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Some Jewish officials are worried that anti-Semites are ratcheting
up violence against Jews in France and that French courts are tacitly giving them a pass with light sentences.
In the latest significant attack, community officials said an assailant
tried to murder a yeshiva student, who was stabbed last week as he prepared for Shabbat at one of Europes top talmudic academies.
Yisrael Yiftah, 17, was heading toward a local grocery store across
from the Mekor Yisrael Yeshiva in Epinay-sur-Seine, a suburb north of Paris, last Friday when a large man described as of
North African origin attacked him with a knife. The man screamed, "God is great" in Arabic and plunged the knife into Yiftahs
chest.
Police believe the same man carried out additional knife attacks that
night against non-Jewish targets, but Jewish groups are in no doubt as to the anti-Semitic nature of the initial incident.
"The yeshivas in a closed alleyway," said Sammy Ghozlan, president
of the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism. "If you enter there with a knife in a bag, youre only going there
for one purpose."
The attack represented a new level of anti-Semitic assault, the first
with a deadly weapon, community leaders say. It came amid an alarming increase in the intensity of anti-Jewish attacks in
recent weeks.
In the past month, rabbis in Marseille and in the Parisian suburb of
Creteil were attacked. In addition, a rabbis son was severely beaten near his home in Paris over Shavuot.
Government statistics show a steep rise in anti-Semitic incidents since
the beginning of 2004. The 67 incidents reported for the first quarter of the year contrast sharply with the 34 incidents
for the last quarter of 2003.
The figures also show that attacks against Jews make up the vast majority
of racist crimes, despite the fact that the Jewish community is one of Frances smallest minority groups. Paradoxically, the
sharp rise has come at a time when Jewish groups acknowledge that the government has shown real willingness to tackle the
problem of anti-Semitism.
The attacks have left Jewish community members wringing their hands.
"The government has taken all sorts of measures to deal with this,
and our synagogues are like fortresses," Ghozlan said. "Theyve even put on extra buses from railway stations so people dont
walk around at night. What more can we do?"
Ghozlan had sharp words for the courts, which, he said, havent been
tough enough with offenders.
"People have been arrested, but its not going to do any good if sentencing
is not exemplary," he said.
Similar views are being expressed in Frances large Jewish communal
organizations.
In a forceful statement following last weeks knife attack, the CRIF
umbrella organization of French Jews said that "a new level had been breached" in anti-Semitic attacks in France, aided "by
recent court decisions that give the feeling that one can attack Jews with total impunity."
Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin seemed to agree, telling French
radio that the legislation was in place, "but it needs to be applied."
Events this week seemed to bear him out: When a group of youths pleaded
guilty this week to the Shavuot attack on the rabbis son, it became clear that one member had been involved in another attack
on a Jewish youth earlier this year.
His penalty?
The court instructed the youth to write a project on anti-Semitism.
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