France’s interior minister vowed Sunday to make the fight against anti-Semitism a “national cause” after the country was rocked by a brutal anti-Semitic attack on a young couple in Paris.
Speaking at a rally in the Paris suburb of Creteil, where the attack took place on Monday, Bernard Cazeneuve said: “We need to make the fight against racism and anti-Semitism a national cause by getting all bodies concerned involved.”
“The Republic will defend you with all its force because, without you, it would no longer be the Republic,” he added.
Speaking at the same rally, Roger Cukierman, the head of the France’s main Jewish organisation (CRIF), said that “Jews feel in danger. Some are already leaving France”.
Cazeneuve said anti-Semitic acts and threats have more than doubled in the past 10 months and called for the authorities to ensure that “none of them goes unpunished”.
In what President Francois Hollande has described as an “unbearable” attack, assailants stormed the flat of a young couple, raping the woman and stealing jewellery and bank cards.
According to the male victim, the attackers told them they had not chosen the place at random.
“We know that your brother is the manager of a big clothing chain. We know he has the cash till,” one of them said, according to the victim, who was interviewed on French television.
“In any case, you Jews, you have money,” the assailant added, according to the victim.
France is home to some 500,000-600,000 Jews, the third largest Jewish population in the world, after Israel and the United States.
Already high levels of anti-Semitism reached fever pitch over the summer during Israel’s war with Gazan terrorist groups. Apart from physical and verbal assaults on Jews, several synagogues were attacked and firebombed and Jewish-owned businesses destroyed and looted by Muslim youths and left-wing extremists.
The number of French Jews who have moved to Israel in the first 10 months of 2014 has more than doubled compared to last year, a leading Jewish agency said last week, attributing the spike to a sluggish economy and a rise in anti-Semitic sentiment.
AFP contributed to this report.
