel's refusal to apologise.

Jewish weblogs linked Helen Clark's comments to the vandalism, and some suggested that anti-Semitism was growing in New Zealand.

Ethnic Affairs Minister Chris Carter said Parliament would be asked tomorrow to condemn anti-Semitism. He hoped the vote, at the start of question time, would send a message to the Jewish community that they, and all New Zealanders, should feel safe to practise their religion and culture.

Acting Prime Minister Michael Cullen would put the motion, which Mr Carter hoped would send an even more powerful message from Parliament.

Police believe the latest vandalism and arson was directed at the Jewish community, given the specific nature of the crime.

Detective Sergeant Tim Leitch said police would be investigating anti-Semitic extremists.

"We will be looking at groups or individuals that have expressed views before against the Jewish community, or have previously been involved in those sorts of crimes," he said.

The vandalism has been widely condemned, and New Zealand Jewish Council president David Zwartz said offers of support had flooded in to the community.

In Auckland yesterday, the Jewish Student Union put up posters on university campuses Auckland-wide appealing to New Zealanders to reject hatred, whether it be on the basis of race or religion.

Mr Zwartz believed some people in the Jewish community were feeling anxious, but they had not indicated fears that it was going to get worse.

The elderly among them were experiencing a repetition of what had happened in their youth.

"It's like reliving a horror story for them."
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CCR, no offense, but oftentimes I have seen you use the past to determine the present, and today's mood in Europe. While this is not untrue, I ask you to look a bit deeper first. Once you said the Austrians hated the Turks because of the war between them, that happened a very long time ago. The Vichy regime is hated by all French except some old people (you see, we are taught in school that they were traitors and bastards). Historical national opinions don't get passed down generations that often. I bet the people who thrashed the cemetary didn't even know what Vichy was, with the crappy education they have in ghettos. It's more likely the FN rather than Vichy was the inspiration for this crime.
 
Dude, as I said before, these aren't news. Jewish centers have been destroyed and burned on several occasions before in France. So unless it's islamists doing it, it's nothing new.
 
You say this like French Soldiers are on the Isrealite's border. This is racists, isolated racists. It happens in Canada, it happens in France, it happens everywhere. There is anti-semitism and racism of all kinds worldwide, vandalism isn't really newsworthy.

Fires, moreso.
 
This sort of thing happens everywhere, against different minority groups (and against some majority groups) and, yes, it is disgusting. There just happens to have been a glut of it recently and an increased media-fueled awareness of it.
It's not like there has been a declaration of war.
 
[url=http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3582989&thesection=news&thesubsection=general said:
NZ Herald[/url]]Jewish weblogs linked Helen Clark's comments to the vandalism, and some suggested that anti-Semitism was growing in New Zealand.
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Never mind vandalism... weblogs are newsworthy?
 
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