Macron to unveil measures to fight anti-Semitism

French President Emmanuel Macron will announce measures to fight a flare-up in anti-Semitism during a dinner with Jewish community leaders Wednesday, a day after thousands of people took to the streets to denounce hate crimes.

Macron’s address to the annual dinner of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) will be closely followed by Europe’s biggest Jewish community, which is reeling after a string of attacks that have made global headlines.

On a visit Tuesday to a cemetery in the Alsace region, near Germany, where 96 Jewish tombstones were spray-painted with blue and yellow swastikas, Macron promised: “We shall act, we shall pass laws, we shall punish.”

But he has baulked at a call by a lawmaker in his Republic on the Move party to criminalise anti-Zionist statements, which criticise the movement that established Israel as a home for Jews.

“I don’t think that it’s a good solution,” he said.

On Tuesday, thousands of people, some carrying banners proclaiming “That’s enough”, held a rally in Paris to denounce anti-Semitism — one of around 70 protests staged nationwide.

Macron and his government has linked the appearance of swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti on artworks, shopfronts and headstones to far-right and far-left elements within the “yellow vest” protest movement.

– ‘France is ours’ –

A protester caught on video hurling abuse at Jewish writer and philosopher Alain Finkielkraut during a “yellow vest” demonstration in Paris last weekend was taken into custody Tuesday evening in the eastern city of Mulhouse, authorities said.

Police confirmed the suspect, who has been named in French media as telephone salesman Benjamin W., was the bearded man seen on video calling 69-year-old Finkielkraut a “dirty Zionist” and telling him “France is ours” after the philosopher ran into demonstrators on the street.

Police sources described the 36-year-old suspect as a small-time delinquent with ties to ultra-conservative Muslim groups.

He was one of the most vocal members of a group that jeered Finkielkraut and called him a “racist”, apparently referring to his past warnings about what he sees as the failure of Muslim immigrants to integrate into French society.

The incident caused outrage both in France and abroad, with Israel’s Immigration Minister Yoav Gallant urging French Jews to “come home” to Israel for their safety.

On Wednesday, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin spoke with Finkielkraut to express his solidarity over the “wicked and hurtful attack.”

“I heard that the demonstrators told you to go back to Tel Aviv. I am sure you know that Tel Aviv is a wonderful place but be in no doubt that every Jew, and every person, has the right to choose wherever they live”, said Rivlin, who also wrote to Macron to thank him for visiting the Jewish cemetery visit.

– Focus on anti-Zionism –

Several officials have accused radical “yellow vest” of fomenting a climate of hatred and abetting anti-Semitism.

The anti-government protests began three months ago over fuel taxes but quickly grew into a broader anti-establishment, anti-capitalist rebellion, with some demonstrators using anti-Semitic slurs to denigrate Macron, a former Rothschild investment banker.

A recent Ifop poll of “yellow vest” backers found that nearly half of those questioned believed in a worldwide “Zionist plot” and other conspiracy theories.

The number of anti-Jewish crimes rose 74 percent last year.

Anti-Semitism has a long history in France where society was deeply split at the end of the 19th century by the Alfred Dreyfus affair, a Jewish army captain wrongly convicted of treason.

During World War II, the French Vichy government collaborated with Germany notably in the deportation of Jews to death camps.

Traditionally associated with the far right, anti-Semitism has become ingrained in the high-rise French housing estates that are home to Europe’s largest Muslim community.

Jews have been targeted in several attacks by French jihadists in recent years.

But the proliferation of anti-Semitic graffiti is seen as a new trend.

In recent days, the word “Juden” was spray painted on the window of a Paris bagel bakery and swastikas were scrawled on postbox portraits of late French Holocaust survivor and women’s rights icon Simone Veil.

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